The Tourist Gaze (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)读后感精选

《The Tourist Gaze (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)》是一本由Professor John Urry著作，Sage Publications Ltd出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：USD 57.95，页数：184，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《The Tourist Gaze (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)》读后感(一)：Review On The Tourist Gaze

It’s really hard to write a review on the whole book when it can’t be treated as something complete or systematic. The thoughts, ideas and theories are like the beads of different colors, sizes and you just can’t put them on the same string. Here, based on my comprehension and the materials about the book, I’ll try to point out some of the limitations of the book.

First, Urry put too much emphasis on the core status of visual experience in travelling. Obviously in many forms of travelling, visual experience is not in the first place, such as skiing, mount climbing and other extreme sports. So the tourist gaze may be better applied to research of nature tourism.

Second, Urry pointed out that differentiation was the key to understanding the phenomena in tourism, which I doubt about. Since McDonaldization and Disneyfication have been the fresh trends in the development of tourism, so-call differentiation will not be the only attraction. The various motivations and behaviors of tourists are more diversified and complex than only to pursue the wonder of nature visually.

Third, which is also fatal I think, although Urry mentioned the tourist gaze is historical and social, when he explained the impact tourism had on destinations he seemed to notice merely the gaze of tourists on culture and residents from destinations, and at the same time, implied the tourist gaze was active and dominant. But the fact is gaze is mutual. With the gradual evolution of destinations and rising population there, the changing power in the subject-object relationship may have an impact on tourists. “local gaze” may be replaced with “mutual gaze”. Urry’s theory then lacks something dynamic and subjective.

Fourth, compared with Foucault’s penetrating analysis, Urry’s work makes me feel left uncompleted. For example, there is a fight for power in the relationship of gazing and being gazed, which Urry failed to make clear. What’s more, according to Foucault, gaze means oppression and production as well, but the related positive cases Urry provided were not enough.

Anyway, The Tourist Gaze is really a worth reading book. It gives me so many fresh ideas that I have to read more other books to digest, which is already a great achievement in this semester. I’m proud I persisted in reading the book.

《The Tourist Gaze (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)》读后感(二)：i do not know what the author want to say after reading the whole book.

Book Review

Introduction

Urry started the book with a comparison of tourism and medicine, which I think is improbable, as the gaze of medicine can be based on experiments, while tourist gaze cannot. And this also become the difficulty of tourist gaze. As a result, how to explain tourist gaze is depended on the view of Urry, not on the view of readers or other authors, thus making the book hard to read.

The whole book tries to put emphasis on how to view the tourists’ behaviors and their influences on the development of tourism. Nevertheless, I think Urry fail to make it, as he cannot ignore the social background of tourist gaze. Analyzing the social background is indeed necessary, but Urry uses too many words to introduce the background, thus making the content of the book much more boring than its name.

When reading the book, I find two highlights in it. I will analyze them in the following part. However, in my point of view, there are also two limitations in the book, which I will analyze later in the Review.

Highlights of the Gaze

I will begin with the highlights of the book first. Generally speaking, I do not like the book, which can be felt from the previous part of my Review. However, two arguments put forward by Urry still interest me a lot.

First, in Chapter 4, Urry gives us a view of the service department under tourist gaze. He introduces the importance of servers to us. We may have some further conclusions based on his words that waiters and waitresses are living symbols of the destination, which in fact, have an extremely huge influence on the future behavior of tourists.

The most interesting point he put forward is that in the view of customers, waiters should be responsible for the low speed of dish serving, which however, is more related to the cooks. This will therefore result in the conflict between waiters and cooks. The point makes much sense to me, as it reveals the fact of restaurant industry.

Second, in Chapter 7, Urry talks about the role exchange of viewer and viewee. According to his words, a tourist in Paris is also a part of the scenery of Paris to other tourists. It sounds ridiculous, but after thinking for a while, I find it rather sensible. The argument is really instructional when we are doing some tourism plans. If we can mix the tourist with the scenery in most destinations, the tourism industry is sure to have a milestone development.

In the next part of the Review, I will talk about two main limitations of Tourist Gaze.

