In addition to challenging our notions of the body, place, and community, cyberspace challenges prevailing notions of travel. The platform on virtual tourism invites students to examine the ways in which one can travel on the World Wide Web and how that travel compares to literal tourism.

Cultural Studies scholars have studied the texts and discourses of literal tourism in depth and have raised insightful questions about the ideology embedded in and produced by literal forms of travel: the construction of otherness, the consumption of the exotic, ecological devastation, and the reinforcement of neo-colonial structures of power. Does travel through the World Wide Web constitute and encode similar ideologies and have similar effects? Or does it offer an alternative version of travel?

The links and resources in this section also take students to sites that advertise and encourage both traditional and alternative forms of tourism, such as travel agency Web sites, but also sites of nonprofit organizations such as Global Exchange that offer Human Rights tours in which one pays to be a participant and/or witness to social conflicts outside the borders of the U.S.

Questions and Activities

1. Whenever you log on to the Internet, you may feel as if you have become an armchair traveler. You can access information that, until recently, you had to physically go to a library to access, both to local libraries and to libraries in cities and nations around the world. You can also visit sites produced and maintained by individuals, organizations, and governments around the world. What does this virtual travel feel like? What are its qualities, as opposed to literal, physical travel and border crossing? Do you need a passport or other forms of identity? Are there other forms of gate-keeping that seem less obvious or obtrusive but are nevertheless present and powerful?
   
   Do you encounter moments of discomfort or unease when you encounter cultural difference on the Web? For example, if you accidentally visit a site in a language and/or written script you cannot decipher, what thoughts and questions come to mind? On the other hand, what do you make of the fact that many sites originating from diverse local communities in the world are written in English?
   
   
2. One of the forms of travel made possible by the visual images on the World Wide Web is virtual tourism. You can visit some museum collections and exhibits, monuments, famous sites in nature, and various cultural locations around the world. Remember, however, that you are visiting photographic representations of these museums, monuments, and cultural locations. To what extent does virtual tourism allow you to roam freely? To what extent does it control and determine the paths of your travel and the perspective of your tourist's gaze?
   
   
3. Many sites on the World Wide Web give us evidence that a new form of tourism is emerging: activist or reality tourism. Some of the sites listed below are for activist or charitable organizations that offer reality tours. For example, Global Exchange offers human rights tours to political hotspots throughout the world (most recently Afghanistan). Other sites give information on how tourists can practice their politics while they travel (avoiding tourist related prostitution, patronizing locally owned businesses and resorts, etc.). What do you make of this sort of tourism? Does it discourage the construction of otherness, the consumption of the exotic, ecological devastation, and the reinforcement of neo-colonial structures of power? Or does it remain mired in these tendencies and power relations?
   
   

Web-Text Connections

On the Web		In Beyond Borders
1.	Virtual Tourism Virtual Geography Department (Univ. of Colorado) Labor Heritage Foundation, virtual tour of labor movement related monuments Mexconnect.com, visual touring by province (e.g., Chihuahua which borders U.S.) Various Museum sites (Fort Ligonier, San Francisco city museum, Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia)	1.	Readings that describe literal moments of border crossing will help students explore the specific qualities of Web crawling: see Thomas King's "Borders," Stuart Hall's "Ethnicity," Roger Williams' "A Key into the Language," and Karima Kamal's "An Egyptian Girl in America." Readings from Chapter 5 on the transformation of one's body in cyberspace are also important connections: Stone's "Sex, Death, and Machinery, or How I Fell in Love with My Prosthesis" and Doheny-Farina's "Real Cold, Simulated Heat, Virtual Reality at the Roxy."
		2.	It would work well to compare these sites and Activity question 2 above to a discussion of some of the photographic images in Beyond Borders. Both ask students to figure out the arguments encoded in supposedly neutral and realistic photographs and photographic collections.
2.	Activist Tourism Global Exchange Borderlinks Third World Network (has a page on Tourism and a periodical publication called "New Frontiers") Queer Nation Holidays (travel without prostitution) Ecotourism Explorers	3.	Many of the sites that describe and advertise activist tourism are driven by concerns about current forms of globalization and legacies of colonization. As such, any of the readings in Beyond Borders on these topics would prepare students to think about the role of cyberspace in activist tourism. In addition to obvious choices in Chapters 4 and 5, consider readings in earlier chapters such as Tara Masih's "Exotic, or What Beach Do You Hang Out On?", Peter Marin's "Helping and Hating the Homeless," and Agha Shahid Ali's "The Correspondent."

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