Kanttekeningen

Het moderne toerisme en het postsociologisch tijdperk

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Abstract

Modern tourism and the post-sociological era - Our article gives an analysis of a recent book by Dean MacCannell: The tourist, a new theory of the leisure class (MacMillan Press, London + Basingstoke 1976). Our reflections however, go beyond the framework of this book, in that they also touch upon relevant aspects it does not treat, and upon the relation between modern tourism and sociology. MacCannell aims at a structural analysis of the main characteristics of modern society through a study of modern mass-tourism. He does not discuss the historical and structural conditions that enabled the development of mass-tourism. In the first part of this article we combine views of Thorstein VEBLEN and Alexis DE TOCQUEVILLE, in order to show that the process of democratization has made that leisure cannot longer be the privilege of a certain class, and that it realized a levelling of income. MacCannell’s analysis is based on the phenomenon of social-structural differentiation as part of the process of modernization. The depth-structure of modernity is a mentality that forms an expression of the process of differentiation, as it differentiates between a modern and a non-modern world. This stimulates a feeling of inauthenticity, and it makes the longing for naturalness, nostalgia and the search for originality the most important motives behind modern tourism. Tourism can be seen as a collective and contemporary attempt to exceed the discontinuity of modern society, by integrating differentiations of it in one total image of it. In order to avoid competition with a better organized tourism and mass-media, the sociologist should use these common sense typifications as a point of departure for his own ‘reconstruction’ of social reality.

How to Cite:

Buiks, P., (1978) “Het moderne toerisme en het postsociologisch tijdperk”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 23(2), 167–175. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.96083