Graduate Student Seminar Series

Touristic Ambassadors: Agents for Change in an Age of Globalization

November, 2007

Renowned French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss opens his classic work, Tristes Tropiques, "I hate traveling and explorers. Yet here I am proposing to tell the story of my expeditions" [1955,1].

What is the significance of the traveler's story, be it told through pictures, postcards, or multi-media PowerPoint presentations? Are today's tourists mere pawns in a multi-billion dollar global industry, or do participants in trends such as eco-, ethnic, and heritage tourism exhibit a growing sense of ethical responsibility to the places they visit?

Today, tourism remains a "moral and social phenomenon" worthy of the contemporary scholar's inquiry. With a focus on popular re-iterations of tourism in Japan and China, our program seeks to identify and articulate this growing global industry's potential as an agent for positive social, economic, and environmental change. Tourism's complex implications in the lives of the visitor and the visited encourage us to move beyond simply decrying the ills of globalization in search of more meaningful journeys.

Please join the Cultural Agents Initiative, Professor Nelson Graburn, and our distinguished panel of experts in beginning the first of many conversations on tourism and the humaninites.

Sponsored by The Cultural Agents Initiative, The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Asia Center, The Humanities Center, and The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Links

Seminar Report

Touristic Ambassadors Postcard