Section One - Living the Tourist Life 1. Why Tourism Matters; 2. The Give and the Take; 3. Doing Being Tourists Section Two - Packing the Travel Bag 4. Packing; 5. Packers of Culture; 6. Bag-sized Stories Section Three - Unpacking the Travel bag 7: New Habits; 8: Exchanging Stories; 9: Changing Spaces Section Four - After Tourism 10: The Return to Routine; 11: Conclusions

This book asks the question; why is it that tourism matters? It looks at how it is we do tourism and learn to be tourists when we are on holiday. Tourism is a dynamic way of being that may facilitate or hinder intercultural exchange. The ways in which we do tourism and the places in which we are tourists raise practical, material and emotional questions about tourist life. This book draws on both empirical work and a range of theoretical frameworks, arguing that tourism matters precisely because of the lessons it can teach us about living everyday life with others.

Gavin Jack is Lecturer in Critical Marketing at the University of Leicester Management Centre, UK.

Alison Phipps is senior lecturer and Director of the Graduate School for Arts and Humanities at the University of Glasgow, where she teaches anthropology and languages. Her books include Acting Identities (2000), and Contemporary German Cultural Studies (2002). She is associate editor of the journal Tourism and Cultural Change.