The GLTRG organises a series of sessions at the Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers. The next conference will take place in London from 3rd to 5th September 2003.The theme of the conference is ‘Geography, Serving Society and the Environment’.
For the first time the RGS-IBG international conference will be hosted by the Society in Kensington Gore, London. This location will provide greater opportunity to engage practitioners and policy makers with research agendas, and encourage Fellows to use the new meeting facilities. The Society’s research groups will continue to provide the intellectual core of the conference. It will be centrally organised by staff in the Research Division and will be the first real opportunity to welcome the academic community to the refurbished buildings at Lowther Lodge. Overspill is to take place in Imperial College.
Geographies of Citizenship (with the SCGRG and PGRG).
Convenors:
Luke Desforges (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
Rhys Jones (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
Michael Woods (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
Citizenship is being refigured both academically and politically. New concepts of citizenship emphasise a ‘thick’ account based in “the cultural work that stands behind the achievement of a ‘citizen identity’” (Szersynski and Toogood 2000). At the same time the scales and institutions of citizenship appear to be in transition. There is a strong argument that new forms of global citizenship are emerging which deal with increasing mobility and transnationalism. At the local level citizenship is contested, and there are strong debates about the contemporary relevance of citizenships associated with the nation state.
This session explores the social processes which are productive of contemporary citizenship under globalisation. It deals with scales from the local to the global, and from the individual to the institutional. It addresses the varieties of citizenships as they’re expressed in new forms of belonging, rights and responsibilities. What sort of media, social interaction and social spaces, such as art, the internet, television, travel, migration, everyday life, are implicated in the socio-cultural production and contestation of citizenship? What sort of historical trajectories is the cultural production of citizenship undergoing? What cultural processes might produce a citizenship beyond the borders of the nation-state? What role do institutions, NGOs and political activists, play in solidifying these versions of citizenship?
MODULE 1: 09.00-11.15
Chair: Luke Desforges
Citizenship in the ‘Post-Justice’ City
Gordon MacLeod (University of Durham)
Abstract:
As the nation-state undergoes a dramatic recasting of its institutional and spatial expression, so a plethora of scholars and enthusiastic politicians are heralding the onset of new spaces of citizenship. While some envisage a future characterized by multiple ‘layers’ of citizenship (Yuval-Davis 1999), others contend that cities represent especially privileged sites for renegotiating citizenship, particularly given their role as restless hubs for the transnational circulation of economies, people and ideas. These processes are viewed to open up spaces of ‘insurgent citizenship’, introducing the city to “new identities and practices that disturb established histories” (Holston, 1999). And yet as argued by Sandercock (1998), planners and politicians have yet to confront these shifting socio-spatialities. On the contrary urban elites seem increasingly preoccupied to ‘control’ the spatial practices and ‘disturbances’ of this heterogeneous citizenry. This is evident in the upsurge of exclusive gated communities and privatized edge cities, the active criminalizing of homeless and immigrants, and the strict disciplining of purportedly insurgent groups, all of whom might be deemed to compromise the strict ethics of globalizing corporate capital and ‘consumerist citizenship’. In some senses, this symbolizes the onset of a ‘post-justice city’ (Mitchell 2001): one that limits societal membership to those capable of confirming a financial stakeholding in today’s quicksilver economy while simultaneously eroding ‘formal’ and ‘substantive’ citizenship rights from many dispossessed groups. Whilst such trends are more deeply engraved upon the US urban landscape, there is growing evidence that UK and European cities are also assuming such institutional forms. This paper discusses some of this evidence and in doing so raises searching questions about the changing substantive nature of citizenship and urban politics within this emerging ‘post-justice’ city.
Reconceptualising citizenship: space, gender and community in South Africa
Cheryl McEwan (University of Birmingham)
Abstract:
This paper develops new theoretical perspectives about gender and citizenship, drawing on empirical research in South Africa. It conceptualises citizenship as more than a set of political rights granted by the state and as grounded in the practices, experiences and meanings articulated and acted upon by individuals and social groups and actively negotiated by even the most marginalized individuals. The devolution of state power in South Africa to localities, and the mediation of this by existing power relations in households, communities and between groups, demonstrates that citizenship is structured, practised and experienced at multiple scales and in diverse spaces. This paper explores the spaces and scales of black women’s citizenship, the ways in which power relations between different groups of people compromise attempts at universal equality, and some of the deficiencies of western theorisations of citizenship when applied to non-western contexts. The paper investigates how, despite the compromising of their equality by entrenched power relations in structures of governance, communities and households and the persistent problem of non-participation in local decision-making processes, black women often bypass formal structures in order to claim and practise their rights to citizenship and participation in both material and immaterial, non-corporeal spaces.
