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Portrait Reportage Environment Maintenance Chronicles
Portrait of Jean-Didier urban anthopologue and sociolgue specializing in travel
Home> Company> Maintenance> Why do we travel?
Jean-Didier Urbain, "Tell me how you travel, I will tell you who you are"
Jean-Didier Urbain, a sociologist and anthropologist, has been working for many years on tourists and their behavior.
Why have we taken the habit of traveling in our societies?
First men traveled for survival, for food purposes (hunting and gathering with the seasons and the regions), safety (escape wars, epidemics and other natural disasters) and professional (pastoral nomadic or migrant merchant economic). Why, once removed from the necessities of life, have they continued to travel? That is the question.
And today, what are our motivations to travel during our vacation?
You could say that we're just doing it for fun. But this answer is not enough. First we love traveling because we désinhibent: away from home is thought to escape a time of moral rules of society. Hence the common but just as "the journey transforms the person!" Then get away from his residence idea is also out of his shell, exposing themselves to the unknown and meet the other . It then meets the "stranger", literally that which is strange, different from me. And that I appear as strange too! I love this ironic remark Georges Perec noting that we always say that Columbus discovered the Indians but we forget that the Indians have also discovered Columbus.
So there is a danger in the form of travel?
This is actually a self-endangerment. When traveling, it is like a worm naked strayed into unknown territory. But this experience is mostly a way to better understand the world and learn the relativity of things. So I think it is important to travel as soon as possible, and as often as possible. For seniors, the journey can become a real makeover! It allows them to stay in touch with the changing world and avoids the danger posed by their withdrawal and the congealing of the mind.
You explain changes in our travel practices by comparing the evolution of the ethnologist trade. What for?
The anthropologist was at first very distant subjects he observed. Secondly it is up, up to settle among them. Finally, he was no longer content to watch but began to participate in the life of these companies to better understand them. This is what is called the "participant observation". Similarly, the tourist does not want only to be surprised when his tour but wants to fill a real role! This allows him to approach closer to the reality of the places and people. One of the conditions of a voyage of discovery 100% successful today.
How do you choose your destination?
Once we opted for a place rather than another as he proposed attractions, monuments, its landscape, its material heritage, past and natural. Now we demand more. We want a destination of history is a carrier, romance or drama. It's not for nothing that the regions are fighting for TV serials episodes or movie will be shot! This will transform a space into a place, as it acquires a narrative dimension to the traveling public. Some guides fully play that card. One can, for example, to visit Venice in the footsteps of Corto Maltese. A completely imaginary character of Hugo Pratt!
The representations we have a destination therefore play an important role in our final choice?
You do not choose a place, but the image one is done! Destinations without strong symbols are therefore very difficult to exist. Historic cities like Paris, Rome and Venice have no problem ... This is harder however to new destinations. Angoulême example was not related to any particular image. The problem has been solved since takes place every year a festival of comics.
The destinations for tourists therefore evolve over time ...
Some places were once very attractive and are no longer today. Therefore, as the singing Gilbert Becaud, would we see on Sunday airplanes Orly while this idea seems completely absurd today? Or on the contrary, the favelas (note: Brazilian slums) are now tourist spots when we had become accustomed to carefully avoid? Desires change and as objects of desire ...
You clearly made the distinction between vacation and travel ...
These terms are often used synonymously. Yet it may well have leave and do not leave home! Similarly, it has become customary to describe as a "tourist" anyone who is outside her home. This is not correct! This word has a specific value, which means "one who makes a turn." So it means a mobile person.
A holiday at the beach, this is not tourism?
Someone who goes to the sea is not a tourist. This is a person who raises the buttocks in the sand. Seaside tourism, this would mean moving from beach to beach! But for all these vacationers are not uninteresting to study. Their behavior is also very symbolic. They breed on the beach an ideal domestic universe, turning his back on the world everyday.
Video: Beach witnessed a company with Jean-Didier Urbain (Source: Youtube).
Despite the economic crisis, people continue to travel. Is this a sign that move has become a necessity in our society?
There are still twenty to thirty years, when households had money problems, the first post that was deleted was the trip. Today, it is preferred cutting corners on food, clothing or appliances. The practice of travel has become a cultural standard. When the crisis began there seven to eight years, many French have worked on their reserves and therefore do not change their behavior. Only now, the recession perduring, some households are forced to also reduce their travel budget.
Does this mean that the number of departures is down?
