Not just sightseeing but resonating: reframing the trouble with the good life in post-tourism

Abstract

Ethical reflections on the relationship between tourism and the good life remain underexplored, particularly in the context of post-tourism’s fragmented and accelerated practices. While tourism’s negative impacts often overshadow its potential contributions to the good life, the absence of a clear telos or internal good —in the Aristotelian-MacIntyrean sense— in tourism practice complicates this evaluation. How, then, can tourism practice’s contribution to the good life be assessed? This paper interrogates this issue by comparing two frameworks. Unlike Dean MacCannell’s approach, which argues that the practice of sightseeing embodies the good common to all tourism and its potential social benefits lie in the tourist’s virtuous capacities, this work proposes that Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance may offer an alternative foundation for a critique of the good life in tourism. This approach shifts the ethical focus from the tourist to the social and cultural dynamics of acceleration that shape contemporary tourism.