Distanciated citizenship: the new times and spaces of the sustainable citizen
Anna Bullen and Mark Whitehead (University of Wales, Aberystwyth)
Abstract:
This paper explores the geographies and temporalities of sustainable citizenship. We argue that the figure of the sustainable citizen challenges and destabilises the conventional socio-spatial and temporal parameters through which citizenship has historically been constructed. Much has already been written on the transition from the social rights bearing citizenship, to more flexible systems of active citizenship – mobilised around issues of gender, race and sexuality. While such work alerts us to the socio-spatial dynamics of citizenship, we argue that it fails to recognise the important role of time, and the “non-human” within the construction of citizenship. We claim that time – through the immediacy of invoked citizenship rights, and the links between these rights and social lifecycles – and the “non-human” (or natural) – as the opposite or antithesis of the rights bearing citizen within law – have historically played a crucial role in defining what it is and is not to be a citizen.
In order to explore the concept of sustainable citizenship, this paper focuses upon how the practices and principles of sustainability are currently being learnt within the Welsh education system. Last year the Welsh Assembly Government launched its educational curriculum for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship. On the basis of research carried out with young people in Wales and key education officers, this paper explores how notions of citizenship are now being relearned and the implications of this relearning process for how citizenship is understood and realised.
One Scotland, many cultures’: voicing Scottish citizenship
David Howard and Jan Penrose (University of Edinburgh)
Abstract:
The ‘One Scotland, Many Cultures’ campaign, launched by the Race Equality Unit in the summer of 2002, has been the central platform from which the Scottish Executive has sought to bolster one of it’s ‘founding pillars’ – the commitment to advancing social inclusion in the ‘New Scotland’. In this paper, based on interviews and discourse analysis, we will discuss the political and policy-oriented motives behind the anti-racist campaign and assess the relevance of multicultural policy and practice to constructions of Scotland as a ‘new’ post-devolution entity. This examination is placed in the context of the current government’s seemingly straightforward promotion of ‘active and responsible citizenship’ (Education for Citizenship in Scotland, Scottish Executive 2002). In particular, we consider whether the new multicultural Scotland is defined by greater inclusiveness in an established construction, or by a more profound re-conceptualisation of Scotland that incorporates difference into systemic transformation of the imagined community and its tangible institutions. This analysis then serves as a basis for evaluating the implications of these two very different goals for conceptions and practices of citizenship.
Getting a ‘Flexible Eye’: round-the-world travel and cosmopolitan belonging
Jennie Germann Molz (Lancaster University)
Abstract:
In The Global Soul, a novel chronicling the cosmopolitan search for home, Pico Iyer (2000) writes: ‘I exult in the fact that I can see everywhere with a flexible eye’ (24). The ‘flexible eye’ describes a new kind of global citizenship that derives from mobility, detachment and multiplicity as opposed to rooted-ness or national affiliation. It describes a way of relating to the world through a sense of ‘cosmopolitan belonging’. In this paper, I explore the extent to which the ‘flexible eye’ serves as an apt metaphor for the spatial and social affiliations enacted by round-the-world travellers.
The paper is based on research that examines the narratives travellers publish on-line while travelling around the world. Drawing on recent academic work on cosmopolitanism and global citizenship, I investigate the way a cosmopolitan discourse circulates in these narratives. In particular, I investigate the way travellers frame these related activities – moving around the world and sharing their experiences via the Internet – in terms of civic responsibility. Travellers respond to a sense of obligation to produce tolerance, interconnectedness and cultural understanding out of encounters with difference. However, this formulation of a round-the-world trip as a civic obligation works to both decenter and re-establish national affiliations. How are travellers both detaching from and re-attaching to notions of (a national) home in their search for the ‘flexible eye’?
Citizenship ‘at-a-distance’: the geographies and politics of diaspora communities
Sean Carter (University of Exeter)
Abstract:
This paper seeks to investigate the issues surrounding diaspora communities and their relations with their ‘homeland’. This is achieved through an examination of the Croatian community in the United States, and, more specifically, their engagement with Croatia as the crisis in the Balkans unfolded throughout the 1990s. It explores the extent to which these engagements can be considered acts of ‘citizenship’, and how useful that notion is for understanding the dynamics of diaspora-homeland relations. This approach is particularly useful in unpacking some of the assumptions inherent in debates about globalisation and citizenship (e.g. Falk 2000). National diasporas, for example, are both de-territorialising and re-territorialising formations. This questions the statist view of citizenship as fixed in territory, but also provides a challenge to the more nuanced approaches which stress the significance of cosmopolitan citizenship. Szerszynski & Urry (2002), for example, argue that a cosmopolitan citizenship involves a disposition towards ‘openness’. The evidence from diaspora communities, such as the Croatian-Americans, is that their cosmpolitanism involves not only an openness to ‘distant places’ but also a simultaneous closure as well. It argues, therefore, that at the conceptual level, our ways of thinking about geographies of citizenship need to be sensitive to the reconfiguration of the relationship between territory and citizenship, but not to the extent of embracing a completely open-ended and de-territorialised view of citizenship.
MODULE 2: 15.45-18.00
Chair: Michael Woods
Speakers:
Panel discussion, with keynote paper presented by Engin Isin (Chair of Citizenship Studies, York University) followed by response from panel members and open discussion. Panel members: Sarah Radcliffe (University of Cambridge), Murray Lowe (London School of Economics and Political Science), Gavin Parker (University of Reading), Joe Painter (University of Durham) and Eleonore Kofman (Nottingham Trent University).
