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In Search of Adventure: Simmel and Similar Travels Among Ruins
- Anthropological Quarterly
- George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research
- Volume 90, Number 4, Fall 2017
- pp. 931-971
- 10.1353/anq.2017.0057
- Article
- Additional Information
ABSTRACT:
This article explores the idea of Adventure as an analytical concept for tourism ethnography. The first task is to understand Simmel's concept of adventure by re-reading it in relation to Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and Boon. The second task is to make use of Simmel and similar concepts of adventure in the analysis of a travel story. This travelogue happens to be an ethnography that includes travel to Maya pyramids and is written by ethnographers. The re-reading of these ethnographers' travel raises additional questions about Simmel's and similar notions of adventure—what it is, how has it, how to use it analytically. Tactically, this article proceeds by understanding stories, ethnographies, and theories as spatial practices, that is, travel and maybe even adventure. Strategically, the article relies on Boon's extra-vagant anthropology, specifically the notion of hierarchy in reciprocity, to advocate the use of his travelogical methods in tourism anthropology.