Politics of Cultural Tourism

Topic: The Politics of Cultural Tourism: Concepts and Theories

Reading: Light, D. (2007) Dracula Tourism in Romania: Cultural Identity and the State. Annals of Tourism Research, 34(3), 746-765.

1. In what ways do the media impact on images of destinations? Consider fictional literature and other (e.g. newspapers, film, television) in your answer.

Popular culture such as literature, film, music, art and other mass media convey and reflect widely accepted values and symbols. Popular culture reinforces and reflects patterns of communication and consumption for the mass audience. Popular culture’s role in building place imagery in the context of tourism is explained by Urry:

“Places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is an anticipation… Such anticipation is constructed and sustained through a variety of non-tourist practices, such as film, TV, literature, magazines, records and videos, which construct and reinforce that gaze… the viewing of tourist sights often involves different forms of social patterning, with a much greater sensitivity to visual elements of landscape or townscape than is normally found in everyday life. People linger over such a gaze which is then visually objectified or captured through photographs, postcards, films, models and so on. These enable the gaze to be endlessly reproduced and recaptured (1990)”.

2. Choose a destination and consider the tourist gaze as a ‘way of seeing’. Discuss the various ways that a destination can be viewed in different ways by different orientations of the gaze (e.g. scientific, romantic, historical, etc.).

• Tourists seeing two people kissing in France captures the gaze of “romantic Paris”

• Tourists seeing a small village in England captures the gaze of “the real old England”

• Tourists visiting Alnwick Castle in the UK captures the gaze of “the magic of Harry Potter”

Places are chosen to be ‘gazed’ upon because there is anticipation through daydreaming and fantasy. The tourist gaze is...