This book broadens the discussion and challenges the traditional paradigm which presents tourism as an outside force - independant of any cultural or symbolic system - making an impact on an indigenous society. The contributors to International Tourism reconceptualize the local and the global, avoiding such crude oppositions as centre v. periphery, modern v. traditional, macro v. micro and North v. South.

Instead, they demonstrate that the local cannot be understood without the global, and that the global can never be isolated from the regional setting within which it operates. Providing new insights into theories of touristic practice, this volume places tourism within the same framework as other transnational global studies. In addition, it offers a sophisticated contribution to the debate on identity and otherness, touching upon the fundamental issues of 'us' and 'them', collectivity and difference.