The making of heritage. Seduction and disenchantment // 2015 // Edited Volume // with Camila del Mármol // (only first and last pages) (original) (raw)
Related papers
G Richards (ed) Cultural tourism: global and local perspectives, 2007
Paragraphs from pages 170 and 171 in lieu of an abstract: Social processes, often conflictive, contribute to the making of heritage products. In these processes, we have to consider a range of groups and social agents who have different political and economic interests and different cultural conceptions, stemming from their distinct positions in social space. Opposed to the discourses that see heritage as something natural and as a product of a consensus, often because of ingenuity as well as dishonest intentions, it is important to stress the dynamic, processual, and conflictive nature of heritage product-making, particularly when it concerns enormously sensitive questions such as identity or memory. That is, heritage-making is inseparable from questions of influence, politics, interests, and authority -in short, power. On the other hand, this conflictive dimension becomes even worse when we move from heritage to heritage tourism, since the commercial exploitation implied by heritage tourism usually arouses resentment. It is not only the fact that commercial exploitalion may be viewed by certain groups as illegitimate when applied to heritage objects of a sacred or inalienable nature, but also the fact that commercial exploitation entails complex political and economic decisions. These issues include lhe kind of public for which the product is designed (which often does not match with the owners of the ascribed meanings), and the fact that the urban speculation that usually accompanies heritage tourism can lead to a rise in the price of land, to processes of use replacement, gentrification, etc. In fact, these latter issues become especially relevant since heritage tourism is mainly a kind of urban tourism and focuses on the historic centers of cities, which become, as a whole, public spaces made heritage (and therefore not only the meanings become problematic, but also spatial practices and uses of space). This is hardly surprising since historic city centers, besides offering a high concentration of heritage referents, usually characterize themselves by their function of centrality and their symbolic contents, particularly their role in representing the city as a whole. Nevertheless. "touristification/heritagization" is still problematic, and it is in these spaces that most of the conflicts regarding heritage and tourism become visible. These conflicts create social discomfort, hence negatively influencing the political success and the economic viability of heritage tourism: consequently, it seems there is a need to develop common criteria for assessment of the complex factors affecting heritage.
Global Heritage: A Reader, 2015
Some argue that the globalization of heritage through tourism has led to a greater respect for (both material and living) culture than previously existed. However, the transformation of heritage properties into destinations and cultural expressions into performances is seldom straightforward. The interface between heritage and tourism is extremely complex. In a tourism setting, heritage can be (mis)used in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes by a variety of stakeholders. This chapter critically analyzes some of the key issues at stake in the multifaceted relation between heritage and tourism, in particular the positive and negative effects in relation to local communities, but also issues such as authenticity, the role of social imaginaries, and the special tourism status of World Heritage properties. Given the limited space, the focus here is on cultural heritage only, although many of the topics discussed equally apply to natural or “mixed” heritage (a UNESCO term denoting properties containing elements of both cultural and natural significance).
Seductions and disenchantments in the making of heritage // 2010 // Conference Proceedings
David Picard and Carina Amaral (eds) Proceedings of the TOCOCU 1st Biannual Conference, 2010
First paragraphs in lieu of an abstract: Tourist sites are not immediately present in social experience. They are the outcome of complex processes that in many cases involve the production of heritage. Recent developments in the study of heritage have outlined the existence of diverse practices and discourses that circulate within and across the territories subject to the tourist gaze. Our aim is to discuss the world of heritage, and its making, through several case studies and from different points of view. Whereas on the one hand we understand the making of heritage as an experience in which diverse power structures and social agencies converge, we also realize its matter leaves plenty of room for divergence. Our purpose is to explore the way in which seduction and disenchantment are involved in the implementation of heritage policies that shape and emerge within the process, as well as the kind of support and dissent the politics of heritage arouses.
The double bind of World Heritage tourism
The significance of World Heritage: Origins, management, consequences, 2013
World heritage sites across the globe are adapting themselves to the homogenizing standards of tourism at the same time as trying to maintain, or even increase, their local particularity. While local and national tourism authorities and tour agencies package and sell so-called 'authentic' cultural landscapes or 'traditional' cultures, what counts as world heritage -be it material or intangible -and the way it is interpreted is increasingly defined and controlled supra-locally. This paper sketches the broad picture of world heritage tourism in the 21st century and illustrates the general trends with examples of on-going ethnographic research on world heritage sites. chapter 8 world heritage and tourism 275
Heritage and tourism: from opposition to coproduction
A Research Agenda for Heritage Tourism, 2020
Why another book on heritage tourism? What is there still to be said after the considerable number of books and articles published on the subject over recent years? The bibliography on the interrelation between tourism and heritage is certainly extensive and multidimensional (
Heritage tourism: The dawn of a new era?
