Thoughts on the Tourist Gaze——Read John Urey's "The Tourist Gaze"

In today's society, tourism behavior is becoming more and more common, and the social economy has been developed to a great extent through tourism. But what is the essence of tourism? According to social chemist John Urey, tourism is people's pursuit of an alien life. People have a latent desire in their hearts. After staying in one place for a long time, they are eager to experience other real lives. This is the reason why tourism behavior occurs.

John Urie analyzes various economic and cultural phenomena behind tourism through his book "Tourist Gaze". Since the publication of this book, the “tourist gaze” has become an important theoretical analysis tool in tourism anthropology research. This innovative concept of “gaze” is derived from Foucault’s “medical gaze”.

In Foucault’s medical gaze, gaze mainly has three connotations, which are: a way of viewing imposed on the object by the subject of gaze projection; it exists in modern society and symbolizes a kind of power. Relationships and a kind of soft violence; invisible but real social forces that are organized and systematized by society. Based on this concept, Uri believes that there is also a power relationship between tourists as tourism subjects and tourist destinations as tourism objects, and it is obvious that tourists are the leaders of this relationship, and the gazing subject also follows changes with the development of history.

In Yuri’s view, the gazing subject’s gaze on the gazing object does not depend on the quality of the gazing object itself, but on the cultural connotation it represents—that is, the code, the characteristics of the code. It is the key to attract tourists to consume. Therefore, the process of tourists’ gaze is actually the interaction between culture, tourists and consumption. The more intense the interaction process, the more obvious the economic benefits brought by gaze.

For tourists, going to a certain place to perform this kind of gazing activity is determined by the cultural concepts of the era in which they live and the cultural connotation of the gazing place. Uri analyzed that traveling was an activity only for the upper class before the 19th century, and mass tourism only developed after that. Similarly, he also used holiday beach as an example to demonstrate the impact of cultural concepts on tourism.

Yuri believes that tourism has two main purposes, one is recuperation and the other is leisure. The reason for the rise of seaside vacations in Britain in the 19th century was not only the convenience brought by improved transportation, but also the fact that people at that time believed that sea bathing could make themselves healthier. Later, the emergence of forest villas and white skin as a symbol of nobility had a huge impact on holiday beach tourism. Later, the sun was given the concept of health, which led to the rise of sun bathing.

Uri also borrowed Burstyn's "fake event" theory to analyze the falseness in tourism. Tourists choose to gaze at a certain place because it has differences that distinguish it from other places. Yuri also believes that in fact, pure tourist gaze does not exist, and those so-called characteristics and typicalities are deliberately constructed. The more deliberately you pursue reality, the easier it is to be blinded by appearances. The reason why this phenomenon occurs, Yuri believes, is that tourists are in a dominant position of power in their gaze. Therefore, in order to achieve better economic benefits, tourist destinations will always use advertising and media to build the cultural connotation of the area to attract them. Tourist patronage. In the tourist gaze, nature and society are transformed into objects that can be controlled. In social history, culture will change, and tourism can rebuild it, or to put it more directly, transform it.

In short, Uri has been trying to explain the power relationship between the subject of gaze, the object of gaze, and consumption in the book. Tourists as subjects are naturally active, while tourist destinations as objects are passive. Subjects exert power influence on objects through consumption. In addition to this analysis of the power relations that exist in gaze activities, Uri also interprets phenomena or factors such as economy, environment, work, history, theme parks, photographers, and globalized tourism in tourism. It cannot be denied that the analysis and argumentation of tourism activities in this book is indeed very detailed. It can be seen that the author has done a lot of work to complete his research, and many views do have their rationality and reference significance. However, after reading this book, I had to raise the following questions to express my doubts.

First of all, there is the issue of "gazing". The most straightforward explanation of "gazing" is to look "concentratedly". Gaze in English translation also has this meaning, but tourists' "gazing" activities Are you really focused? This is debatable, especially in modern society. In fact, in the era of rapid development of mass tourism, tourism activities have become increasingly rapid and more like a fast-moving consumer product. As the author said, in tourism activities, the cultural connotations of many places are constructed, so the repeatability is particularly high, so the value of tourists "gazing" at them has been lost, and the real quality Gazing exists among social groups with higher incomes. They have better conditions than ordinary people to satisfy their desire to "gaze". Therefore, if the "gaze" the author refers to only refers to the tourism activity itself, then it does exist, but it is obvious that the author hopes to give a higher connotation to his "gaze" theory.

Secondly, is there really a power relationship in which tourists are in a dominant position in tourism activities? This is questionable. According to Foucault, gaze is a kind of power. What others gaze brings is not the recognition of the subject but a kind of oppression.

However, is it really reasonable to apply this power relationship between tourists, tourist destinations and tourism services? The author believes that tourists have a "gaze" with desire for tourist destinations, and this gaze can form a kind of power that affects the tourist objects. From this aspect alone, this is indeed reasonable, but from another perspective, The author also said that tourist destinations will attract tourists by building culture, so that tourist destinations that were originally objects in a dominated position will become dominant in the power relationship. Therefore, even if such a power relationship really exists, the subject and the The roles of objects are also interchangeable.

Finally, the author said in the book that his purpose in writing this book was not to illustrate individual travel motivations, but to emphasize the systematized and orderly nature of various gazes. In other words, the author hopes to find the uniqueness that exists in various tourism activities. This uniqueness can be used in all tourism "gazes". However, by reading the whole book, it is found that the author only looks at it from different aspects. Analyzing different phenomena and problems makes it difficult to draw a general conclusion. What the author calls the essence is actually the theory of power relations between tourism subjects and tourism objects derived from applying Foucault’s “medical gaze”. This is actually more like an over-interpretation of social phenomena.