We perceive today a true "guerrilla recreation." Faced with the crisis, it is organized! So it does not pass through the usual channels of trade, that is to say, the travel agencies, but reserve their holidays online. There are also rental swaps as exchanges of apartments or houses. Or the principles of sharing: traveling in groups of 8 to 10 people and costs are shared. Sometimes families also decide to go along with the grandparents so that they finance part of the trip or stay.
Going on a trip every year is still perceived as a kind of obligation today?
It is a marker of exclusion only when one is unable to travel due to insufficient funding. Otherwise the holidays away from home are no longer seen as an obligation. For some it is even a way to stand out from the others: when everyone leaves, I stay. The height of snobbery! Today, the frequency of travel does not necessarily ostentatious value related to an economic determination. A worker from urban and often travel a frame residing in rural areas. Also appearing more sophisticated practices: people increasingly prefer to make only big trip every 3-4 years rather than every year from destinations cheap.
Internet, using tools such as "Google street view" allows you to explore the world in pictures from home. Why do we travel always the same?
Even with webcams that broadcast live pictures we never end up facing each other as possible by moving physically. At no time virtual trip can therefore replace the actual experience. New technologies have the opposite today tend to become less interesting excursions. Formerly travel, it was happiness to disappear. But now, thanks to mobile phones and all their new features, we remain constantly connected, even on the other side of the world. The break is therefore never complete. And we do not have that same pleasure to reappear among us at the end of our adventure.
So would you recommend to turn off his cell phone while throughout his journey?
Personally, I've grown accustomed to. Today, travelers are "cybertouristes" boarding with them amount of electronics. Nothing but our cell phones allow us to call, check our emails, take pictures ... and leave us the possibility to get lost using GPS. The pleasure of the city, yet it is possible to get lost! Today need more contact with the natives to ask directions. This is a bubble that is closing in on us ...
What will your next trip?
At the end of the semester, I will go to my house in Burgundy. I'm going to write, it is therefore not a real holiday ... Otherwise I'm used to give me every summer in Corsica. I work there a hobby that allows me to find the "zen" is the spearfishing. Because in the words of Theodore Monod explorer ". Past head under the water, it is immediately another world" For me the journey begins here range f
Portrait Reportage Environment Maintenance Chronicles
Portrait of Jean-Didier urban anthopologue and sociolgue specializing in travel
Home> Company> Maintenance> Why do we travel?
Jean-Didier Urbain, "Tell me how you travel, I will tell you who you are"
Jean-Didier Urbain, a sociologist and anthropologist, has been working for many years on tourists and their behavior.
Why have we taken the habit of traveling in our societies?
First men traveled for survival, for food purposes (hunting and gathering with the seasons and the regions), safety (escape wars, epidemics and other natural disasters) and professional (pastoral nomadic or migrant merchant economic). Why, once removed from the necessities of life, have they continued to travel? That is the question.
And today, what are our motivations to travel during our vacation?
You could say that we're just doing it for fun. But this answer is not enough. First we love traveling because we désinhibent: away from home is thought to escape a time of moral rules of society. Hence the common but just as "the journey transforms the person!" Then get away from his residence idea is also out of his shell, exposing themselves to the unknown and meet the other . It then meets the "stranger", literally that which is strange, different from me. And that I appear as strange too! I love this ironic remark Georges Perec noting that we always say that Columbus discovered the Indians but we forget that the Indians have also discovered Columbus.
So there is a danger in the form of travel?
This is actually a self-endangerment. When traveling, it is like a worm naked strayed into unknown territory. But this experience is mostly a way to better understand the world and learn the relativity of things. So I think it is important to travel as soon as possible, and as often as possible. For seniors, the journey can become a real makeover! It allows them to stay in touch with the changing world and avoids the danger posed by their withdrawal and the congealing of the mind.
You explain changes in our travel practices by comparing the evolution of the ethnologist trade. What for?
The anthropologist was at first very distant subjects he observed. Secondly it is up, up to settle among them. Finally, he was no longer content to watch but began to participate in the life of these companies to better understand them. This is what is called the "participant observation". Similarly, the tourist does not want only to be surprised when his tour but wants to fill a real role! This allows him to approach closer to the reality of the places and people. One of the conditions of a voyage of discovery 100% successful today.
How do you choose your destination?
