| This study analyzes the relationship between international tourism and the contemporary global system: (1) its hierarchical structure and (2) the bifurcation of its interstate system into two blocs defined on the basis of political-military alliances. It combines analyses of global- and regional-level observations and data with those pertaining to a controlled comparison of the case of two countries, Austria and Hungary. It implements an eclectic research strategy, utilizing a mixture of research methods ranging from historical narrative through content analysis, linguistic history, the statistical modelling of secondary data, descriptive statistical analysis, an analysis of ethnographic fieldwork material, and a questionnaire survey. First, it examines quantitative historical data to demonstrate an association between the structural patterns of the uneven development of industrial capitalism and flows of international tourism (1) across the continent of Europe and, (2) in the comparative framework of the two societies selected, that is, in the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy and in post-monarchical Austria and Hungary. Then, Chapter 4 outlines the specific ways in which the structures of the two countries' external linkages were reconstructed after World War II. On that basis, Chapter 5 tests the statistical effects of such macrostructural inequalities as uneven development and political-military bloc-affiliation on the likelihood of international tourism in Austria and Hungary between 1960 and 1984. Chapter 5 also observes important differences in the patterns of incoming tourism in the two countries. Hence, finally, Chapter 6 examines the effects of the two countries' differences in the characteristics of incoming international tourism on some social, economic and political outcomes by summarizing ethnographic fieldwork data, survey evidence and secondary statistical and analytical materials concerning the differences in the insertion of structures of international tourism in the two countries. |
