Abstract

The author explores tourists’ practices and performances around border markers and other landmarks at geopolitical frontiers or more abstract geodetic lines. Borders have become tourist attractions visited by millions of people and generating as many border-crossings and ritualized bodily performances. Border-crossing performances refer to both border-crossing postures and line-crossing ceremonies, and both originate from the narrative of otherness that is infused in border imaginaries. Therefore, by examining tourists’ border-crossing practices and bodily performances, the author aims to further conceptualize developments in the study of borders in tourism, and particularly on borders as being tourist attractions. In addition to documenting tourists’ border-crossing performances and actions, the author briefly details how social media has affected the meanings of border-crossing performances and borders as tourist attractions. It is argued that with the rise of social media, these border-crossing postures and ceremonies have become a new means of reaching the “other” in a virtual world that everyone can share.