Concluding comments

Here it is; the last blog! In the first I have promised three objectives, out of which I have discussed two. So the last question remains: Did I experience this trip differently in comparison to previous because of the gained knowledge?

The answer is yes.

Although we had a tight schedule and could not decide on our own, I did experience it differently because of the knowledge as well. When I was walking in Amman, passing all the cafés, shops, restaurants, I thought about urban tourism. When I was shopping for souvenirs, I thought about whether it was staged authenticity. At the dead sea I thought about the gaze and all the senses. At the US AID I also thought about the gaze. And in general, every time someone grabbed his/her camera, I thought about the gaze. Huh, why then?

The camera can be seen as an extension of the eye, with which one records an object in a specific way. Hence, with a photograph the view (hence, the tourist gaze) can be framed. When looking at everyone’s pictures, I noticed some had a different focus (although most of them were ordinary touristic pictures), which can be explained by this theory (Urry, 1990).

Many theories that crossed my mind while travelling I haven’t even discussed, such as religious tourism (at Mount Nebo and the Baptism site) or the media nexus, with Lawrence of Arabia that was mentioned both in travel books as by the travel guide, but there are no blogs left anymore.

Conclusively: during this module as well as in Jordan I have learned that tourism exists in many forms; muscular tourism, urban tourism, mass tourism, techno tourism, just to name a few… 

It all has its own characteristics and therefore, everyone can experience the joy of travelling!

References
Robinson, M., & Picard, D. (Eds.). (2009). The Framed World: tourism, tourists and photography. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Edensor, T. (2009). Tourism. Elsevier
Urry, J. (1990). The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and travel in contemporary societies, theory, culture & society.