Introduction - Tourism and Visual Culture: Theories and Concepts - page 5

reproductions of space can provide interesting
insights into the way in which space is conceived
and experienced. The conception and use of
space is further explored by Lisa Power and
Clive Baker, in the context of the Gurkha
Museum in England. Whilst the museum clearly
documents the military history of the Gurkhas
and their association with the British armed
forces, it also concentrates on the social and cul-
tural heritage of the Gurkhas' homeland, Nepal.
Power and Baker discuss how the layout and
content of 'museum space' structure the visitor
experience, and thereby the way in which the
story of the Gurkhas and the Nepalese people is
intended to be read. For Power and Baker, a
quick glance or a deeper gaze reveals very dif-
ferent aspects of the story, not least of which is
the absence of the soldier's voice.
Speaking of absent voices, Freya Higgins-
Desbiolles offers us the often-absent voice of
the researcher. Casting aside the normative neces-
sity for objectivity, she challenges us to listen to
her story and how it has affected her research.
Her self-appointed role as an 'activist academic'
means that she has no intention of being any-
thing other than subjective in investigating the
power structures that lie behind local diffi culties
with tourism and that inform our understanding
of the crisis of tourism. Her work draws on visual
memory and asks what it means to be an aca-
demic in a society with increasing gaps between
rich and poor. Stefania Antonioni, Laura
Gemini and Lella Mazzoli's research into local
identity in the Italian town of Levanto employs a
combination of photo elicitation and focus group
interviews to explore the relationship between the
gaze of the tourist and the gaze of the local inhab-
itants. In so doing, they are able to show how
local people 'see' and understand the tourism
potential of their own town.
Related to this is the chapter by Elisabeth
Dumont, Mikel Asensio and Manuel
Mortari, which explores the process of image
construction supporting the development of
tourism in two European towns - the Belgium
town of Mons and the Spanish city of Ávila.
Interviews with key stakeholders are among the
methods employed to examine reactions to the
promotional logo adopted by the local autho-
rities in each destination. Interesting issues
emerge from these interviews concerning the
mismatch between local resident perceptions of

place and the views of the tourism authority that
has the power to decide what and how to pro-
mote the town.
The role of the visual in mediating the
encounter between tourist, local resident and
site/sight provides the focus for the chapter by
Ketwadee Buddhabhumbhitak. Buddhab-
humbhitak draws on the fi ndings from an
empirical study of backpackers in Thailand to
highlight the disparity between the ideology of
backpacking and the actual behaviour of back-
packers. By analysing the data obtained from
interviews, Buddhabhumbhitak shows that far
from immersing themselves in the host culture
backpackers do little more than gaze at the peo-
ple they encounter. Such superfi cial immersion
is felt to be the cause of negative social impacts
for the host society. The negative consequences
of the gaze also provide the focus for the next
chapter. Here, Gayathri Wijesinghe and Peter
Willis explore the lived experiences of female
receptionists working in a luxury hotel in Sri
Lanka who fi nd themselves the object of a male
tourist gaze. The receptionist's account of seeing,
knowing and telling incorporates metaphor and
poetry to explore and explain what the tourist
gaze feels like. The experience presented high-
lights issues of power and gender as well as the
sexualized nature of reception work.
Taking a social constructivist approach,
James Moir's chapter analyses the visuality of
tourism through a discourse of travel as sight/
site-seeing. For Moir, sight-seeing is a form of
visual rhetoric where the inner realm of the
imagination and the outer realm of 'reality'
combine to structure a tourist's perceptual rela-
tionship with the destination visited. Moir con-
cludes by arguing that this inner/outer duality
represents an under-researched area within
tourist studies. Shopping as a form of sightsee-
ing provides the focus of the next chapter. Here,
Hilary du Cros offers a fascinating view of
Chinese tourists' encounter with and consump-
tion of Western goods and services in shopping
malls and markets. Employing observation,
interviews, video and digital technologies, du
Cros highlights how for some Chinese tourists
the shopping experience is as much about a
visual consumption of the experience of shop-
ping as it is about the purchase of material
goods such as watches, suits and jewellery. The
connectivity between visibility and visitability is