Quote of the Week: Edward Bruner on Interpreting Tourism

In postmodern writings, contemporary American tourist attractions tend to be described in ways that replicate elements of the theory of postmodernism, emphasizing the inauthentic constructed nature of the sites, their appeal to the masses, their imitation of the past, and their efforts to present a perfected version of themselves. This is a narrow and distorted view that fails to account for the popularity and frequency of such sites on the American landscape, that begs the question of the meaning of the sites to the participants, and that by its denigration of popular American culture and mass tourist sites imposes an elitist politics blind to its own assumptions. (Edward Bruner 1994)

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This photograph is of the statue of a young Abraham Lincoln outside of the reconstructed cabin site said to have been built by his parents, and now on the grounds of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. It was taken by Flickr-ite Marina Kukso in August of 2005.