Relocating the Tourist.

This article traces the arrival and the subsequent debates about the place of the tourist in sociology. The sociology of tourists first focused on their economic, and then their physical and sociocultural impacts, in the stereotypical case of mass tourists of the metropolis visiting historical and peripheral locations. More recently, Graburn and Smith differentiated tourists by class, gender and lifestyle, and then by national origin. Tourism has come to be seen as a form of expressive and perhaps therapeutic culture comparable to art, play and leisure. The tourist as sight-seer was first castigated by snobbish social commentators, and then valorized as a seeker of authenticity by MacCannell, and as a caster of gazes by Urry. Cohen usefully examined the range of tourists' experiences and authenticities. In this special issue Lengkeek and Harrison re-examine tourist differentiations, authenticities and subjective experiences. Thorns and Perkins conjoin the notion of the tourist as sight-seer with that of physical performer, while Liebman Parrinello looks at the tourist as both embodied and as technologized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]