Hostility towards foreign visitors has a long history, connected to the controversial anthropological status of stranger. Reject phenomena have been faced by explorers, missionaries, traders and ethnographers. Retracing their itineraries, both the mass tourists seeking recreation and the motivated tourists seeking experience, have to deal with encounter shocks.
Contemporary antitourism issues, though, have matrices of distinct nature. The aristocratic antitouristic matrix, historically speaking, draws an image of tourists as herds contaminating exclusive gardens of Eden, destinated to happy few. The psychological matrix paradoxically produces antitourism germs inside tourists themselves, which currently avoid and condemn each others. A third matrix, which is often of ethnic nature, is bound to territory and culture. In autochtones' view, industrial tourism is frequently perceived as an intrusion, with heavy environmental ans social impacts.
If not openly, antitourism reveals itself in mockery. Since the end of 19th century, ironical drawings depict early tourist' aspect and behaviour, in the Alps. And the subject is fertile. These caricatures can be read in an anthropological perspective, establishing comparisons with other contexts and destinations.