As an international ecotourism destination, Yosemite National Park welcomes millions of climbers, sightseers, and other visitors from around the world annually, all of whom are afforded dramatic experiences of the natural world. This original and cross-disciplinary book offers an ethnographic and performative study of Yosemite visitors in order to understand human connection with and within natural landscapes. By grounding a novel "eco-semiotic" analysis in the lived reality of parkgoers, it forges surprising connections, assembling a collective account that will be of interest to disciplines ranging from performance studies to cultural geography.

"Where Asia Smiles" offers an understanding of tourism and its cultural consequences that is neither a lament at the arrival of tourists nor an endorsement of the industry as a blanket resolution of social ills in "underdeveloped" places. Examining the relationship of tourism to cultural identity and practice in Davao City, Mindanao, Philippines, Sally Ness observes and documents what is at stake for various actors who have entirely different objectives in the creation of a new cultural landscape. Ness takes an approach that emphasizes the relationship of tourism to the idea of home and the cultivation of all that home supports. Without forcing an interpretation, she draws from her own remembrances and hesitations to explore the ways one is obliged to live within the presence of this geocultural reality.Based on twelve months of research conducted in the 1990s, the study tracks the development of tourism during a time when the industry was growing faster in the Asian and Pacific Islands than anywhere else in the world. Ness focuses on individuals and families engaged in three types of tourism development: family-owned beach resorts, urban economy hotels, and a government-developed tourism estate. With great sensitivity to detail, she records the insights of those dealing with tourism in their home territories, observing closely the cultural consequences of tourism's particular way of operating at one unique developing location.

In Body, Movement, and Culture, Sally Ann Ness provides an original interpretive account of three forms of sinulog dancing practiced in Cebu City in the Philippines: a healing ritual, a dance drama, and a "cultural" exhibition dance. Ness's examination of these dance forms yields rich insights into the cultural predicament of this Philippine city and the way in which kinesthetic and visual symbols interact to create meaning. Ness scrutinizes the patterns of movement, the use of the body and of objects, and the shaping of space common to all three versions of the sinulog. She then relates these elements to the fundamental ways the culture bearers of Cebu City experience their world. For example, she shows how each of the dance forms functions to reinforce class distinctions and to establish a code of authenticated "cultural" action. At the same time, Ness demonstrates, the dances manifest and actualize widely applied notions about the nature of "devotion," "sincerity," "naturalness," and "beauty." Throughout the text, Ness provides a close analysis of movement that is all too often missing from anthropological studies of dance. Most significantly, she works to relate the movements used in dance to everyday movement and to interpret the attitudes and values that are embodied in both choreographed and quotidian movement. Important and illuminating, Body, Movement, and Culture is of particular interest to students and scholars of anthropology, folklore, dance, and Asian studies.

The essays explore embodied narratives in which the connections between religion and nationalism, globality and locality, tourism and politics are drawn. While religious festivals are expressions of communal faith, they empower as well political, social, and economic networks. Emphasizing the Philippines, the essays demonstrate how religious festivals are windows into the identity of their observers as well as their participants. As extraordinary occasions where transgressive behaviors may be played out and displayed publicly, festivals negotiate cultural identities.