Tourism, creativity and the city (with the UGRG).
Convenor:
Andrew Church (University of Brighton)
Increasingly notions of creativity are at the heart of new ways of imagining, representing, manipulating, managing and selling cities throughout the world. Tourism and leisure are central to creative spaces, strategies and practices. The expressive creative power of individuals can be enacted through leisure whilst creative cityscapes are imbued with the priorities of international tourism corporations and policy organisations. This session seeks to explore the theoretical, empirical and policy-related debates surrounding ‘creativity in the city’ and ‘the creative city’ that have been taking place in geography, sociology, cultural and urban studies. Papers will include: theories of creativity, performance and space; the cultural, social and economic aspects of creative tourism and leisure spaces; the socio-spatial relations of tourism, leisure and creativity; cultural polices for the city; tourism and leisure policies and creativity; theories of urban politics and the politics of tourism and leisure; creative tourism and leisure sites such as celebrations, festivals, spectacles, sports centres, art galleries, concert halls and museums; creativity, tourism, leisure, exclusion and marginalisation; urban spaces, personal creativity and becoming through tourism and leisure; everyday leisure and creativity.
MODULE 1; The creative industries of the United Kingdom: 09.00-11.15
Chair: Tim Coles
Mapping the creative industries: concept, methodology and an example, Southeast England
Andy Pratt (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Abstract:
This paper critically evaluates the notion of the creative industries developed in recent years in the context of economic policy development. It sketches out the development of a UK national policy framework that has created a visibility of the creative industries, and the struggle to arrive at a definition of its object: the creative industries. Moreover, the paper discusses the emergence of a regional agenda. The paper outlines the development of a conceptual framework, the regional data framework, and discusses the problems of its operationalisation: the empirical measurement of the activities of the cultural and creative industries. The paper is illustrated with an example of a creative industries ‘mapping’ exercise carried out in the South East Region. The strengths and weaknesses of the approach, and its application, as well as its utility for policy making, advocacy and analytical understanding will be discussed.
Decentralisation and the regional distribution of Arts Council of England expenditure
Nicholas Wilson and Mark Hart (Kingston University)
Abstract:
This paper puts forward an initial discussion of the links between public subsidy of the arts and local economic development, with particular focus on regional equity. Drawing on a research project commissioned by the Arts Council of England (ACE), it analyses the regional distribution of ACE Treasury and Lottery expenditure in 1999/2000.
In attempting to consider how ‘fair’ regional distribution of public sector arts funding has been, the paper first considers three key questions of fiscal decentralisation:
# Did London receive a disproportionately large amount of funding, when compared with the rest of the country?
# Did the South receive more funding than the North? And
# Did urban areas receive more funding than rural areas
It then moves on to consider areas of cultural decentralisation, including an analysis of subsidy in relation to geographical accessibility and deprivation indices. The paper concludes with a summary and review of the key policy issues raised.
The development dynamics of ‘creative industries’: knowledge flows and sustainability
Paul Jeffcutt (The Queen’s University, Belfast)
Abstract:
This paper critically evaluates understandings of the development dynamics of ‘creative industries’.
The paper argues that the complex dynamics of convergence that have enhanced the socio-economic capabilities of ‘creative industries’ for regions, also construct considerable challenges for researchers and policy makers in conceptualising and operationalising appropriate development in a knowledge economy.
The paper reviews a major field study that undertook in-depth analysis of the development dynamics of the ‘creative industries’ in one UK region. On the one hand, it considers the problematics of capturing the complex knowledge flows that characterise the ecosystem of ‘creative industries’ in a region; on the other hand, it considers the problematics of translating these complex and multi-layered interrelationships into effective development policy and action involving the numerous regional stakeholders that need to be included. The paper concludes with observations concerning the difficult interrelationship between knowledge and practice in the development of regional knowledge economies.
What is critical? Mass of what? The discourse of critical mass in the context of the creative industries and regional development
James Crawford (University of Newcastle Upon Tyne)
Abstract:
Notions of the Creative Industries as a distinct grouping of economic activity with a special significance for the economic development of cities ands regions have emerged as a powerful strand of policy and, more critically, academic discourse. Much academic work on what are conventionally understood as the Creative Industries, whether using that term or not, has stressed the tendency of these activities to agglomerate or cluster, above all in so called world cities, suggesting that the opportunities for significant growth of this sector is limited. On the other hand many cities and regions, including those with little claim to world city status, have made significant investments in the development of the creative industries, in the face of theoretical and empirical arguments that suggest that significant agglomerations outside of the existing strongholds is unlikely. In UK policy discourse, for example, this dilemma has seen claims that spreading state support for these industries “too thinly” could damage the pre-eminent role of London as a centre of Creative Industries activity. Meanwhile, development in the regions is seen as hampered by the lack of a “critical mass” of creative industries activity. This paper seeks to challenge this way of thinking about the creative industries and regional development by asking both what is “critical“ and what exactly is it that might constitute the “mass” of activity.
