Comments on: Your next vacation

By: Jared

Jared — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:49:11 +0000

Grant, can you recommend an introductory guide to ethnography?

By: Seth Edenbaum

Seth Edenbaum — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 23:53:20 +0000

A last one, then I’m done.

“Well, if the object is to penetrate the barrier that stands between every tourist and country/culture, ”
then the answer that’s been known and described by many (and for a long time) is to be not a tourist but a traveller. It doesn’t cost more money. It’s usually cheaper.

An anthropologist begins as a professional traveller: professionally curious and professionally social. Sociology, as an old friend of mine and a well known ex-student of Sahlins likes to describe it, began as a study of contemporary society by its own members and the problem of culture was assumed not to apply. But it does.

You recommended a way for people to professionalize their travels, by spending more money and playing at a field that began as self-aware sociability, when you could have merely suggested that they just choose to be more curious and social. I found that ironic and still do.
And the B Kliban cartoon only adds to the irony.

as I said, I’m done.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 20:45:00 +0000

Seth, no, accident just isn’t enough. For some people, this is the best they can hope for, and, I’m guessing, all they can manage. Thanks, Grant

By: Seth Edenbaum

Seth Edenbaum — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 20:39:37 +0000

I meet people by accident, and we interview each other
(the reciprocity must make you nervous)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 10:48:53 +0000

Seth, poor thing, I can see you didn’t. No one I have ever heard of sets up interviews before the fact of travel. So I haven’t discovered travel, I have reinvented it. Thanks, Grant

By: Seth Edenbaum

Seth Edenbaum — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:35:12 +0000

A traveller travels to ask questions, to learn from other people and to see new things in new ways.
A tourist goes to new places to see things that remind him of what he already knows.
Travelers travel to lose their prejudices; tourists tour to reinforce them.
So you’ve just discovered travel.

And you studied with Sahlins?

By: Discourse.net

Discourse.net — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 20:09:20 +0000

Grant McCracken on How to Have a Good Holiday

I didn’t really have the greatest summer ever. It sounds as if Grant McCraken, on the other hand, did. This Blog Sits at the: Your next vacation: I have an idea for your next vacation. Phone Saida at Saros Research in London and set up ethnographic int…

By: Grant

Grant — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 17:15:18 +0000

Virginia, funny you should mention that, I am indeed working on classes and on-site practice. But not for tourism, but for commerce. Thanks, Grant

By: Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 20:11:04 +0000

Maybe you should offer classes and on-site practice in how to do these interviews and charge for your “tour guide” services.

By: Serendipity Book

Serendipity Book — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 05:46:07 +0000

Ethnographic busman’s holidays

Originally uploaded to Flickr by dgray_xplane Grant McCracken (This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics) is recommending that people seek cultural stimulation on their holidays via the mechanism of an ethnographic interview. He …