Tourists and the Carnivalesque

This article uses the idea of the carnivalesque to “think through” party tourism as practiced by British charter tourists in the resort of Magaluf on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. In addition, it considers the related idea of the European medieval fantasy Land of Cockaigne. Both the carnivalesque and Land of Cockaigne invite reflection on symbolic inversions that productively illuminate party tourism practices that are often underlain by transgressive behavior. The article uses the symbolic inversions associated with the carnivalesque of the unruly woman, male-female inversion, and the discourse of the grotesque as a means to understand party tourism practices. The discussion is framed within the context of a deep-rooted discourse of social class–based understandings of tourism-related travel. The condemnation of party tourism in Magaluf, which often occurs in UK-based news media outlets, follows a lineage of a demonization of the working classes that began at the start of industrialization. With the changes brought by industrialization, a demarcation arose between the working classes and the bourgeoisie that was focused on how and where carnival was performed. Based on periods of participant observation in Magaluf, the article notes that contemporary party tourism appeals to an imagination of a life other than that experienced in the quotidian world and that this bears comparisons with medieval fantasies associated with the Land of Cockaigne.