Envisioning Eden

"This book is the reference for tourism imaginaries academia was waiting for. Based on excellent ethnographic work that disentangles 'glocal' issues, it demonstrates that globalization divides the planet as much as bringing it
together. Tourism and the encounters it generates are pertinently analyzed as central pieces of the new anthropology of glocalization." · Maria Gravari-Barbas, Director IREST, UNESCO Chair: Culture-Tourism-Development


"I am very impressed with this book. It is the best ethnography of tour guide training and performance to date. Indeed its probing analyses and its many comments make a great contribution to our understanding of contemporary international and intercultural tourism. It is very well written and superbly referenced." · Nelson Graburn, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley


"This is a lively and enjoyable book based on rigorous research which highlights the power and persuasiveness of international tourism while, at the same time, critically, it reminds us that tourism is ultimately about people and their stories." · Mike Robinson, Director, Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change


"Noel Salazar's contribution to understanding globalization and localization processes is informed and persuasive, using tourism-the phenomenon which has turned our world into a global village-to illuminate, par excellence, the resulting intersects, overlaps, and especially clashes now dominating our shared history." · Jafar Jafari, Founding Editor, Annals of Tourism Research


"...a clear, well-organized interesting piece of original research on two exceptionally interesting and productively comparable destinations. It is well placed within the tourism studies literature." · Sally Ann Ness, Professor, University of California, Riverside


As tourism service standards become more homogeneous, travel destinations worldwide are conforming yet still trying to maintain, or even increase, their distinctiveness. Based on more than two years of fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Arusha, Tanzania, this book offers an in-depth investigation of the local-to-global dynamics of contemporary tourism. Each destination offers examples that illustrate how tour guide narratives and practices are informed by widely circulating imaginaries of the past as well as personal imaginings of the future.


Noel B. Salazar received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is a Fellow of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) at the University of Leuven, Belgium. His research interests include anthropologies of mobility and travel, the local-global nexus, discourses and imaginaries of Otherness, culture contacts, heritage, and cosmopolitanism.