Knowledge and the commodification system: creative industries in a manufacturing city
Alex Burfitt and Chris Collinge (Centre for Urban and Regional Studies / University of Birmingham)
Abstract:
To sustain capitalist accumulation there must be ‘commodities’: objects that have definite identities, that are delimited from their context, determinate in their ownership, resistant to uncontrolled dissemination, readily priceable and exchangeable, and can be slotted back during ‘consumption’ into the manifold of other commodities. The creation of commodities itself depends upon a second order process, which we may call the production of ‘commodity production’ – the articulation across different spatial scales of a social framework that organises the determination, production and consumption of items as ‘commodities’. The growth of knowledge sectors – in which products are images or representations – is particularly challenging to this framework and to its reorganisation: knowledge is not only ubiquitous, it is also reflexive, evanescent and (through digitalisation as well as the ‘play of difference’) impossible to secure with finality. This paper explores the manner in which the commodification system is being restructured at different scales, drawing upon an empirical study of the reproduction of Birmingham as a ‘creative city’. It focuses in particular upon the establishment of a local creative industry ‘value-chain’, and examines the underpinning of this in ‘primitive knowledge accumulation’, intellectual property rights, the evolution of business models and labour processes, the propagation of new cultural norms amongst artisans and discourses amongst policy-makers.
MODULE 2; Culture, tourism and urban change: 15.45-18.00
Chair: Tim Coles
Creative tourism: a solution to the serial reproduction culture?
Greg Richards (Tilburg University, Spain)
Abstract:
As culture is increasingly used by cities as a means of social and economic development, the proliferation of cultural tourism products threatens to develop this into a mass tourism market. Many consumers, tired of finding the serial reproduction of museums and monuments in different destinations are searching for alternatives. The rise of skilled consumption and the emphasis on the development of individualised cultural capital and spirituality in post-modern society points towards the development of creative tourism as a successor/adjunct to cultural tourism.
This paper considers the development of creative tourism from the perspective of demand (why creative tourism has emerged at this point in time) and from the supply perspective. In particular, attention is paid to the need for cities and regions to be creative in developing new products, avoiding serial monotony in the process. Examples of creative tourism projects will be examined and contrasted to traditional models of cultural tourism.
Urban heritage tourism trails: analysis of Dunedin, New Zealand
Stephen Boyd (University of Otago, New Zealand)
Abstract:
Tourist attractions can exist as points (museums), areas (national parks) and lines (trails). Linear tourist attractions have received less attention than those that are characterised as points or areas. In New Zealand, considerable attention has been given to trails that exist either in rural settings or backcountry regions. Virtually little research has examined trails within urban places. The research presented in this paper aims to address this lacunae, where the focus is on heritage within an urban trail context.
Urban places are important for tourism. They contain historic cores, interesting street patterns, as well as cultural and heritage features. Often public sector trail development has occurred as part of how historic cores and particular themes within urban places are marketed to visitors. In conducting tourism research in urban areas, it is difficult to differentiate tourists from residents. In order to avoid this problem, the research presented in this paper focused not solely on trails users, but how businesses along or near trails have benefited from visitors walking the various trails.
The research comprised several stages, involving a mix of generating primary data, collecting secondary (existing) data as well as using both quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews) methods. This paper presents the findings to date of this programme of research.
Re-directing the tourist gaze: the (re)production and (re)creation of tourism spaces in the context of urban regeneration
Melanie Smith (University of Greenwich)
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to analyse the ways in which tourism and the cultural / creative industries have increasingly become primary determinants in the (re)production and (re)creation of urban spaces, particularly in the context of regeneration. Urry (2002) describes the proliferation of the tourist gaze as a result of globalisation and ‘mediatisation’. The tourist is now afforded a plethora of sights and landscapes on which to gaze, many of which are re-constructed or purpose-built for tourism or leisure purposes. Despite fears of cultural homogenisation, Hughes (1998) describes how tourism can help to ‘re-vision’ or ‘re-imagine’ space, drawing out spatial distinctiveness in an attempt to gain competitive advantage. Various destinations are actively engaging in the reconfiguration of their identity in an attempt to reposition themselves or to put themselves on the tourist map. Numerous regeneration strategies now include the construction of new themed spaces (Edensor, 2001) or the re-development of old ones (e.g. waterfronts). Although there are concerns that this can create a form of ‘heritagisation’ (Walsh, 1992) or bland standardisation (Edwards, 1996), many such developments reflect the creativity and diversity that is characteristic of post-modern urban planning. This paper will discuss examples of this phenomenon, focusing in particular on South-East London.
Recycling space: public art, local identities and the national cycle network
Mark McGuiness (Bath Spa University College)
Abstract:
Contemporary writings in geography and cultural studies have emphasised the importance of culture in constituting local imaginaries and the public sphere (e.g. Crang, 1998; McGuigan, 1996; Urry, 1995). In particular, there has been growing awareness of the increased significance of public art as the conduit of ‘the local’ in contemporary central urban regeneration strategies (Miles, 1997; Seldon, 1995; Hall, 2001).
