Showing papers in "Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change in 2006"
TL;DR: The authors argue that using less structured interview situations, and a very close, fine-detailed analysis of interview data that draws upon socio-linguistic approaches, it is possible to reveal the underlying narrative structure of accounts for and of touristic experience.
Abstract: Tourist experiences are often profound and help to shape the social world of actors. Memories of travels become part of lived experiences to share with others. Experiences of travels or holidays achieve iconic status in everyday lives, and are communicated through the stories of life into lived identities. Accounts of touristic experiences in naturalistic everyday interaction have a story-like quality to them which become mythologised, fabled and flamboyantly and richly narrated to friends and relatives back home. However it is often extremely difficult to collect naturally occurring data of these storied experiences. Interviews in contrast appear to have a more structured and less naturalistic quality. This paper argues that using less structured interview situations, and a very close, fine-detailed analysis of interview data that draws upon socio-linguistic approaches, it is possible to reveal the underlying narrative structure of accounts for and of touristic experience. The paper argues that the natur...
115 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a discussion was expanded towards premodern tourism and postmodern theories were utilised to strengthen the theoretical ideas, two example destinations in Indian Himalayas were selected.
Abstract: Volunteer tourism is very close to modern backpacking tourism but when the motive basis is concerned, it can be considered a clearly separate form of tourism. Thus new viewpoints must be utilised. In this study the discussion was expanded towards premodern tourism and postmodern theories were utilised. To strengthen the theoretical ideas, two example destinations in Indian Himalayas were selected. The rise of so-called alternative tourism is one aspect of postmodernity in tourism. Volunteer tourism belongs to the group but it also differs remarkably from the other members. These differences are connected here with traditional pilgrimage, which represents probably the oldest type of tourism. While pilgrims are searching for enlightenment by conducting pilgrimages to particular sites, volunteer tourists follow their altruistic motives and reach their aspiration level in sacred liminoid. Altruistic tourism will most likely grow in the future. In addition to this, traditional pilgrimage has also been changing...
94 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the narratives utilized by Rotary International as they socialise American teenagers for study abroad. But they found that these narratives employ many of the tropes utilised in Euro-Western tourist and travel accounts.
Abstract: Every year, Rotary International sends thousands of American teenagers to live in foreign lands. Rotary is responsible for teaching students about travel and culture and for preparing teens for their year-long intercultural experience. Rotary International Exchange Students are ‘embedded tourists’, living in their host countries in order to ‘acquire’ a binational subjectivity. Rotary International's Program is a pedagogical site, where students are taught how to think about and consume cultural difference and are given ways of conceptualising tourism, travel, cultural adaptation, and personal transformation. Based on over three years of ethnographic research with Rotary clubs in the US Midwest and New England, this paper explores the narratives utilised by Rotary International as they socialise American teenagers for study abroad. The paper asserts that Rotary's narratives employ many of the tropes utilised in Euro-Western tourist and travel accounts. At the same time, the Rotary International Youth Excha...
23 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the complexities and their complex origins: nationalism, regional and trans-Atlantic migration, and tourism in Panamanian Afro-Antillean identity, concluding that so-called globalisat...
Abstract: Throughout its history as a nation, Panama has emphasised its Spanish roots. Having become a postcolonial state, Panama now exploits its multiculturalism for the purpose of attracting tourists. In this context, Afro-Antilleans in the Archipelago of Bocas del Toro – historically marginalised and considered temporary migrants – are developing gendered and racialised identities for tourist consumption, in response to the state's tourism promotion and in pursuit of a complex cultural politics. Tourism provides an occasion for Afro-Antilleans to reposition themselves within the Panamanian nation, vis-a-vis the state and other ethnic groups. ‘Panamanian’ Afro-Antillean identities are also transnational, African and Caribbean; these constructions of difference in the touristic context are inevitably contradictory, at once national and diasporic. This paper explores these complexities and their complex origins: nationalism, regional and trans-Atlantic migration, and tourism. It concludes that so-called globalisat...
22 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine a contested tourism proposal in Romania, Dracula Park, and its attempts to balance the indigenously produced history of the region with the powerful myths imposed by European and American filmic and literary influences: Bram Stoker's Dracula and the ‘heritage films’ it spawned.
