From Pilgrimage to Package Tour: Travel and Tourism in the Third World [Hardcover]

When people in First World countries think of tourists in the vast expanses of the Third World today, they typically think of pampered westerners, filling up the luxury hotels and imposing their Orientalist gazes on the teeming masses. As David Gladstone shows us in this fascinating and provocative book, such preconceptions are wrong. Coupling incisive and colorful ethnographic accounts of tourism in India and Mexico with sharp analysis, Gladstone demonstrates the amazing complexity of this industry, which now comprises close to ten percent of the world economy. As he also shows, the vast majority of tourists in the Third World are indigenous people with few resources-often making pilgrimages to religious shrines.<br>From Pilgrimage to Package Tour is a fresh and entirely original account that stands tourism studies on its head and proves that this industry is far more complicated than it initially appears.From Pilgrimage to Package Tour is a fresh and entirely original account that stands tourism studies on its head and proves that this industry is far more complicated than it initially appears.David Gladstone is Assistant Professor of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of New Orleans. He also serves as the Director of their Ph.D. program in Urban Studies. Put simply, this is the best book on Third-World tourism produced thus far
. -- Dennis Judd, Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, and co-editor of The Tourist City
Immensely readable, this volume should be of interest to anyone concerned with issues of place making, authenticity, and planning. -- Susan Fainstein, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University, and co-editor of The Tourist City
a much needed antidote to the main stream of previous research on highly capitalized glitzy tourist enterprises and destinations. -- Dean MacCannl^