Tour guide performances as sight sacralization

Abstract According to sociologist Dean MacCannell, sights are transformed into tourist attractions through five stages of “sight sacralization”: naming, framing and elevation, enshrinement, mechanical reproduction, and social reproduction. This paper hypothesizes that these stages of sight sacralization should have spoken correlates in the performances of tour guides. Through an ethnographic analysis of tour performances at the Lindheimer Home, this study shows how spoken correlates of these stages ritually transform an unimposing cottage into a valued cultural sight. The enshrinement stage, more than any other, has the potential to accomplish a ritual transformation of liminoid tourists into a state of communitas with the hostess and tour sight. The only sacralization stage without spoken correlates is mechanical reproduction. Yet the printed brochure serves as an analogue to tour performances. The paper suggests ideas for future studies of tour guide sacralization based on an examination of the structural oppositions and symbolic inversions which define types of tour performances.