ARI Working Paper Series
WPS 66 Of Reverie and Emplacement: Spatial Imaginings and Tourism Encounters in Nepal Himalaya
Author | : | LIM Khek Gee Francis |
Publication Date | : | May / 2006 |
Publisher | : | Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore |
Keywords | : | Nepal Himalaya, tourism encounters, Simmel, place, development |
Download |
While the concept of the ‘tourist gaze’ has been influential in tourism research, the ‘counter-gaze’ of the host communities and their imagination of the tourists’ places of origin have not been adequately addressed. Based on fieldwork conducted in the Langtang National Park of Nepal, and drawing on Simmel’s theory of sociation, this paper attempts a simultaneous analysis of the shifting images the visitors and hosts have of each other and how these images shape their experiences of tourism, and argues that a constant shifting of subjectivity between ‘reverie’ and ‘emplacement’ characterises the structure of tourism encounters.