Tourisme et anthropologie : un tango de l’altérité

Abstract

This article aims to study the relationship between anthropology and tourism—as one of its objects. From the pionneers in the 1960s to the latest publications, the authors will examine the theoritical and ethnographical diversity of the approaches used in anthropology to study tourism. In a reflexive approach, it will trace the academical, scientifical and epistemological difficulties encountered by the anthropologist working in a field often despised in its own discipline. Furthermore, the article will explore how tourism itself could be approached as a social and cultural practice that is partially based on a reappropriation of anthropological knowledge. Ultimately, the authors suggest that tourism could be defined as an “alternity enonomy”, which values depend on relations, practices or imaginations of alterity.

Keywords

• Anthropology
• tourism
• alterity