index

Critical tourism

click on images for full-size:

Preparations for a Krakow neighborhood festival

Critical tourism may sound like an oxymoron. We don't "tour" to exercise our brains. A "vacation" is literally an emptying out, a voiding of daily experience and responsibility. Vacations are supposed to be fun, but then some of us get off on critical thinking. Lippard 1999, 4
[A tour guide says:]"We work really hard on these trips [reality tours to migrant workplaces, etc.]. We're trying to make sense of the world around us." (146)