Available From UC Press

From the world’s leading thinker on tourism, a bold new vision of its role in our democratic future.

Over the past half century, tourism has exploded into the world’s largest industry, transforming every sphere of life on Earth. As Dean MacCannell argues, this extraordinary rise signals a fundamental shift in society, one that rivals the Industrial Revolution in its global impact. He reveals how modern mass tourism and Enlightenment democracy emerged together, united by a shared impulse toward openness and cultural exchange.

Far more than a history of travel, Democracy and the Tourist offers a new way to understand the defining political tensions of our time. As tourism’s democratic drive increasingly collides with authoritarianism and enforced homogeneity, MacCannell envisions a future in which the human desire to encounter difference proves more enduring than the politics of exclusion.

At once accessible and deeply original, this book shows how tourism, at its core, can be a powerful force for connecting people across divides—and a compass pointing us toward a more democratic world.

Dean MacCannell is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Design at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class and The Ethics of Sightseeing.

“While the Nerd Reich seem hell-bent on strip-mining our shared humanity as they pump out their AI, crypto, and algorithmic sludge, Dean MacCannell says the simple act of crossing a border to experience another culture can be an act of resistance. He remains one of our most indispensable and clear-eyed critics, one who sees tourism as a potentially formidable defense against the corrosive forces currently tearing at democracy.”—Gil Durán, author of New York Times bestseller The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

“Building on a half century of groundbreaking research, MacCannell reveals how tourism becomes a fundamental force for democracy by embracing as pleasures the differing cultures, peoples, and places that contemporary authoritarianism views with distrust and disdain. A passionate, deeply learned, magnificently written, and intellectually clarifying book that should be required reading in our troubled times.”—Georges Van Den Abbeele, author of Sense and Singularity: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Interruption of Philosophy

“Critically perceptive in its observations and elegantly creative in its theorization, Democracy and the Tourist is a must-read for both casual travelers seeking an engaging reflection on political values and modern tourism and serious thinkers pondering the unshackling of contemporary societies.”—Chin-Ee Ong, Professor of Cultural and Tourism Management, Macao University for Tourism, and co–editor in chief of Tourist Studies