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eroticism
This term captures the sexual excitement which
permeates much of tourism. At the heart of both
eroticism and tourism lies a craving for the
beautiful �a characteristic ascribed by Plato to
Eros, the Greek god of sexual love). Both share
associations with `beginnings' ± tourism with
personal recreations, eroticism �classically) with
cosmogony ± and both are also implicated in the
transgression of boundaries, particularly those
between the private and public domains.
See also: advertising; escape; fantasy;
pornography; sex tourism
escape
TOM SELWYN, UK
It is widely accepted that one of the reasons why
people become tourists is that they want
temporarily to `escape'. Two issues necessarily
follow: what is it that they desire to escape from,
and what do they wish to escape to?
At the most general level, part of the answer to
both these questions lies in the etymology of
holiday. Modern `holy days' are periods set apart
when time bound, hierarchically organised and
bureaucratically controlled work routines, governed
by principles of rationality, are suspended.
This tedium is what contemporary holidaymakers,
like celebrants of holy days in earlier times, escape
from. Furthermore, holidays are, with certain
exceptions �when appropriated by the state, for
example), typically celebrated in an atmosphere of
relatively open and egalitarian relationships unconstrained
by time or formal social regulations
�Turner 1969), and it is these characteristics
towards which people would like to escape.
Valid and important as these generalisations are,
contemporary sociologists and anthropologists of
tourism have sought to place the motivation to
escape within more specific and recent social,
cultural and politico-economic contours. Two
features of modernity and postmodernity have
attracted particular attention: institutional fragmentation
and consumerism �see also postmodernism).
The former, together with its social and
escape 201
psychological consequences, has been variously
examined. The evocative idea of the modern's �or
postmodern's) `homeless mind' �Berger et al. 1973)
is frequently used as a starting point. It is used by
MacCannell �1976) to suggest that the cognitive
rootlessness of today's tourist may find temporary
relief in the psychological and sociological warmth
of touristic activities.
Complementing this train of thought, Lash and
Urry �1987) have argued that the passage from
modernity to postmodernity has been shaped by
a general movement from `organised' to `disorganised'
capitalism, and that one of the accompanying
features of the latter is a lessening of intellectual
and cultural `certainties'. Underlying these observations
is the assumption that the psychological
disturbance and cognitive dislocation which has
accompanied these movements has opened up a
void from which the escape promised by the
tourism brochures appears compellingly attractive.
Some commentators have gone on to argue that
part of the reason for such attraction derives from
the general sense of nostalgia for imagined times
and places which resonate with the supposed
stability of castles and stately homes, the apparent
scientific and religious verities embodied in cathedrals
and universities, and the imagined natural
and cultural harmonies of the agricultural and
fishing regions of, for example, southern Europe.
Underlying such fantasies is the promise of escape
from the risks and disonances of postmodernity as
daily experienced in the suburban hinterlands of
the cold north.
As far as consumerism is concerned, it can also
be shown that the promise of escape from the
apparent wholesale `commoditisation' associated
with the consumerism of the age, is another
powerful motive behind modern tourism. The
argument here is more complex, as in some senses
tourism itself is a form of consumption. Nevertheless,
the possibility of escaping from credit card
and mortgage repayment worries into the illusion
of a cashless world may well be one of the
foundation stones of such types of tourism
arrangement as the `all-inclusive' package tours.
Moreover, the yearning for supposedly authentic
traditions �see authenticity), the fondness for
places such as islands and historic cities, and the
feelings of togetherness and community associated