- Title
- Travel talk: when knowledge and practice collide: tracking gendered discourses in popular texts; in the stories of contemporary Australian women who work in the travel industry; and women who begin international leisiue travel in mid-life
- Creator
- Simmons, Beverley Ann
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2003
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- This narrative analysis of the gendered construction of travel in written, visual and oral travel texts is used to identify textual congruities and incongruities between travel knowledge and practice. Travel and women's magazines reproduce a sovereign tourist within a preferred contemporary travel discourse that is based on a fantasy of tourists' class elitism, masculine exploration and colonialism; sightseeing; a desire for place and its past; and fanciful play. Textually. women are marginalized in travel as if they are men or aligned with romantic fantasies of a colonial or domestic past. Women who work in travel agencies reproduce this discourse when they assume divorcees and widows need the protection of package tours to reduce any fear of travel. This discourse is also dominant for some of the women I interviewed who began travelling abroad when family responsibilities diminished and resources increased. These women would not travel abroad if it were not for package tours and travelling companions. Yet, their travel is not always entirely congruous with this discourse. However, my research also uncovers a group of women whose travel does not fit with dominant media discourses of travel in travel and women's magazines. These are women who work in the tourism industry and some of the women I have interviewed who are beginner mid-life travellers. These self-sufficient tourists are social adventurers and risk-takers who construct their travel in a relational travel discourse. This discourse, which is missing from the magazine texts examined, includes a tourist's subjective experience; a fully sensory engagement with place; a desire for authentic contact with Others, place and everyday domestic life; and practiced interactive social relations with local inhabitants. This travel practice is more likely to be self-transformative than travel within the fantasy discourse. Even though women's travel is diverse, gendered ambiguities are ongoing and central features in women's stories of their travel practices, travelling self-identities and their homecoming.
- Subject
- travel; travel writing; womens magazines
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1312964
- Identifier
- uon:22498
- Rights
- Copyright 2003 Beverley Ann Simmons
- Language
- eng
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