TOURISM - LEISURE AND SOCIETY Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

TOURISM - LEISURE AND SOCIETY - Essay Example ns pertaining to social standing and status may sometimes happen to be fluid, which may evolve over time, influenced by dominant or popular traditions and values. Still, there is no denying the fact that the individuals affiliated to the same social standing do share a common lot of beliefs and values that enable them to recognize themselves as having a unique status, which may be real or imagined (Anderson 1991). Hence, social identity and status mostly correspond, irrespective of the cultural, racial and ethnic disparities within a society. This correspondence of social identity and status sans economic and demographic disparities portends multifarious ramifications for the tourism industry the world over. Social identity and status are the concepts, which are many times not directly observable or discernable, but inferred from various ways and patterns of group expression, tourism and leisure qualifying to be one important manifestation. Going by this fact, many nations and touris t destinations are vying with each other to come out with tourism management policies and strategies, which have notions of social identity and status incorporated and adjusted within them (Henderson 2001). Such tourism strategies have observable and coveted economic, political and social agendas embedded within. Thus, the concept of tourism, and the old and new perceptions pertaining to it often portray narratives associated with unique symbols of social identity and status. The concept of tourism and leisure had the notions of social identity and status amalgamated with it at the very time of its conception in the early 19th century. Thorstein Veblem in his acclaimed work ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of institutions (1902)’, meticulously elaborated on the concept of leisure and tourism being intricately associated with social entities like wealth and status. According to Veblem (1902), the middle and working class in most of the developed countries have the