Political Tourism and its Texts

Synopsis

The concept of political tourism is new to cultural and postcolonial studies. Nonetheless, it is a concept with major implications for scholarship. Political Tourism and Its Texts looks at the writings of political tourists, travellers who seek solidarity with international political struggles. With reference to the travel writing of, among others, Nancy Cunard, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, Ernesto Che Guevara, and Salman Rushdie, Maureen Moynagh demonstrates the ways in which political tourism can be a means of exploring the formation of transnational affiliations and commitments.Moynagh's aims are threefold. First, she looks at how these tourists create a sense of belonging to political struggles not their own and express their personal and political solidarity, despite the complexity of such cross-cultural relationships. Second, Moynagh analyses how these authors position their readers in relation to political movements, inviting a sense of responsibility for the struggles for social justice. Finally, the author situates key twentieth-century imperial struggles in relation to contemporary postcolonial and cultural studies theories of 'new' cosmopolitanism.Drawing on sociological, postcolonial, poststructuralist, and feminist theories, Political Tourism and Its Texts is at once an insightful study of modern writers and the causes that inspired them, and a call to address, with political urgency, contemporary neo-imperialism and the politics of global inequality.

Copyright:

2008

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781442692909

Publisher:

University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division

Date of Addition:

01/14/15

Copyrighted By:

University of Toronto Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Social Studies

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.