authent c." This attitude of "staging suspicion" is, in a sense, complementary to MacCasi ell's "staged authenticity."
4 _Contrived: This is a situation in which the scene is admittedly staged by t hosts, or the tourist establishment, and thEiburist is conscious of the staging. This author proposes to call such a situation one of "overt tourist space." A good example of such overt tourist space are model villages, such as villages which have been especially established to show the tourist the traditional way of life of a people which has either disappeared or been adulterated. Another example might be staged performances of traditional dances or rituals, which are produced especially for tourists, in settings and in times which are admittedly not the original ones.
The typology enables one not only to classify and compare different kinds of touristic situations, but to outline typical processes of change of such situations. MacCannell discusses mainly the process of transition from type (1) to type (2): the staging of authenticity and the emergence of covert tourist space. This elaboration enables one to conceptualize a complementary process of "touristic denouement" (a transition from type 2 to type 4): the process through which the staged nature of a touristic situation is uncovered or exposed by growingly sophisticated tourists, and covert tourist space is, contrary to the intentions or wishes of the tourist establishment, turned into overt tourist space.
This discussion illustrates how important concepts, proposed but not systematically developed by sociologists of tourism, can be usefully elaborated. At the present junction, more continuity in the sociological study of tourism, through further elaboration and empirical testing of existing conceptual frameworks, would serve the development of this field better than the constant proliferation of ever new approaches.
REFORMULATION OF RESEARCH PROBLEMS
from sociological writings is nothing
but the prevalent poptilar View of the tourist in society which the soeiologists -hive unwittingly accepted as being "objectively" correct. In doing so they have turned part of the problem to be examined into an instrument of their investigation. One must not agree with the consequences which MacCannell draws from his insight in order to appreciate its importance. In fact, a similar state of affairs has emerged in an adjoining area, namely the study of the 'Fike,l'ilf,;,tkOisAttwoitthegho'StArs0'0: tculture and environment. There exists a wide4pre—aTFOPular vieW that tourists are a major factor of socio-cultural and environmental change, who by their very presence and behaviour as well as by the demands which they make upon the hosts, often effectuate a wide-spread and primarily negative transformation of their destination. This view prevails particularly in the areas from which tourists originate, where people are aware of tourism, but not of other factors of change in popular destination areas; it is often not shared by the people of the area itself, whose own attitudes to the consequences of tourism are often left unexamined. The popular view, however, has a feed-back effect upon the tourists themselves. Tourists, particularly the more sensitive ones, have developed what could be called a "bad touristic conscience." They often feel guilty of their own activity because they feel that (hey destory the very place which they came to visit. This view of the impact of tourism has also long been naively accepted by