This paper examines the relevance of these urban-regeneration based arguments in the context of the development of the largest public art scheme in Britain today, the National Cycle Network. Now integrated into many urban regeneration schemes and often incorporating the recycling of disused industrial land and transportation corridors this network currently comprises over 6,500 miles of cycleways linking central urban areas and remote countryside and is punctuated with hundreds of examples of public art.
Based on primary research into the planning and development of an established cycle route of this kind, this paper explores: the role public art in the representation of local identities; the use of public art to re-integrate redundant space into local ‘place consciousness’; the potential of public art and ‘culture’ in the promotion of alternative, sustainable transport strategies; and the contribution of public art in the encouragement of mixed-use/multi-user planning schemes.
Public art as a means for city marketing
Mariangela Lavanga (Libera University, Italy) and Michelle Trimarchi
Abstract:
Public art has gained considerable momentum, in particular considering the increasing urban deprivation, the importance of urban design and the relevance that “cultural quarters” are gaining in metropolitan cities.
Public art offers a number of socio-economic and material benefits. It has an important role to play in the success of the urban realm, in the humanisation and re-discovery of public spaces, enhancing the local distinctiveness and the quality of the environment, and involving local artists and the community.
There is a clear need for a cross-cutting approach: the public art function of the local authority has to work as closely as possible with planning to ensure the mutual benefits. In that way, public art, integrated into the overall concept of an open space and forming part of urban life, can really act as a catalyst for a wider cultural regeneration process, stimulating creativity and moreover enhancing the image of the city.
Public art may have, therefore, a role in the promotion of the city, enhancing the levels of tourism through an active programme of temporary and permanent public art, based on a wide range of means, including street furniture, lighting, community projects, temporary installations and exhibitions.
Creative city/destructive neo-liberalism? The cultural strategy of Barcelona Ramon Ribera-Fumaz (University of Manchester)
Abstract:
There is a general agreement that the economic restructuring of the last decades has signified the global integration of the economy where to achieve economic growth, territories must support processes of innovation, which relies heavily on cultural factors (Scott, 2000). In addition, a new policy paradigm has emerged, which aim to enhance market forces and to achieve as a first objective economic growth. These processes have been termed as neoliberalisation (Brenner and Theodore, 2002). In this scenario, the national state has lost its ability to regulate the economy and the local scale is seen as the place where policy action must be taken.
Under these circumstances, it has emerged the ‘creative’ city (Landry, 2000): to achieve economic development urban governments has to enhance the importance of the cultural environment in order to attract investment and workers able to develop the creative/innovative capacities of the city. These strategies are seen as socially inclusive to the uneven processes of global neoliberalism, which are understood as external to the urban politics. Thus, culture and the local are seen as the best policy tool to face globalisation and the neoliberal restructuring of the state. This paper critically assesses the relations between neoliberalism and the creative strategies in the light of the regeneration processes in Barcelona.
MODULE 3; Culture, creativity and identity: 09.00-11.15
Chair: Andrew Church
The Mediterranean in mind: visiting the Med and negotiating or space in the world
David Crouch (University of Derby)
Abstract:
This paper seeks to make a contribution to the understanding of contemporary British citizenship and ways in which individuals negotiate that citizenship in terms of membership through identity and identification by focussing on specific aspects of British ideas about and practices of the Mediterranean, through tourism.
The significance of tourism in the negotiation of contemporary life has been identified in a powerful strand of recent cross- disciplinary debate. We argue that tourism provides a significant means through which individuals come into contact with and may encounter ideas of the Med and may use this to negotiate their feeling of what is citizenship in contemporary Britain. Tourism provides a pertinent example of contemporary encounters with diverse contexts and through which those contexts may be engaged and made sense in and through everyday life. Such an approach problematises citizenship and the contents of citizenship, through which participation and identities are distinguished.
The Med as an idea has been significant in diverse ways in British culture for over a century. In relation to pleasure we include such elements as the body; heat and light; health and sexuality. In terms of the exotic we note the sacred, danger and ideas of the other. We regard these, less as discrete, than overlapping and mutually informing ideas that may also be elusive. Each of these strands is encountered through diverse representations and cultural knowledge, and through channels of practice that influence feeling of citizenship, investment in a culture and its identity.
Looking for the exotic: Catalan travellers in Cairo at the beginning of the 20th Century
Maria Dolors Garcia Ramon, Perla Zusman, Lluis Riudor and Antoni Luna (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Abstract:
In the transit from the 19th to the 20th century was experiencing a process of industrial growth accompanied by the rise of a strong urban bourgeoisie. This emerging social class tried to emulate its counterparts in more advanced European countries and developed a distinctive cultural behaviour which included tourism as a practice to underline its social and economic success as well as its increasing cultural sophistication. Egypt, and particularly Cairo, became a privileged destination as it could offer the facilities needed to satisfy the demands of leisure and consumption of such visitors.
