Marco d'Eramo

How is a tourist society shaped? How has travelling gone from being a selective, minority practice to the activities of mass tourism as we know it today? Tourism is one of the main economic drivers of the twenty-first century and is still a burgeoning industry. Accordingly, the sociologist and physicist Marco d’Eramo has defined our times as “the tourist age”. In addition to its economic power, the growing significance of tourism as a global phenomenon is due to the fact that it has become deeply ingrained in the imaginary of modern civilisation. D’Eramo suggests that questioning this industry, with its huge environmental and urban impacts, means having to redefine current ideas of freedom, and about our relationship with the world and what is alien to us. 

In his lecture, presented by the anthropologist Saida Palou, this eminent Italian thinker will open the debate on a phenomenon that has shaped contemporary imaginaries. Marco d’Eramo suggests that we should look for ways of recognising the complexities of tourist culture and also of making visible its transformative potential. 

Marco d'Eramo's lecture accompanies the seminar The Cultures of Tourism. From origins to global phenomenon.