Bruner, Edward M.

Edward M. Bruner (September 28, 1924 – August 7, 2020) was professor emeritus of anthropology and criticism and interpretive theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was an American anthropologist known for his contributions to the anthropology of tourism, particularly his constructivist, processual approach that centers on experience and narrative in and beyond tourist settings. His book Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel is perhaps his best-known book. He has written numerous articles on tourism and has edited or coedited four volumes, including International Tourism: Identity and Change. His early field research was on acculturation and culture chance in Native North American communities in the 1950s. Subsequently, he studied Toba Batak migrants in Indonesia in the 1960s, then turned his attention to performance, narrative, and tourism in the 1980s through the present.