Abstract: In this study, we examine a contested tourism proposal in Romania, Dracula Park, and its attempts to balance the indigenously produced history of the region with the powerful myths imposed by European and American filmic and literary influences: Bram Stoker's Dracula and the ‘heritage films’ it spawned. While the project was recently announced to be abandoned, the Romanian discourse on Dracula Park offers an avenue for a post-colonial critique which we explore in the context of globalisation, place, identity and various texts of the culture industry. A film-location-tourism spectrum helps illustrate some of the issues raised in this paper. Dracula films and Dracula Park (DP) occupy a problematic spot on this continuum, as myth and history are mediated around a real Transylvania by local-global cultural intermediaries. This helps us situate the political economy of tourism in settings like post-socialist Romania. We argue that the literary-film-DP example shows tourism as a postcolonial enterprise of a glo...
22 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines how Romania is responding to Dracula as a tourist attraction and focuses on the debate surrounding the proposed development of Dracula Park, a theme park employed a mythology developed from Bram Stoker's popularised Count Dracula, a character loosely based on medieval Wallachian ruler Vlad Tepes.
Abstract: The following analysis examines how Romania is responding to Dracula as a tourist attraction and focuses on the debate surrounding the proposed development of Dracula Park. The theme park employed a mythology developed from Bram Stoker's popularised Count Dracula, a character loosely based on medieval Wallachian ruler Vlad Tepes. The proposal triggered a string of heated debates that eventually thwarted the project. Although Dracula Park was met with opposition in Romania and from abroad, tourism (mainly from the western European Union and north American countries) to ‘Dracula sites’ continues and local tourism industries are thriving. This paper will contextualise this situation in longstanding debates on national identity and attempts to redefine Romania after Communism.
19 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined tourist promotional materials from the UK and found that these largely conform to the traditional image of bucolic, semi-rural, quintessentially southern Englishness, but also went further to analyse sexuality and race issues which, they argue, lie at the heart of not only Englishness itself but also the difference between the former and contemporary Britishness.
Abstract: The standard image of England has been traditionally dominated by bucolic, semi-rural, quintessentially southern Englishness. This paper examines England's current tourist promotional materials only to confirm that these largely conform to the above-mentioned traditional image. However, it also goes further to analyse sexuality and race issues which, we shall argue, lie at the heart of not only Englishness itself but also the difference between the former and contemporary Britishness.
11 citations
TL;DR: The authors draw on MacCannell's semiotic of the tourist attraction to suggest that whatever the significance of past literary productions of high culture to contemporary tourists, they continue to be cited generically to validate and authenticate touristic responses to, and encounters with, a city lacking familiar and regularly reproduced sights.
Abstract: Alexandria is familiar in the West it is largely as the fictional city of Durrell and others, a city with a glorious ancient past which had been subsumed into a more recent cosmopolitan decadence. Yet it lacks the visual signifiers of either its Hellenistic splendour or its early 20th century allure, and exists in contemporary guide books as a place without touristic sights where the well read traveller is exhorted to ‘use the mind’s eye' to bring it alive. Its associations, however, are those of high rather than popular culture, and its literary construction is as a bastion of Western colonialism and nostalgia, one which hegemonically defines an oriental Other as a liminal place of transgressive erotic possibility and schadenfreude. This Alexandrian myth exists uneasily within postcolonial Egypt, and equally uneasily with contemporary touristic practices that are both democratised and posited as much on material as on cultural consumption. This paper draws on MacCannell's semiotic of the tourist attraction to suggest that whatever the significance of past literary productions of high culture to contemporary tourists, they continue to be cited generically to validate and authenticate touristic responses to, and encounters with, a city lacking familiar and regularly reproduced sights.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the ways in which temporality influences constructions of otherness, and the importance of differentiation in the construction of identity in touristic discourses, the aim of this paper is the destabilisation of these polarities, by trying to locate areas of sameness through an engagement with temporality.
Abstract: This paper is an exploration of the ways in which temporality influences constructions of otherness. A position in time and space, subjectivity is the fusion of past-present-future. Attempts therefore to posit a group of people as all that I am not invariably require a realignment of time. Frequently depicted as if rooted in a disconnected present tense, the Other has rarely ever been described as a temporally complex being. Within touristic discourses this has resulted in a variety of binary opposites: tourist/traveller, guest/host island/mainland, and also psychotic/non-psychotic. While recognising the importance of differentiation in the construction of identity, the aim of this paper is the destabilisation of these polarities. This will not be done by attempting to negate difference, but rather by trying to locate areas of sameness through an engagement with temporality. I will begin by challenging the traveller/tourist dichotomy as it is delineated in Beatrice Grimshaw's South Sea travel brochures (1...
