At the Beach (review)

Sociologist Jean-Paul Urbain's At the Beach is a representational history of the beach as a vacation space in Western societies and of the bodily practices/rituals that reproduce this space. In the work, originally published as Sur la plage in 1994, Urbain takes issue with the dismissal of beach vacationers in tourism studies as lazy or sedentary tourists. Of particular concern to Urbain are two ways the beach vacation, one of the most popular forms of leisure, is typically classified. First and foremost, he argues that residential vacationers cannot be placed in a subcategory of tourists. Using the literary metaphors of Robinson Crusoe (the residential vacationer) and Phileas Fogg (the tourist), he demonstrates that vacationers travel only to reach a destination of refuge and repose, while a state of temporary nomadism is the tourist's goal. Secondly, Urbain provides detailed evidence that beach tourism or vacationing is anything but natural. The broad, clean sandy beach of today's vacation dreams is a carefully contrived setting and Westerners have had to learn to enjoy the shore and sea.

Following a preamble which introduces the Crusoe and Fogg metaphors, Urbain lays out his argument in the introduction. Nine chapters, divided into three parts, contain the history of the beach (part I), an exploration of the beach as a social space (part II) and his examination of the contemporary vacation beach society (part III). Urbain concludes with an epilogue that succinctly summarizes his major point; collapsing the residential vacation within the broad category of tourism hides the meanings of this decidedly sedentary collection of cultural practices that occur on and reproduce the beach.

The introduction begins with a call for a reversal of the leisure categories "tourist" and "vacationer." Urbain argues convincingly that the vacation is the generic activity and that tourism is one possible form that a vacation may take. He then works to counter scholars and critics who believe that the summer beach residential vacationer is either uninteresting or should be considered negatively as responsible for the overcrowded conditions plaguing "formerly pristine" shores. Finally, Urbain suggests that the place-myth of the deserted island from Robinson Crusoe remains "a powerful image that underlies the hedonistic uses of the beach and continues to function today as a model of symbolic behavior, even for overpopulated locations that are not in the least remote" (20). In other words, whether hoping to discover a new secluded shore (a Robinson) or content to follow in other vacationers' footsteps (a Friday), seaside vacationers are motivated, at least in part, by this search for purity and isolation.

In part I, Urbain draws from period literature and painting to argue that urban, literate Western Europeans found the coast, like many wilderness areas prior to the Romantic movement, to be a threatening and noisome place. Taming this natural space and encouraging elites to enter the sea required representing the scene as sublime, the figurative and literal removal of "the fishermen," and the prescription of sea bathing as a healthful activity. Many episodes of this history have a familiar ring from other contexts. The othering of the residents of fishing villages by nineteenth century travel writers, for example, recalls the discovery by local color authors of "a strange land and peculiar people" in the Appalachian mountains during the same time period.

Part II, "At the Beach," contains Urbain's analyses of representations of the beach. He begins by laying out the place-myth constructed through romantic novels, beach resort promotions, and the contrived landscapes of Club Med and other similar resorts.¹ The place-myth at the root of Urbain's beach vacation is the deserted shore as imagined through Robinson Crusoe; it is an empty space of refuge that permits a solitary and romantic experience. This is juxtaposed against the "overcrowded desert"—the beach as invaded by the masses and threatened by urban and industrial pollution. But this second image is not presented as the reality that contradicts the place-myth. Rather, Urbain...