Sightseeing: itineraries, journeys, rituals and identity in university students

Abstract

We start from two facts: the turistificacion of everyday life and that our living cities only makes sense on the basis of the significance of places. Thus, correlation of places and tourism is the binomial that we will try to explain. We will be concerned about the young university tourist, become a traveler and a stranger to a city. This work arises from an ethnographic work has been carried out from 2018 in European cities: Madrid, Rome and Paris. It is particularly in visits to cities in other countries where the influence of places charge greater expression. This is not only for the beauty of the place but for social recognition that this implies for the tourists. This recognition is also related to certain rituals and positions that will be displayed on various media printed or electronic as "proof" of veracity, and as a mechanism for creating idealized identity. The methodology followed was to observe and interview some tourists at specific points of the already mentioned cities. In interviews we go back from the Organization of the trip, which means planning itineraries, routes and rituals, to their respective impacts on the identity of travellers.