The Cultures of Tourism: From Origins to Global Phenomenon

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Image courtesy of the CCCB.

Tourism is a far-reaching phenomenon in continuous transformation that permeates many aspects of public life in populations and landscapes around the world, to the point of becoming totally ubiquitous in various aspects of social life, for example in the economy, culture, housing and politics. Yet tourism has not always existed. It is the result of a particular culture in which leisure and free time acquire social value, and certain natural and urban settings become places for consumption and contemplation. This is a culture in which cities, regions and states must legitimize discourses of identity, and in which the service economy and means of transport incentivize the displacement of new strata of the population for pleasure-seeking reasons. Modern tourism is invented in the wake of these conditions.

Experts and researchers from various disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, history of art architecture and geography, will come together in this seminar to establish a genealogy of tourism and to discuss the question of how we have turned into a tourist society. They will look back to consider the continuities and changes in the phenomenon, and also to identify and explore the ingredients that make up tourist culture in the twenty-first century.

Event will be held in Spanish, Catalan and English with simultaneous translation from English to Catalan.

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