Tours That Bind is must reading for those who work on homeland/diaspora relations. Ditto for those who research tourism in all its modalities.
If sociology is an art form, Shaul Kelner is a master artist
Tours that Bind . . . serve[s] up some fascinating insights into one of the most daring and effective social experiments of the modern Jewish Diaspora.
“This fascinating, carefully researched study focuses on a specific kind of tourism... the Israeli Taglit-Birthright program... This study is insightful, rich in data, and exceptionally well informed. While the subject focus is unique, the volume contributes broadly to understanding pilgrimage and tourism, youth culture, and Israel-diaspora relations... Highly recommended.
“Kelner, assistant professor of sociology and Jewish studies at Vanderbilt University, has written an original and persuasive account of the ways in which tourism has evolved into an important means for the creation of transnational identities and commitments. Using Birthright tours to Israel as his example, Kelner offers new ways to think about place, society, and self.
“After several years of serious scholarship, Kelner concludes that tourism is the great equalizer, an opportunity for institutions to compete for the ability to represent a people.Though not the first book to explore Birthright’s impact, Tours That Bind approaches the subject academically, analyzing how Israel co-opts the Jewish diaspora to strengthen its nation-state.
Edward M. Bruner,author of Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel:
The best book to date on diaspora tourism. Kelner sweeps away the cobwebs that have clouded the relationship between young American Jews and the state of Israel. Rich description, subtle theory, and jargon-free writing make this book a joy to read. A major contribution to the literature on tourism and Jewish studies.
Harriet Hartman:
Drawing mainly on his own participant-observation experiences, Kelner situates the program in a context of political tourism, giving us new tools with which to understand the visceral, emotional and cognitive impacts on the participants. This provides a sophisticated lens through which to analyze what the Birthright program, and others like it, does, how it accomplishes its goals, what those goals are and why the mechanisms used may also limit its impact.
Riv-Ellen Prell,author of Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender and the Anxiety of Assimilation:
Tours that Bind is an exceptional work. Shaul Kelner offers one of the finest social scientific studies of contemporary Jewish life in a generation.
Adam Kirsch:
...[O]ffers some intriguing insights into a phenomenon of considerable importance in the American Jewish community.
Howard M. Weisband:
Kelner provides vivid descriptions, conversations, and analyses resulting from his experiences on multiple Taglit trips, his involvement wiht the Brandeis evaluations, and his own studious academic work.
Sylvia Barack Fishman:
Kelner lucidly lays out evolving conceptual structures in the field of diasporic homeland tourism, illuminating a spectrum of intellectual trends, and using them both to enrich nuanced understandings of the larger significance of the Israel trip in contemporary Jewish life and to portray Israel trips as part of "broader transnational trends that are gaining momentum worldwide.
Ben Brazil:
In analyzing tourism as a potent but imprecise tool for transnational political socialization, Kelner makes an important contributiong to scholarship on tourism, transnationalism, and diaspora.