The aim of this paper is to present the images of Cairo as reflected in the travel narratives of several Catalan bourgeois who were fascinated by the city- among them, the generous sponsor of varied cultural initiatives Eduard Toda i Güell, the scenographer Olaguer I Junyent, and the writer Vicent Coma i Soley. Under British domination Cairo experienced a strong process of Europeanization, and became a place in which times, spaces of Eastern and Western cultures intertwined. The travel, then, was for the tourist an experience full of mystery and exoticism that was flowing from a place which was not fully alien to European ways of life.
Italopoiesis: tourism, fascist creativity and Italian identities on Rhodes
Stephanie Hom (University of California)
Abstract:
On numerous occasions, Benito Mussolini referred to himself as an artist who would create, manipulate, and transform the nation of Italy, his blank canvas, into a fascist spectacle. This paper examines how Mussolini’s creative mantra becomes the guiding principle that transforms the gem of Italy’s colonial enterprise, the Greek isle of Rhodes, from provincial backwater to fashionable tourist destination. In fact, tourist propaganda becomes the primary means through which fascist aesthetics and italianità [Italianness] are (re)presented and perpetuated.
In the postcards, brochures, guidebooks, and magazine articles sanctioned by the regime in the 1920s and 1930s, a rhetoric of “home” is employed wherein Rhodes, with its “medieval” fortress and walled city, can never be evoked without recalling a similar place in Italy. In this tourist propaganda, much artistic license is exercised in depicting Rhodes as “il faro radiante della nostra civiltà [italiana]” [the radiant beacon of our (Italian) civilization]. Yet insofar as Rhodes was (re)presented as “Italian,” the propaganda also reiterates, and in fact, insists upon its difference, portraying Rhodes as “la perla modesta dell’Oriente” [the modest pearl of the Orient].
I suggest that this paradoxical move to simultaneously “italianize” and “orientalize” Rhodes in fascist tourism propaganda served to interpellate a colonial city that ultimately contradicts Mussolini’s aesthetic politics.
Catalan travellers in West-Central Africa: hunting colonial identities
Antonio Luna Garcia (University of Pompeu Fabra Barcelona)
Abstract:
Between the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, several Catalan men experienced the beauty and the risks of Central Africa. Travelling for different purposes around Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, Guinea, or the Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, some of these travellers narrations offer us an interesting perspective of colonial life in Africa and also, they (re)consider the role of Spain and Catalonia in relation of the world. Some of these travellers are relevant members of the high cosmopolitan society of Barcelona of the turn of the century such as scientists, politicians, intellectuals. Their images of Africa reinforced a wide spread point view among Catalan higher society that the Spanish state was doing a poor management of their colonial possessions in Africa. They also brought stories that enhanced the unquestionable image of Catalan businessmen as good colonialist in Africa. Catalan consider themselves Europeans but by their constant disagreement with the Spanish colonial administration they denied their Spanishship in Africa. Geographical scale becomes a key element of identity building among these traveller writers by accepting a particular scaffolding of geographical scales and refusing some other in order to build their own identity. Catalonia is therefore part of the European elite but not part of Spain in relation to colonial Africa.
Communist heritage tourism and Post-Socialist identity formation: the case of Statue Park, Budapest, Hungary
Craig Young (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Abstract:
Communist heritage tourism is a problematic feature of tourism markets in East and Central Europe (ECE). It is a valuable economic resource, attracting tourists who wish to gaze upon the legacy of Communism. However, it sits uneasily with the re-imaging of countries as modern, liberal, Western and ‘European’ which other economic and political strategies demand. Post-socialist transformation is a process suspended between being rooted in the past and tied to an imagined future, and thus how the recent past of ECE is represented, memorialised and consumed is a central feature of post-socialist identity formation. In this context this paper presents an analysis of ‘Statue Park’, an open-air museum in Budapest, Hungary, in which statues from the Communist era are displayed. Heritage and museums are places where senses of the past are produced – the material organisation of museums shapes knowledge through public spectacle. Thus this paper reflects on the creation of meaning in this tourism site by examining the ways in which local politicians and those working in tourism create meaning through representations and everyday work practices, and how tourists (both Hungarians and international) create meaning through consuming ‘Statue Park’.
Free independent travellers? British working holiday makers in Sydney
Nick Clarke (University of Bristol)
Abstract:
In interviews with key players in Sydney’s backpacker industry, a narrative of loss emerged: backpacking in Australia has become too easy; it is no longer a challenge; so people will stop coming. In this paper, I draw on participant observation and in-depth interviews with British working holiday makers (WHMs) in Sydney to confront this fear-full narrative.