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the phenomenon of Neopagan "pilgrimages" which are advertised on the Internet and directed to various ancient sacred sites in Greece and in the Mediterranean Sea.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the phenomenon of Neopagan ‘pilgrimages’, which are advertised on the Internet and directed to various ancient sacred sites in Greece and in the Mediterranean Sea. After showing how travellers to Greece in the Modern Age have been inspired by classical myths and have often represented their trips as ‘pilgrimages’, the paper examines how Neopagans, women belonging to the Goddess Spirituality Movement, use travels to ancient sacred places as a way to reconstruct their own identity. Therefore, the perception and representation of the tourist journey as ‘pilgrimage’ obscures the reality of the commodification of religious experiences, in a globalised context in which different consumers ‘buy’ different experiences of ancient Greece.
8 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the way adventure is presented in three non-fiction narratives that span 80 years and reveal the subjective nature of adventure and how it can be repackaged and re-presented at specific historical moments.
Abstract: This paper is part of a broader research project which examines the history of leisure motor touring in Australia from the 1920s to 2004. At the core of this piece is an examination of the way adventure is presented in three non-fiction narratives that span 80 years. By considering different points in time the impact of the developing tourist infrastructure, improvements to roads and growing knowledge of the landscape, on the constructs of adventure can be seen. Yet, despite fundamental cultural shifts the lure and zest of adventure continued to function as a means of framing the overland experience. The narratives reveal the subjective nature of adventure and how it can be repackaged and re-presented at specific historical moments.
TL;DR: The effect of enforced wartime travel on women's thinking about themselves and their world has been explored in this paper, where the authors explore the consequences of enforced tourists who travelled during World War II.
Abstract: The exigencies of World War II resulted in a massive expansion of travel opportunities for American women, both civilian and military, that formed an essential ingredient of their wartime experience. As enforced tourists, the geographical centres and states of knowledge of American women were greatly expanded as they travelled to distant and remote areas, met new people, took on new jobs, encountered different cultures and ways of life, and established themselves and their families in unknown locations. The far-reaching consequences of enforced wartime travel played an important role in transforming the way American women thought about themselves and their world, and the legacy of the war continues to reverberate in women's lives. Much has been written about how major wars have given rise to postwar pilgrimages, battlefield tours, and the establishment of commemorative memorials and museums, but the significance of enforced tourists who travelled during wartime itself has not been fully explored. The far-...
TL;DR: This article analyzed three incidents in her journey: the meeting with a taciturn cowboy who hailed from Massachusetts, her assessment of the vaudeville nature of a Native American dance performance, and her sensation of being behind the scenes at a theatre as a trainload of passengers were served by the legendary Harvey Girls.
Abstract: Emily Post, an upper-middle class American divorcee, not yet the byword for correct social behaviour, as her Blue Book of Etiquette was to be published seven years later, set off from New York in April 1915 to motor to San Francisco. Armed with many misconceptions about the Wild West, she took two evening dresses, a block and tackle and a solid silver picnic set, and planned to see how far she could go in comfort. Her attitudes changed dramatically as she drove west, and she wrote perceptively about the disjunction between myth and reality and the inherent theatricality of the tourist experience. This paper analyses three incidents in her journey: the meeting with a taciturn cowboy who hailed from Massachusetts, her assessment of the vaudeville nature of a Native American dance performance, and her sensation of being behind the scenes at a theatre as a trainload of passengers were served by the legendary Harvey Girls. The creation of the myth of the Old West was well under way in 1915; this micro-study of...
TL;DR: The authors examines the novella Ein fliehendes Pferd (A Runaway Horse) by Lake Constance author Martin Walser as anti-tourist literature.
Abstract: This paper examines the novella Ein fliehendes Pferd (A Runaway Horse) by Lake Constance author Martin Walser as ‘anti-tourist literature’. The popularity of Lake Constance as a tourist destination owes much to its beautiful natural landscape, which is often depicted in romantic images and words in the tourist brochures and guidebooks from the region. Local author, Walser uses similar descriptions of the natural landscape in his novella, which tells the story of four disillusioned tourists and their disappointing holiday by Lake Constance, but provides a local, critical perspective on constructions of the place Lake Constance by the tourist industry. The paper reflects on the ways in which Walser's ‘anti-tourist’ characters react to, and are influenced by, the natural landscape and the holiday destination. It focuses on the satirical use of typical tourist brochure and guidebook descriptions of the landscape, and the ways in which changes in the landscape mirror changes in the destructive relationship bet...