02 237 02 237 Volume Tales of Tourism Global changes and tourism discourse Karina M. Smed PhD, assistant professor, employed by AAU since 2004, a member of the Tourism Research Unit at AAU and involved with the Tourism Master’s Pro- gramme. Her main research areas are: tourist expe- riences, consumption and identity, with a particu- lar interest in cultural aspects of these. In the name of globalisation, tourism has become a world-wide phenomenon, and in the process, a dominant discourse of tour- ism and the tourist has developed. This discourse seems to be based on a particular world order and specifc cultural values. It also seems, however, that what one would believe to be basic agreements within this discourse are perhaps not. In addition, new fows and developments in world tourism might change ex- isting assumptions in tourism at large, and the question is wheth- er or not discourse will change with these, particularly in the case of die hard terminologies? In tourism studies, there is a tendency to assume that tourism is a global phenomenon, and it is, but only in the sense that tourism affects most people around the world in very different ways, and not in the sense that it carries the same meaning globally, i.e. to all people around the world, nor that it affects people in the same way Host-tourist interactions and identities embody the very essence of globalizing processes. It is in com- munication with each other, in every particular in- stant of contact, that hosts and tourists also negoti- ate the nature of the tourist experience, the meaning of culture and place, as well as their relationship to each other and their own identities. (Thurlow & Jaworski, 2010:9) kvarter akademisk academic quarter Volume 02 • 2011 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Open Access Journals at Aalborg Universit