Interpreting tourism from a cultural studies’ perspective proves difficult a task in late modern societies because
of the embedding of this practice in multiple mobilities. The scientific domain “tourism studies” as well as tourism as a autonomous research object becomes problematic if constructed as fully delineated phenomenon. Yet, tourism is constitutive for a ever greater number of phenomena in late modern societies and is also embedded in multiple mobilities and mobile ways of life. This contribution aims at putting forward a definition of tourism as “relationship to the world” that assigns meaning to specific practices. The “tourist gaze” is the starting point for proposing a relational concept of the “touristic”, but under the condition of abstracting the implied “scopic regime”. Tourism would not be any longer an object, but a relationship to the world, which is mobilised in different situations and practices. Second, because tourists are mobile individuals practising places in a specific way, I propose the expression “dwelling” for what tourists do with space: symbolic and material appropriation of places and mobilities. The concept “dwelling touristically” could allow for a discussion about tourism within cultural studies by focussing on the spatial components.