Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers [Paperback]

Dean MacCannell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0415056934 | ISBN-13: 978-0415056939 | Edition: First Edition

Empty Meeting Grounds continues Dean MacCannell's search for the cultural subject that is about to emerge from the encounter of the ex-primitive and the post-modern. It contains fascinating chapters on `Cannibal Tours', `The Desire to be Postmodern', the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., the Statue of Liberty Restoration Project and the urbanization of Yosemite Park.

Editorial Reviews

Review

MacCannell's strength lies in his ability to dissect this lingering disquiet, so often lying behind the gaudy innocence of the package holiday, without railing against the tourist experience from the vantage point of informed high culture.
–The Times Literary Supplement

This is a brilliant book. MacCannell unmasks the political face of terror too often occluded by scholars working within contemporary strands of cultural criticism . . . Rich, accessible and important.
–Peter McLaren, Miami University, Oxford

About the Author

Dean MacCannell is Professor of Applied Behavioral Sciences and Sociology at the University of California at Davis. He is the author of The Tourist (1976) and The Time of the Sign (1982). --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; First Edition edition (August 22, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415056934
• ISBN-13: 978-0415056939
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,282,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MacCannell, erudite and angry, chronicles postmodern decay, August 25, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Hilo, Hawaii) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers (Paperback)

Dean McCannell, an angry academic, takes on the pervasive rot around us in a fascinating collection of essays. The appropriation and conversion of cultural and material goods into commodities is a process that MacCannell calls by its correct name--cannibalism. The historically recent assimilation of all available cultural and material goods into a monolithic system has created a monstrous world order which provides no alternatives to itself.
These passionate essays reward many readings. I do not feel I exaggerate when I call this a great and indispensible book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars personal anger outweighs solid topics, September 20, 2007

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers (Vol 1) (Hardcover)

Dean MacCannell's "The Tourist" was one of the cleverest, most innovative books I have ever read. (I've reviewed it here on Amazon too.) He analyzed the subject of tourism so that nobody could look at it in the same way again. I was really impressed and used the book in my Anthropology courses and in other places. So, when I saw this volume on sale some years ago in a book store in Cambridge, Mass., I bought it. The title certainly promised more worthwhile insights on the topic of tourism. Having just read the book, I must say I was very disappointed.

EMPTY MEETING GROUNDS is about tourism only in some circuitous, roundabout way. Yes, there is a very short chapter about a Chinese-built town in California, the last such labor-ghetto town in the state, which was bought by a Hong Kong company to be turned into a tourist attraction. This chapter was certainly up to MacCannell's old standard. But the rest were mostly only tangentially connected to tourism. The various essays comprise angry rants or long-winded expositions of MacCannell's own thoughts, own mental ponderings on various issues. While these can be interesting--the man is certainly original and insightful--they don't comprise a focussed collection. Besides that, you have to accept some very long reaches, broad jumps, and inattention to facts or counterarguments. Like many works of the same kind, it is based on the plan that a) you ought to accept 1 because I say so. b) therefore 2 is true, 3 is true, 4 is true and so on. But if we don't accept 1 ? And if there are no facts backing up that 1 ? Well, we have to take those facts on faith because we are not given many. I got tired of reading a poorly-organized collection of arguments, blanket statements like "Postmodernism is driven by the desire to forget the horrors of modernity..." (217) MacCannell fears the rise of fascism in the USA, certainly a reasonable fear, he argues that we are becoming inured to violence--also true---and so on, but to connect these things to postmodernism as a set of theories or a trend in modern social science requires a great leap.
His ideas about cannibalism, arising from an interesting movie called "Cannibal Tours" get bigger and bigger, wider and wider, seeing our world culture as one which appropriates everything and everybody, swallowing it all. But somewhere in there the author's anger overwhelms his reasoned arguments until you feel that he is merely pissed off. That's fine, but I prefer calmer presentations. MacCannell was better when he applied his thinking to a single subject. I think most readers will have trouble with this book.