Dean MacCannell

Tourism is argued to be the best way to experience culture not in a static state as in a museum environment. This work of cultural criticism is commonplace and already accepted in academia. Barack Obama went to Hiroshima to celebrate peace efforts but blamed America for the bombing of the city. Accordingly, Obama was a good tourist since he was able to condemn an alien America without having to exercise any self-criticism about his role as a guilty party. This book is Marxist in its show more theoretical presuppositions so it has no value outside the group-think of like minded university coterie. show less

I gave up 3/4 through the book. There were a couple of intriguing concepts in a sea of hog wash. The disconnected social and psychoanalytical theories were apparently thrown in for effect because I could find no connection, one to another and heaven knows what the author's point was. He didn't even define ethical and used it several different ways. Points made in one chapter were refuted in the next. I could rant on but I'll stop.