`Argued with a real verve, it makes a plea to rethink the role of tourism in modernity seeing it not as a fleeting and marginal element, but as something enduring, emblematic and constitutive of contemporary society. Tourism is seen as a key element of modern life, not an escape from it' - Mike Crang, Department of Geography, University of Durham

Tourism is a rapidly growing area of student enrolment. Lecturers and students who have waited patiently for an up-to-date, lucid and indispensable teaching and research text, need wait no more. This book is a matchless guide to understanding the theory, practice, development and effects of tourism.

Tourism: An Introduction:

- equips students with a critical perspective of the central processes of tourism and the relationship between tourism and culture

- places tourism at the heart of modern life rather than as a peripheral feature added on after work

- illuminates the relationship between tourism and nation formation, citizenship, consumerism and globalization

- reveals the ritual, performative and embodied dimensions of tourist experience

This book offers readers a major synthesis of modern thought on tourism. It breaks the mould of approaching tourism as a self-contained, compartment of contemporary life and treats it as a major and exciting cultural phenomenon. This is a landmark work in the study of tourism.

Adrian Franklin is the editor of the acclaimed journal Tourist Studies (SAGE Publications).