Title: Power in tourism research: the tourist gaze as metonym

Authors: Bonnie Farber Canziani

Addresses: Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality and Tourism, Bryan School of Business and Economics, University of North Carolina Greensboro, 473 Bryan Building, Greensboro, NC 27402, USA

Abstract: This manuscript offers an updated review of publications citing Urry's work on the tourist gaze. The primary purpose is to assess whether the gaze continues to be useful as a research window through which tourism may be observed and analysed. The paper offers evidence that the tourist gaze continues to hold significant interest for researchers who seek to understand the complexities of a power-ridden network of tourism system components engaging in performative relationships across time and space. The enduring value of the tourist gaze depends on recognising the inherent utility of the gaze as a metonym for a comprehensive multisensory negotiation of power and meaning in the tourist space, rather than literally interpreting the gaze as the tourist's physical act of seeing and the stereotypes that result.

Keywords: agency; destination image; ecological systems; ecosystems; host gaze; inclusion; network; performativity; power; meaning; multisensory negotiation; tourist gaze; tourism research; metonym; tourism destinations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2015.067645

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2015 Vol.4 No.1, pp.13 - 24

Received: 03 Jun 2013
Accepted: 13 Oct 2014
Published online: 18 Mar 2015 *

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