I acknowledge the importance of enabling and constraining structures: the backpacker industry (ironically), the nation-state, family and friends, devices such as the guide book and the camera. I report the social and cultured stories of WHMs, their purposive sightseeing, and the formal and institutionalised spaces through which they sometimes move. And I present their strategies for coping with the pressures of travelling away from home: travelling-in-dwelling and dwelling-in-travelling>
But I also point to the many pleasures of travelling away from home, and caution against simultaneously over- and underestimating WHMs. For some, moving to Australia for 12 months remains a challenge. So they return home proud, fulfilled, with strong narratives. And for many, backpacking doesn’t simply translate as passive consumption. I report personal and individual stories of WHMs too; their active use of and creative drift through informal and non-institutionalised spaces.
Broad horizons? Youth travel and global citizenship
Kate Simpson (University of Newcastle Upon Tyne)
Abstract:
“Taking a gap year is a great opportunity for young people to broaden their horizons, making them more mature and responsible citizens” (Jack Straw 2001)
Notions of citizenship, responsibility, and global travel have, at least for Britain’s youth, become increasingly bound together. A relationship that the growing ‘Gap Year industry’ has been quick to manage and promote and, in so doing, has created an education and experiential ‘necessity’ that it is able to meet. The rise, over the last 10 years, of the ‘Gap Year’ has shifted youth travel from a marginal activity into one of mass participation. With this growth has come increased public and institutional attention, producing an established rhetoric and set of expectations, on just what a gap year will entail, and what it will deliver. Central to these expectations is the notion and valorisation of ‘broad horizons’. Drawing on a range of empirical sources, this paper un-packs this concept, arguing that it contains problematic assumptions about both the nature of cross-cultural understandings and the practice of citizenship.
MODULE 4; Policy, perceptions and images of the city: 15.45-18.00
Chair: Andrew Church
Re-imaging the City: the value of sport initiatives
Andrew Smith (Sheffield Hallam University)
Abstract:
Cities are increasingly capitalising on associations with mass or popular cultures, including sport, to compete in a symbolic post-industrial economy. Most contemporary cities will use sport to some extent in their tourism marketing. However, beyond any nominal use, it is apparent that a number of contemporary cities have adopted sport as the central theme of their reimaging efforts. Indeed, several cities have attempted to brand themselves as ‘cities of sport’ to present an attractive image to potential tourists. Alongside the inevitable use of slogans and publicity material, this ‘sport reimaging’ usually involves constructing new urban spaces and staging sporting spectacles. Despite the lack of evidence of, and associated explanations for, image effects, it is widely assumed that these initiatives have the capacity to enhance city images. Using an original theoretical framework, this paper explores the value of sport as a reimaging theme for the contemporary city destination. This assessment is based primarily on evidence regarding the use and effects of sport reimaging in three UK cities – Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield. The findings suggest that, although sport reimaging does exhibit some advantageous qualities, these are largely obviated by problems with this mode of place marketing.
Assessing visitor-resident impact of cultural events in historic cities: lessons from Bruges and Ghent
Jeroen Byron and Veerle Van Rompaey (Catholic University Leuven, Belgium)
Abstract:
Historic cities welcome a considerable number of visitors throughout the year. Moreover, it is an international trend that these cities host cultural events. Still this raises a number of issues, such as the additional visitor-resident impact generated by these types of events. Therefore, this paper focuses on the question whether the local communities’ social carrying capacity could be exceeded due to the social pressure of the event.
We will present two different studies on this issue, carried out at the same time (2002) in two historic cities with a strong vocation as tourist destination. Resident surveys, with a representative sample, were conducted in Bruges (N=1086), the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2002, and in Ghent (N=504), since many years host city of the Ghent Festivities (a ten days, yearly reoccurring inner city summer event). Although the cities and events are unique in terms of scale, morphology, visitor profile, etc., findings show interesting similarities. One of the main results is that perceptions of the visitor-resident impact display a strong spatial differentiation over the city. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that a negative/positive perception of the visitor-resident impact does not imply a respectively negative/positive opinion about spatial expansion of the tourism and event district.
Tourism planning in developing countries: a Third Way?
Peter Burns (University of Brighton)
Abstract:
The left/ right divide in late 20th and early 21st century politics act as a metaphor for the debates surrounding aid-funded tourism master planning in developing countries where the traditional right, framed by the values of neo-liberalism, sees market forces as providing the only alternative. On the other hand, modern world problems have emerged that go far beyond the assumptions upon which the left was founded. This conceptual paper takes Anthony Giddens’ proposals for a Third Way in politics and applies them to tourism planning in the context of the developing world. The Giddens’ framework, which goes beyond mere liberal democracy, reveals that a Third Way approach could go some way towards resolving social issues that have been largely neglected by ‘master planning’ approaches to tourism.
A geographical analysis of one destination experience: tourism expansion in coastal North East Brazil
Nilson Crocia (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Abstract:
The paper aims to describe and provide spatial and temporal interpretation of the fast diffusion of tourism in one destination of coastal North East Brazil (Tibau do Sul/Pipa), 40 miles South off Natal, the capital town of the State of Rio Grande do Norte. During the second half of the 1990s and early 21st century, coastal North East Brazil – and the mentioned chosen section is no exception – was unevenly subjected to tourism private and public investments. A wave of hotel development with units ranging from 5 star international chains to family-run firms spread first over the gate-way entry – the capital towns. Latter in the 1990s, this process poured to some traditional sugar cane and fishing based villages located at the seaborder, like Tibau/Pipa. The outcome of this process was housing removal, fishing decline, property transfers, land use change and increased land price and speculation. The traditional planning local level did not adjust itself properly to the wave’s pace of tourism urbanization. The major state planning action in the coastal North East Brazil since 1996 is a project called Prodetur, a jointly effort of Inter American Development Bank and Brazilian federal and state governments to provide infrastructures for tourism development.
