In a conversation I had with Jeremy Boissevain and Tom Selwyn about the anthropology of tourism at the Mediterranean Summer School in Piran, Slovenia, 2002, Tom Selwyn suggested that anthropological research on the topic should bring together political economy and (imaginative) semiological approaches. As I was fascinated by Tom's suggestion, I sat down and tried to write an essay on the issue for a lecture at the Free University of Berlin. Despite the fact that I had never con ducted fieldwork specifically on tourism in the Sahara, I became, interested in the topic, however, during my research on the Tuareg upheavals against the governments of Niger in Mali in the 1990s. While doing fieldwork in Southern Algeria on Tuareg migrants from Mali and Niger in 1992, I realised that most Tuareg migrants found employment in fields they are particularly accustomed with, or at least are believed to be, by members of the host society. Nomadic migrants actually look for and are searched for those occupations which are in accordance with a particular nomadic identity or associated with particular nomadic properties and values, such as night-watchmen, herders, soldiers (mercenaries), trans-border traders or tourist guides. Economic transactions between migrants from a nomadic background and their hosts obviously seemed to be based on the principle of ‘foreignness’, a principle that also applies to transactions between ‘host and guest’ in the field of tourism.

A second phenomenon with regard to tourism in the Sahara that I came across during fieldwork was a particular relation between tourism and rebellion. Quite a number of former tourist guides actually became members of the various rebel movements in the two countries, just as quite a number of former rebels found or tried to find employment in the tourist industry. I wondered what kind of relationships might exist between the decision to take up arms against the government in order to fight for (political) autonomy, social and economic rights, or even a Tuareg state on the one hand, and the decision to work in the field of tourism, on the other.