[an error occurred while processing this directive]

February 27, 2003

Dean MacCannell on why tourist attractions are tourist attractions

"In the establishment of modern society, the individual act of sightseeing is probably less important than the ceremonial ratification of authentic attractions as objects of ultimate value, a ratification at once caused by and resulting in a gathering of tourists around an attraction and measurable to a certain degree by the time and distance the tourists travel to reach it. The actual act of communion between the tourist and attraction is less important than the image or the idea of society that that the collective act generates. The image of the Statue of Liberty or the Liberty Bell that is the product of visits to them is more enduring than any specific visit, although, of course, the visit is indispensable to the image. A specific act of sightseeing is, in itself, weightless and, at the same time, the ultimate reason for the orderly representation of the social structure of modern society in the system of attractions."
--Dean MacCannell, The Tourist (1976)

Posted by Rolf on February 27, 2003 09:22 AM
Comments

" ....... ceremonial ratification of authentic attractions ...." call me a dumb bunny, but what was that all about??????

Posted by: googoosh on March 1, 2003 11:06 AM

Ah yes, academic-speak. Pretty dense stuff. MacCannell's book is fascinating, but you have to wade through a lot of jargony sentences to get many of the points. "Ceremonial ratification" in this case is a technical way of describing why people visit certain attractions again and again. Just as holidays are ceremonial ratifications of religious or cultural ideals, visits to tourist attractions are ceremonial ratifications of the collective travel desire.

But then, I'm no academic; that's just my take on it. Anyone else have thoughts on putting this into "plain English"?

Posted by: Rolf on March 2, 2003 10:44 PM

I think by "ceremonial ratification of authentic attractions as objects of ultimate value" MacCannell means to say certain places will only have true value to us if we consider them "authentic" in one way or another. We have a collective desire to travel because we desire as a "modern" society to find a level of authenticity that we consider absent in the society we are embedded within.

That's my take on MacCannell so far, anyway. What do you think?

Posted by: Venessa on January 9, 2004 09:42 PM
Post a comment