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DISPLACING DESIRE: Travel and Popular Culture in China. By Beth E. Notar. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2006. xiv, 193 pp. (Illus.) US$57.00, cloth. ISBN 0-8248-2980-8.
In Displacing Desire, Beth Notar's general argument is that touristic representations do not simply "present again" a place for external consumption, but that they are fundamental in shaping the ongoing material transformations of place. She views representations as social relations that do their work not in a one-way fashion but as sites of negotiation between locals, tourists and other relevant socioeconomic actors. There are three cases of representation that she deals with specifically. First, that of the Lonely Planet-toting backpackers who have frequented Dali since the early 1980s. Here, Notar focuses on the "transnational" place of Dali's "foreigner street," a space more familiar to foreign travellers than to Dali locals or Chinese travellers. Notar argues that backpackers display a desire for both what she calls the "visual cultural authentic" of China's borderlands, and also the "transnational authentic" of familiar food and music...