Article,
Networks and Tourism. Mobile Social Life.
Annals of Tourism Research, (2007)
Abstract
This article shows that much tourism should no longer be seen as marginal
and
by implication ‘‘unnecessary’’. Rather, traveling, visiting, and hosting
are necessary to social
life conducted at-a-distance. It is argued here that research has
neglected issues of sociality
and corporeal copresence and thereby overlooked how more and more
tourism is concerned
with (re)producing social networks—with (re)visiting and receiving
the hospitality of friends
and kin living elsewhere and fulfilling social obligations. The article
documents how much
tourism is not an isolated ‘‘exotic island’’ but a significant set
of relations connecting and
reconnecting ‘‘disconnected’’ people in face-to-face proximities where
obligations and
pleasures can go hand in hand.
