The Case Against Travel! Is Being A Tourist Bad? Should People Stop Traveling? Does Traveling Change A Person or the Place More?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: A tourist is a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change. This definition is taken from the opening of "Hosts and Guests," the classic academic volume on the anthropology of tourism. The last phrase is crucial: touristic travel exists for the sake of change. But what, exactly, gets changed? Here is a telling observation from the concluding chapter of the same book: "Tourists are less likely to borrow from their hosts than their hosts are from them, thus precipitating a chain of change in the host community." We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting change on others. This paragraph comes from an essay in the New Yorker, titled: "The Case Against Travel." The essay is written by Agnes Callard. You can read the full essay here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-case-against-travel Zac and Don reflect upon the arguments made against travel. They also reflect upon their recent summer travels and how that fits within the case against travel.