Once we opted for a place rather than another as he proposed attractions, monuments, its landscape, its material heritage, past and natural. Now we demand more. We want a destination of history is a carrier, romance or drama. It's not for nothing that the regions are fighting for TV serials episodes or movie will be shot! This will transform a space into a place, as it acquires a narrative dimension to the traveling public. Some guides fully play that card. One can, for example, to visit Venice in the footsteps of Corto Maltese. A completely imaginary character of Hugo Pratt!
The representations we have a destination therefore play an important role in our final choice?
You do not choose a place, but the image one is done! Destinations without strong symbols are therefore very difficult to exist. Historic cities like Paris, Rome and Venice have no problem ... This is harder however to new destinations. Angoulême example was not related to any particular image. The problem has been solved since takes place every year a festival of comics.
The destinations for tourists therefore evolve over time ...
Some places were once very attractive and are no longer today. Therefore, as the singing Gilbert Becaud, would we see on Sunday airplanes Orly while this idea seems completely absurd today? Or on the contrary, the favelas (note: Brazilian slums) are now tourist spots when we had become accustomed to carefully avoid? Desires change and as objects of desire ...
You clearly made the distinction between vacation and travel ...
These terms are often used synonymously. Yet it may well have leave and do not leave home! Similarly, it has become customary to describe as a "tourist" anyone who is outside her home. This is not correct! This word has a specific value, which means "one who makes a turn." So it means a mobile person.
A holiday at the beach, this is not tourism?
Someone who goes to the sea is not a tourist. This is a person who raises the buttocks in the sand. Seaside tourism, this would mean moving from beach to beach! But for all these vacationers are not uninteresting to study. Their behavior is also very symbolic. They breed on the beach an ideal domestic universe, turning his back on the world everyday.
Video: Beach witnessed a company with Jean-Didier Urbain (Source: Youtube).
Despite the economic crisis, people continue to travel. Is this a sign that move has become a necessity in our society?
There are still twenty to thirty years, when households had money problems, the first post that was deleted was the trip. Today, it is preferred cutting corners on food, clothing or appliances. The practice of travel has become a cultural standard. When the crisis began there seven to eight years, many French have worked on their reserves and therefore do not change their behavior. Only now, the recession perduring, some households are forced to also reduce their travel budget.
Does this mean that the number of departures is down?
We perceive today a true "guerrilla recreation." Faced with the crisis, it is organized! So it does not pass through the usual channels of trade, that is to say, the travel agencies, but reserve their holidays online. There are also rental swaps as exchanges of apartments or houses. Or the principles of sharing: traveling in groups of 8 to 10 people and costs are shared. Sometimes families also decide to go along with the grandparents so that they finance part of the trip or stay.
Going on a trip every year is still perceived as a kind of obligation today?
It is a marker of exclusion only when one is unable to travel due to insufficient funding. Otherwise the holidays away from home are no longer seen as an obligation. For some it is even a way to stand out from the others: when everyone leaves, I stay. The height of snobbery! Today, the frequency of travel does not necessarily ostentatious value related to an economic determination. A worker from urban and often travel a frame residing in rural areas. Also appearing more sophisticated practices: people increasingly prefer to make only big trip every 3-4 years rather than every year from destinations cheap.
Internet, using tools such as "Google street view" allows you to explore the world in pictures from home. Why do we travel always the same?
Even with webcams that broadcast live pictures we never end up facing each other as possible by moving physically. At no time virtual trip can therefore replace the actual experience. New technologies have the opposite today tend to become less interesting excursions. Formerly travel, it was happiness to disappear. But now, thanks to mobile phones and all their new features, we remain constantly connected, even on the other side of the world. The break is therefore never complete. And we do not have that same pleasure to reappear among us at the end of our adventure.
So would you recommend to turn off his cell phone while throughout his journey?
Personally, I've grown accustomed to. Today, travelers are "cybertouristes" boarding with them amount of electronics. Nothing but our cell phones allow us to call, check our emails, take pictures ... and leave us the possibility to get lost using GPS. The pleasure of the city, yet it is possible to get lost! Today need more contact with the natives to ask directions. This is a bubble that is closing in on us ...
What will your next trip?
At the end of the semester, I will go to my house in Burgundy. I'm going to write, it is therefore not a real holiday ... Otherwise I'm used to give me every summer in Corsica. I work there a hobby that allows me to find the "zen" is the spearfishing. Because in the words of Theodore Monod explorer ". Past head under the water, it is immediately another world" For me the journey begins here range f
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