Tourism, Cosmopolitanism and Global Citizenship

Certain types of tourism, such as volunteer tourism and student travel, have long been associated with global citizenship. To travel and to experience other societies and other cultures is linked with a cosmopolitan outlook, and also with the capacity to empathise and act ethically in relation to people in distant countries. In turn global citizenship - being a ’citizen of the world’ - has become increasingly important both as a moral and political identity. Encouraged by employers, validated by universities, travel has become a marker of moral and intent for altruistic and ambitious youth with a mind to travel and the bank balance to facilitate it. The chapters in this volume explore the relationship between tourism, global citizenship and cosmopolitanism.

The chapters were originally published in a special issue of Tourism Recreation Research.

Jim Butcher is a Reader in the School of Human and Life Sciences at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK. He has written three books on the politics of tourism, and blogs at http: //politicsoftourism.blogspot.co.uk/