Valene Smith, tourism, and the remapping of anthropological terrain

Adams, Kathleen M.

Abstract

This article argues that Valene Smith’s contributions were fundamental for mapping out the terrain for what was envisioned as an ‘anthropology of tourism.’ As the first major collection of anthropological research on the topic of tourism, Smith’s 1977 volume Hosts and Guests offered a wide geographical range of ethnographically grounded studies of tourism, charted typologies, and chronicled tourism impacts, much as one would map a ‘field of ethnological study’. This article addresses the role of Smiths’s volume in legitimizing what had previously been an off-the-radar realm of anthropological study. It also traces one of the many legacies of Smith’s landmark volume: the blossoming of a realm of tourism studies oriented toward examining the politics, performance, and negotiation of identities (including ethnicity, gender, nationalism, and heritage) in and beyond encounters between ‘hosts’ and ‘guests.’ Finally, the article addresses Smith’s 2001 revised edition of the volume, Hosts and Guests Revisited, arguing that her essays in that volume presciently identified 21st-century realms of interest for tourism scholars, including space tourism, voluntourism, terrorism and tourism, and cyberspace.

Citation

Adams, K. M. (2024). Valene Smith, tourism, and the remapping of anthropological terrain. Tourism Geographies, 26(4), 695-699. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2342467

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 17, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Apr 13, 2024
• Publication Date: Apr 13, 2024
• Deposit Date: Apr 27, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 27, 2024
• Journal: Tourism Geographies
• Print ISSN: 1461-6688
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-1340
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 695-699
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2342467
• Keywords: Tourism social science; anthropology of tourism; history of tourism thought; tourism and identity; tourism and politics; hosts and guests; Valene Smith
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2024.2342467