Indian Tourist Guide Books

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses Bhattacharyya's belief that the "Lonely Planet" guidebook shapes how westerners see India and how they interact with their Indian hosts. The paper explains how she posits that the text reflects western biases and that tourists tend to interact with Indians through the distorting lens of their own cultural paradigms. The paper then looks at John Urry's idea that the "tourist gaze" is sub-consciously shaped by the tourist books and examines MacCannell's partly similar beliefs.

From the Paper:

"At the core of her paper, Bhattacharyya appears to be insisting that tourists books - like the western travelers they inform - reduce the Orient to something akin to spectacle and that they "leave out" things which might seem mundane or insignificant to western eyes (387). For his part, John Urry does not seem to dispute this. Particularly, he writes that the "tourist gaze" is sub-consciously shaped by the tourist books that provide so much of his or her information; he also writes that western society is notably "ocular-centric" and that it places special emphasis upon what is seen rather than what is heard or smelled or even touched (Urry, 174-178)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bhattacharyya, Deborah. "Mediating India: An Analysis of a Guidebook." Annals of Tourism Research, 24.2 (1997): 371-389.
• MacCannell, "Tourist Agency." Tourist Studies, 1.1 (2001): 23-37.
• Urry, John. "The Tourist Gaze 'Revisited'." American Behavioral Scientist, 30.2 (1992): 172-186.

More papers on Indian Tourist Guide Books:

• Descriptive Essay # 116801 : "Tourists' Guide to the West Coast of Africa"
• Book Review # 66232 : "North American Indian Ecology"
• Book Review # 86607 : "Indian Givers"

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