If “at first sight” a commodity appears to be an obvious thing, analysis could be said to be a second way of looking at it, which frees it from the fallacy of an obvious, or self-evident (selbstverständlich) simplicity: that is to say it destroys that “selbst”, the pretext of autonomy, and reveals that it can be traced back to an accumulation of metaphysical and theological complications. 

Maria Velho da Costa is a highly respected writer who has nonetheless remained in the background, impermeable to the processes and strategies used in the public construction of writers. Her works of narrative fiction are a milestone in the history of Portuguese literature of the last half-century. She combines a dash of experimentalism with the great points of reference of modern literature. Maria Velho da Costa's immense merit stands out in our literary landscape.

From the elitist journeys in the old days to the democratised travels of mass tourism, there is a long history that has been mapped out here by a geographer who has traced the long-time phenomenon of tourism and accompanied the rise of trends and concepts that we often tend to regard as a creation of our times. Álvaro Domingues believes that the fundamental issue of tourism today is the game of global capital in urban geographies.

Coming out controversially against the commonest ideas about tourists, which generally regard them as ridiculous, grotesque figures, Didier Urbain, a sociologist and ethnologist, and author of L’idiot du voyage: histoires de touristes, criticises the arguments put forward by the detractors of tourism and considers them representatives of the true travel experience of our times who should not be disparaged.

Among all the forms of tourism, some of which are invented with a degree of imagination, none is as suitable for ideological analysis as so-called ethical tourism, for which a new word, 'voluntourism' has even been coined. Here is a considerable four-handed contribution that transcends disciplinary bounds and offers an ideological critique of ethical tourism.

This architect and researcher at the Faculty of Architecture at Universidade do Porto believes that the huge effects of tourism on contemporary cities can be measured with the instruments of a critical theory of political economy to reveal the image and logic of the neoliberal city.

The tourism sector, with its global dimension including all the fields of the production of wealth, has undergone incomparable expansion. All the figures are astronomical and the impacts are huge in the economics of tourism. Álvaro Matias, an economist, researcher and author of studies on tourism published in scientific journals, analyses them as positive achievements and essential benefits.

From leisure travel to the initiation of young nobles – under the title of the 'Grand Tour' – and today's mass tourism, the urban theorist Thierry Paquot creates and underscores a distinction on the basis of the idea that a tourist trip has nothing to do with the concept of travel and upholds that there is an urgent need to cut short the growing movement of global tourism.

Tourism is also a discourse with its must-see commonplaces. A journey, in its most common sense, could be guided by the following references, in alphabetical order.

In the year of the bicentenary of Karl Marx's birth, the historian José Neves addresses the complex legacy that the philosopher left us, a legacy that did not pass the test of time or the ups-and-downs of political and economic history. He talks of what is still current – and often such an integral part of current language and representations of the political and social world that we all seem to be more or less Marxians, even if we are not Marxists.