In this article, I consider the ethnographic study of tourists and tourism by juxtaposing the perspectives and positions of differently situated members of the tourist-receiving population at Lake Mille Lacs, in the upper midwestern USA. There, I positioned myself as worker at two sites — the Mille Lacs Indian Museum and Trading Post State Historic Site and the Mille Lacs Area Tourism Council's information office. From these two locations, I conducted ethnography by engaging in a range of pursuits including participant-observation, conducting surveys and interviewing both tourists and tourist workers. In discussing this experience, I critique discourses that ascribe `mobility' and `rootedness' in ways that obscure the complex realities of daily life in tourist settings. I argue that these conceptions of the positions available in tourist settings can be usefully unsettled through the practice of ethnography.
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