Long Distances: Tourating, Travel, and the Ethics of Tourism

Abstract

Baudrillard worries that, in the age of the screen, instantaneous communication shrinks time and distance, so that the delays and deferrals essential to self-consciousness collapse, and any specific identity is effaced. Touration, the industrial tourism of Las Vegas and Disney, contributes to this loss through the erasure of place and the monetizing of uniform experiences. In analyses of Venice, Proust and Calvino argue, conversely, that the value of travel is to amplify distance and difference through the disruption of habit and convention. Might an ethics of tourism identify practices that would serve local security, global mobility, and universal leisure, or the opportunity for local and tourist alike to pursue happiness? The sustainable touristic practices in Bali and Bhutan safeguard local landscapes and enterprises, while subordinating the tourist to the sustaining values of the indigenous culture, requiring that she take just that distance on herself that is essential to encountering both the other and oneself.