Limitations of the Gaze

In the previous part of the Review, I’ve talked about some highlights of the book. However, we should not ignore the limitations of the gaze.

When talking about mass tourism, Urry views it as a fight for tourism resources. He thinks that the prior comer will have a better experience than the later ones. Therefore, Urry does not put much effort on analyzing the post-modernism of mass tourism. In fact, he does not even believe that mass tourism will last to the post-modernism period.

However, Professor Shen Zu-xiang argues that mass tourism is not such a horror. He argues that mass tourism is an opportunity of cultivating the tourism culture of the destination. He views mass tourism a share of culture rather than a fight for resources. Tourists in fact add their thoughts to the culture of destination, so that the later comers will find the culture of destination more fascinating than the prior ones.

Another limitation is that the whole book is written in a mess, out of logic. When talking about post-modernism, Urry may suddenly turn to post-modernism museums, describing their structure, history, etc., which in my view, is not closely related to the title, thus making me confused of what he really want to talk about. Some similar changes of topics can also be found in the other chapters of the book. I just hate that kind of changes.

Conclusion

In the Review, I have listed two highlights and two limitations of Tourist Gaze. As you can see, the Book Review is written in Urry-style, concluding what I have talked about tirelessly, giving a view of what I will talk about all around, and arguing around to support my view. However, I’ve not been adapted to the logic of Urry, so that I am not able to make my Review a mess. Finally, I will give my comment of Tourist Gaze in a sentence.

The book is full of thoughts, but unfortunately lacks logic.

© luc_chiang. All rights reserved.

《The Tourist Gaze (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)》读后感(三)：旅行的意义？

2018-02-19

（一）

上个月底期末答辩完，赶在学期马上开始之前，跟朋友去了一趟布鲁塞尔。

这次终于没有着急放下行李赶去博物馆、哪个景点或者房子“朝圣”，而是找了个地方坐下，闲扯了一个下午。

布鲁塞尔的房子和街道太有意思了。

习惯了哥本哈根的小巧朴素，以及波澜不惊的平坦地形，再在这样上上下下的坡道、带着梯形台阶和眺望台的各色城市广场间穿行，总是带着意外的惊喜。

在我带着个人偏见的粗线条文化谱系里，比利时夹在低地民族（荷兰比利时卢森堡）和法国之间，既有沿海人民商业务实的一面，但相对于荷兰人纯粹的务实又自诩有些悠游闲置（当地朋友亲口说的，他们一大爱好就是调侃荷兰人如何爱钱），心理上跟布尔乔亚又庞大的法兰西靠拢（因为当年的欧洲皇室，路易十六最潮）。当然这也可能是对比利时官方双语的马后炮解释——至少是在游客区讲法语才地道而更受尊重。所以荷兰的文化符号是木拖鞋、郁金香、奶酪、风车和苦兮兮一辈子的梵高，哦，还有红灯区；而比利时则是时装、精酿啤酒和腻死人的巧克力。体现在城市中，是既有市民气息的小街道、老城广场和朴素的市政厅；又有跟风凡尔赛宫修建的大尺度法式宫廷和几何园林，宽阔的八车道环旧城墙大道，缀满各式花枝招展的房子，比维也纳的环城大道还要“大气”。

（二）

以上，我粗暴示范了如何作为一名游客对一个地方符号化的评头论足、若有所闻的洋洋自zhuang得bi。

上学期后半段充分迷失的研究里，有幸碰到了一本以社会学眼光研究旅游而集各方理论大成的书《游客的凝视》the Tourist Gaze。这本书初版自1990年，到2011年已经出到了3.0版本；但可惜，由于主要作者、英国社会学家约翰·尤里在前年逝世，可能不会再有版本更新了。这本书引用了大量跟旅游相关的文献，梳理了其中观点。

