Tourism, Tradition and Culture
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David Harrison has contributed to the academic study of tourism over the last 30 years. This book brings together a collection of his published material that reflects the role played by tourism in 'development', both in societies emerging from Western colonialism and in societies previously part of the Soviet system. The overarching theme looks at how, promoted as a tool for development, tourism can lead to conflict between competing elites, but can also empower groups previously subject to constraint by traditional authorities. Tradition is intensely manipulatable and always reflects power relations. Such pressure on tradition is but one aspect of tourism's wider social impacts. This includes changes in economic and social structure, which, for many, constitute social problems that need to be addressed. At the same time, 'sustainability', though apparently a worthy aim, can be a problematic concept, especially when applied to 'traditional' cultures, and may conflict with such ideals as egalitarianism.
is a sociologist/anthropologist of development and has spent two decades teaching sociology at Sussex University in the UK and later taught for nine years at the University of the South Pacific and for ten years at London Metropolitan University, before going to Middlesex University in 2014. His basic approach to development issues emerged in his single-authored text The Sociology of Modernization and Development (1988), and he went on to edit numerous books on tourism, including Tourism and the Less Developed Countries (1992), Tourism and the Less Developed World (2001) and Pacific Island Tourism (2003), and co-editor of many others, including The Politics of World Heritage (with Michael Hitchcock (2005), and Tourism in Pacific Islands (with Stephen Pratt) (2015). He has also written numerous papers in refereed journals and chapters in books on tourism and development. A Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, David imbued the sociological perspective when an undergraduate and since then has been fascinated by social behaviour in different societies. Since the late 1980s, his key research interests have been the global role of tourism as a development tool, with particular reference to tourism's economic, social and cultural impacts. He has carried out research in the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, South-east Asia and the South Pacific.