The formation of a tourist area: a case study of Thamel in Kathmandu, Nepal
Izumi Morimoto (Mejiigakuin University, Japan)
Abstract:
This paper examines the process of the formation of Thamel as a tourist area especially for foreigners. Thamel lies in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, the country which has attracted international tourists since the 1950s. Despite their crucial importance for the development of tourism in Nepal, urban tourist areas have not been paid much attention in comparison with the Himalayas in tourism studies of Nepal. Focusing on one of the most important urban tourist areas in Kathmandu, this paper investigates how the activities and business strategies of local hotel entrepreneurs from various different ethnic backgrounds Newar, Gurung and Tibetan for instance have influenced the creation of Thamel as a tourist area. Primarily based on my own observation and interviews with these hoteliers, I discuss that: (1) these entrepreneurs have used their ethno-cultural backgrounds as resources to appeal to foreign tourists and; (2) as a result of such business strategies of hotel entrepreneurs Thamel has come to represent the various cultural images on Nepal created by an international tourist gaze.
French “political landscapes”: geographic education, sports, tourism, and the geopolitics of France’s natural environment
Oleg Kobtzeff (American University of Paris)
Abstract:
In French geopolitics, nature is no less important than in American popular culture.
In 1878, the French schools launched a campaign to improve geographic and ecological knowledge to implement hygienist policies, modernize French agricultural, prepare future soldiers to master the terrain in a future war against Germany, and create markets for transportation and rubber industries and their new advertising support: the illustrated periodicals covering sports.
The 1920s and 1930s, are marked by adventurer-literary stars like Saint-Exupéry and an intense campaign to glamorise colonization in the eyes of a traditionally hostile or indifferent public. But the important years are 1936-1938, when a socialist-communist government succeeds in democratising sports and tourism, boosting both economic activities and environmental awareness. Wartime destruction leaves tourism as France’s main source of revenue and sports as its only symbol of national pride. Government policies explain how popular geography, figures like Capt. Cousteau, or French Olympic champions helped a strategy for creating tourist infrastructures. Unexpectedly, French identity found a catalyst in its “culture of the outdoors” which abandoned nationalism and matured into an international “green citizenship”. Could the French experience serve as a model for new strategies advancing international cooperation for a healthier environment?
Contemporary tourist attractions as complementary offers to heritage sites: a case of Istanbul
Gurhan Aktas (Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey)
Abstract:
Tourism has proved to be an important component of revitalisation programmes of many cities around the world. While new attractions and recreation sites are being built to accelerate tourism development in the cities where the industry has not been among the traditional income-earner sectors, many have been benefiting from heritage sites and cultural activities in attracting both international and domestic visitors.
There is no doubt that the product offers of city destinations should meet at least the basic expectations of potential visitors. However, with particular reference to the primary elements of the supply side of any city, the authorities should ask themselves, to what extent these attractions, services and facilities should be a repetition of other cities’ experiences.
After emphasising the importance of unique attractions in urban destinations, this paper will provide a detailed analysis of the supply side of the tourism industry in Istanbul with special reference to the existing tourist attractions such as museums, mosques, palaces, shopping centres and conference centres and, will discuss the presentation of heritage sites and the newly built contemporary tourist attractions within the same product package. Marketing the city as a tourist destination, tourist zones, the tourism management network, collaboration among different attractions and the tourism policies of local authorities are among the other subjects, which will be examined from the perspective of unique tourist attractions and their importance for the success of Istanbul as a tourist destination.
Competitive and co-operative synergies in European tourism
Constantia Anastasiadou (University of Strathclyde)
Abstract:
This paper is one of the outcomes of a project that examined the evolution of the direct EU involvement in tourism. For the purposes of the study a number of interviews were conducted with high-level figures from the European Parliament, trade associations and the European Commission. Among other areas, the interviewees commented on the possible impacts the next wave of the Enlargement could have on tourism matters. Benefits were acknowledged for the new entrants and the existing member states primarily in terms of tourism flows. In addition, other potential impacts were identified regarding tourism supply, human resource issues and intra-regional competition.
Greater emphasis is given in this paper on the ways the new entrants might influence established competition and co-operative practices within the EU. The conclusion of the study was that at present a number of issues can only be loosely defined and will ultimately be conditioned by the political coalitions fostered in the near future. Nevertheless, this paper will emphasise the main factors that will need to be reviewed when these alliances are formed. For this reason, this study will be of particular interest to policy makers and practitioners, academics and researchers in tourism and other related fields.