For many years tourism has been one of the principal ways through which the relationship between heritage and globalisation is analytically articulated. Countless studies since the 1970s have considered the arrival of tourism as the precipitator of modernity, of modernisation and of widespread social transformation. There is little doubt this tradition of scholarship will continue to thrive and evolve. By way of a contribution to this research, this chapter sets out to illustrate why current debates in this field need to shift direction, and why frameworks which better reflect the realities of today's global tourism industry need to be developed, most notably ones which can better account for the ongoing rise of non-Western forms of tourism.
C del Mármol, M Morell and J Chalcraft (eds) The making of heritage. Seduction and disenchantment, 2015
If interested in the full text, please contact the author. First pararaphs of last section in lieu of an abstract: It is argued that the World Heritage site nomination is so that Majorcans can gain international recognition of the splendid mountain range they treasure, so they can sustainably develop it while caringly protecting it from the very same development that feeds upon the climate, the heritage, the landscape, the urbanisation of land and the tourist expenditure. The questions I have wished to put forward are concerned with the value forms heritage takes in an island that represents the paradigm of the Spanish brick-and-mortar economy, the role of heritage as a commodity in a society in which tourism is a total prestation: [T]otalities tend to end up inscribed in a series of objects that, insofar as they become media of value, also become objects of desire . . . The object in question might be almost anything . . . Such objects imply within their own structure all those principles of motion that shape the field in which they take on meaning . . . In any case, they become frozen images of those patterns of actions that in practice are called into being by the very fact that people value them; they are . . . mirrors of our own manipulated intentions. (Graeber 2001: 259). The one thing almost all heritage objects share is that, among their self-indulgent outline, their reports are mostly made of preachments on use values. And yet, grounded research reveals that there is not a huge distance to cover from the use values heritage offers in its advertising and legal materials to the exchange values many of its promoters actually seek when appealing to the attraction of visitors. Take, for instance, Crossley and Picard (2014) who initially dismiss what they call the “conventional economic angle” in their critical exploration of value in tourism. Their agenda is haunted by the commodity form tourism values are about in the last instance. However, after a brief escape they fancifully return to a notion of value that holds at once use and exchange: “meanings attached to intangible or atmospheric qualities of a tourist destination [can] be seen as intimately linked to its measurable, economic value” (Crossley and Picard 2014: 1). Because, at the end of the day, why do we seek heritage nominations in heavily touristic-loaded places like the Balearics?
Heritage Tourism and its Representations
At most destinations, the haphazard collection of brochures and related paraphernalia can generally be used to piece together an official sanctioning of what a heritage tourism site ought to 'look like'. Images, in this context, operate as perhaps the most critical element. No doubt incorporated so as to simply portray or mirror 'the real thing' -the physical realities of a site or place -they are simultaneously unsettled from this role by their capacity to also 'speak' of embedded, underlying meanings and tensions. Thus, while the images used are likely to be quite blatant in terms of promotion and marketing, their composition will also have far more subtle things to say about issues of power and exclusion. To put it briefly, this occurs by virtue of the role images play in the construction or creation of meaning; a process that is also inevitably filled with hidden silences and obfuscation. This tells us something significant about the act of signification: any negotiation between what is hidden and what is made manifest is meditated by discourse.
Heritage and cultural tourism: The present and future of the past
Tourism Geographies, 2009
Heritage and culture have long been recognized as core components of tourism. Whether we are dealing with pilgrimages and visits to sacred sites, visits for cultural interaction with ‘other’ host societies, or elaborating on other forms of spiritual activities, tourism has always been an important platform for such meetings and interactions. This report is a summary of the conference ‘Heritage and Cultural Tourism: The Present and Future of the Past’. The conference was held on 17-19 June 2008, at the Brigham Young University, Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, in Jerusalem, Israel. It brought together 75 tourism researchers from fifteen countries, and was organized by the Department of Geography at Brigham Young University (Utah, USA) with the assistance and sponsorship of several partners.