Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
according to a society's rules or proscriptions as well as technological mediation and physical
environment' (Paterson, 2009: 771), and the melding of these cultural conventions with the
capacities of the body and the affordances of space. Here we have emphasised that tourism
cannot be captured by one sensation - such as the gaze - but instead is shaped contingently
and contextually, for, as Scarles asserts, '[T]here is no beginning and no end, but a series of
rhythms, fl ows and fl uxes, in-between points and stages that tourists move in and around'
(2009: 466). Accordingly, rather than considering tourism as over-determined by pre-
existing sensual dispositions, experiences and performances, the sensual experiences of tour-
ists in, across and through different spaces are typifi ed by the
fl o w
and rhythm of experience
rather than a wholly predictable, unfolding apprehension (Edensor and Holloway, 2008).
Tourism is a process and not a discrete, identifi able set of practices, beliefs and apprehen-
sions. As a consequence, future research on tourist sensation needs to be organised around
extensive ethnographic study over time, wherein researchers are immersed in specifi c
temporal or spatial contexts, in order to provide the kinds of thick descriptions of sensory
experience that will undercut the ethnocentric, reductive generalisations about tourists that
masquerade as universal but in reality merely focus on distinctive tourist experiences and
practices in certain places at particular times.