作者对于旅游的一个关键论点是，旅游这件事的一个核心行为或动作，是「游客的凝视」，是游客的「看」这个动作，是视觉性在统摄。

离开自己所居住的地方，到别的城市、文化、景观短暂地落脚观光，体验不一样的世界，从根源上这是一种现代行为——从很大程度上，这是（对于生存）「不必要的」。在十五世纪以前的西方，也只有宗教朝圣能给人足够的动机去跋山涉水、冒着一去不返的危险遥遥千里。文艺复兴以后、十九世纪以前，西方人中也只有贵族和真正的中产阶级能够负担得起长途旅行的开销。

《逍遥游》里说「适千里者三月聚粮」，可见为旅行做准备绝不轻松。学古诗的时候，感觉好像文人们都潇洒得很。然而首先阮籍、李白、杜甫都是士大夫，贵族，其次是他们都是对时代失望/没当上官/当不好官，反正政治抱负没有出路或者被战争所迫或被贬谪，才驾着车、骑着马或拖家带口到处跑；徐霞客倒是不想当官，但同样家底殷实。所以旅游真正普及到普罗大众中间，是十九世纪工业文明开花结果之后的事：火车、轮船以及摄影技术的出现，到后来的民用飞机和汽车，以及当代的大众媒体。

（三）

游客的凝视，首先是因为被凝视的对象是一种「他者」，是「别处」，是「远方」、「彼岸」，是「异与自己」、「与自己平常所见不同的」。尤里认为旅游的核心来自现代生活的一种基本区分，即将工作和生活分离、甚至对立起来——我自己转译了一下，也就是现代社会中产阶级的出现；换句话说，更多的人开始有闲了。旅游，即是要求见到与自己琐碎的日常生活场景中不同的事物，从工作的沉闷烦心或单调的束缚中抽身出来，短暂地进入另一个世界——哪怕这个世界只是个泡泡，无关于表象还是深刻，人造还是真实 ；或者应该说，需要的也只是一个泡泡。「凝视」（或观看的动作）本身是一个通过文化、社会被学习的行为；我们受到的教育，学到听到的的诗词歌赋，读过的书，看的电影电视，都为我们创造了种种预期，将这些预期与要去的地点挂钩起来。沈从文的边城至少曾经照亮了凤凰（现在听说连墓都很少有人去看了）；一部一米阳光火了整个丽江；跟夫人关系不善，或者蜜月旅行，当然是要去巴黎了——作为游客，我们给自己制造预期与幻想，再去寻找印证；我们都是搜集符号、使用符号的专家。

「生活在别处」，如果别处没有了可以幻想的余地，还能不能成为「别处」呢？

作者用「白日梦」和「幻想」来形容游客必备的技能，我们如何带着预期、将自己的期待投射到身边周遭的现实中，又在期待被满足印证、搜集到了符号之后获得愉悦感，重新用符号来确认泡泡。我们都是这样建造自己的泡泡的。

在旅行中如是；在生活里呢？

这本书作为研究，尽可能保持了中性，通过关于“凝视”的探讨呈现更多的视角。譬如，书中也对不同类型的“凝视”作了区分，因为凝视的方式也跟游客自身的社会阶级、性别、职业、文化族群、年龄等等相关。但现实的荒诞只是摆放在那里：每年全球有50万间新建的酒店客房，但同时期有3100万难民无家可归。

我们studio在古巴的课题有不少人在处理旅游业的课题，但大家常常预设的一件事是，希望创造某种游客与当地人的「真实接触」，一种穿过或者绕过泡泡的接触；似乎帮助游客们了解真实，就能帮到当地人的处境。但是，那层泡泡不在外面，而是在里面的：有多少人去旅游时是抱着新闻记者、人类学家或是大悲大悯的普世关怀去的呢？大多数人的生活已经足够烦恼，他们并不是花钱来处理别人生活中的问题的。泡泡已经足够；泡泡很好。

「真实并不是人们所想要的。」

逃离「此处」，是现代文明的一个困境；此处与此刻百无聊赖，因此永远在赶往「别处」。

我们也不得不承认，「逃离」在某种程度上确实是有用的——比利时的啤酒，的确让我暂时忘掉了对古巴旅游业的批判。

难怪陈绮贞老师唱得哀怨，

“你离开我，就是旅行的意义”