Anthropology, Tourism and Local Societies. A Survey of the Literature
Through a survey of forty years of anthropological publications on tourism, the paper begins with an investigation of the foundations of that particular discipline’s analysis, looking for the origins of theoretical propositions and their evolution. The focus is then narrowed to examine studies which look at tourism as a factor of social change in host societies with special attention paid to empirical research on the cultural and socio-economic impacts of tourism development on local societies. The author argues that anthropological research on these impacts, when conducted within the conceptual framework of an encompassing yet hypothetical « theory of tourism », is not convincing. To further research fruitfully on the impacts of tourism on host societies at the local level, the author stresses the necessity of dissociating this research from the one on the tourist, and of producing more case studies firmly rooted in their particular contexts, a fundamental prerequisite to progress in this still little known field.