Customer Reviews

Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers

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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.

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.