by Audrey Herrin
A couple years ago, The New Yorker published a controversial article. An article that enraged travel writers, enthusiasts, and tourists alike – provoking passionate rebuttals on Substack, Reddit, and travel blogs.
The Reddit thread responding to the article concluded that the author is an over-intellectual who has forgotten how to enjoy life. A sentiment shared by a friend who sent me the piece, which I subsequently read and which has remained lodged in my memory ever since.
I’m talking about Agnes Callard’s semi-viral essay “The Case Against Travel.”
In this philosophical essay, Callard cites respected writers to support her argument that travel isn’t as valuable and enlightening as we often pretend. It promotes shallow behavior, and adds little to our lives. Travel is ultimately little more than a way to escape the monotony of life. A band-aid for existential anxiety.
It is no wonder that readers took issue with this article. Not only is Callard being a stuffy, intellectual killjoy – but her claims don’t reflect many people’s personal experiences. People who genuinely love travel, who find a lot of meaning in it.
Here’s the thing though, the article provoked so much indignation because it touches on something real. There is a lot of shallow, performative tourism out there.
Callard believes there is nothing wrong with travel when it has real motivation. For example, if you travel to study, work, or to pursue a particular passion. But, if you travel to “see something you neither value nor aspire to value, you are not doing much of anything besides locomoting.”1
She believes that tourists are “deferential” creatures. Something I am inclined to agree with. We travel to Paris and take the obligatory selfie with the Eiffel tower for Instagram, because that’s simply what tourists do in Paris. We go to the leaning tower of Pisa and pose as if we are pushing it over. We visit the Louvre and stand in line to see the Mona Lisa.
When I visited the Louvre a few years ago, the room displaying the Mona Lisa was packed wall to wall. There were many more eye-catching and interesting paintings in the room, but no one gave them a single glance.
Callard argues that tourists travel to a new location to seek a “change,” but they rarely succeed. They simply go and see the things which others have assigned cultural value. Then they return home, with their core ideologies and interests unchanged.
While I do see truth in Callard’s arguments here, I believe she underestimates the value travel has for most people. Even when a tourist doesn’t engage with a new location on a deeper level, being pushed out of their comfort zone may still be an eye-opening experience for them. Even if they only see the conventional ‘touristy’ sites.
I also disagree with her claim; “although people like to talk about their travels, few of us like to listen to them.”
This is not true in my experience, as an avid reader of travel writing. My friends and I love to share our travel experiences with each other. We learn from each other’s experiences, and get a dose of second-hand excitement from hearing about them.
Critics of Callard’s essay lambasted it for out-of-context quoting, pessimism, and over-generalization. But my biggest criticism of the essay is that she could have built a much stronger case against travel.
She could have written about the degrading effects of overtourism. Or the devastating impact of excessive plane travel on the environment. Or how leisurely travel is only accessible to the privileged minority.
All of these are important issues, and real reasons for everyone to re-consider why and how we travel. It is important to ask ourselves: why do I really want to go on this trip? Is Croatia really calling to me? Or did I just see a Tik Tok claiming it’s the hot new travel destination?
We need to consider how our actions impact others while traveling, and ensure we are being respectful visitors in someone else’s home. The tourism industry can be extremely exploitative and detrimental to the local population. Hawai’i is one of the best examples. While the native population suffers from water scarcity and the trauma of devastating wildfires, the resort pools must be kept full. The tourists kept happy, and the money kept in the corporation’s pockets.
This is why it’s important to consider the ethical implications of our vacations. Something Callard might have discussed to build a far more powerful argument against travel.
Personally, I am not too concerned about whether I use travel as a band-aid for existential anxiety. So what? So is everything. God forbid we travel just because we enjoy doing it!
But we should try to do it more consciously.
* * *
A great resource for ethical travel tips:
https://www.melaninbasecamp.com/trip-reports/2024/3/9/8-ways-to-embrace-ethical-travel
All quotations in this article are from “The Case Against Travel” by Agnes Callard, The New Yorker, June 23, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-case-against-travel
Audrey Herrin is an aspiring journalist from Seattle, Washington, with a degree in English Literature from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her work has previously been published in Intrepid Times magazine, among others. She is an avid reader, writer, and traveler; and she writes about her adventures and miscellaneous musings on Substack: @Bookish Backpacker.
