Liminality and difficult heritage in tourism

Abstract

Difficult heritage, rooted in difficult knowledge, is not simply difficult because of traumatic content but also because of the responses it can provoke. These responses can include confusion, anxiety, and empathy for the fear and suffering of others. As such, difficult heritage sites can be problematic in tourism, which is typically characterized by expectations of fun and relaxation. Scholars recognize that the tourist experience is liminal in that tourists occupy a state of limbo outside of their normal places and lives. This article argues that difficult heritage can be a liminal experience within tourism by critically analysing tourist reviews of Bonaire’s slave huts. The Caribbean island of Bonaire attracts cruise tourists and tourists interested in water sports like snorkelling and diving. Yet, these tourists may visit the slave hut sites as a secondary activity during their stay on the island. TripAdvisor reviewers describe feelings of being both out of time and out of place at the slave huts as they imagine the conditions the enslaved would have experienced, and they describe emotional responses ranging from sadness to revulsion. Additionally, reviewers reflect on their visit to the slave huts after ‘resuming’ their vacation, particularly focusing on the contrast between their experiences. The approach of liminality has the potential to better understand tourists’ experiences of difficult heritage.     

Anthropology in the middle east

Canfield, Robert L., ed. Turko‐Persia in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xiv + 256 pp. including references and index. $54.50 cloth.

Caton, Steven C. "Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemen Tribe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. xv + 351 pp. including notes, appendices, bibliography, and index. $34.95.

Khoury, Philip S. and Joseph Kostiner, eds. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990 xv + 351 pp. including collected references and index. $45.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.     

Mobility and modernity in Luang Prabang,Laos: re-thinking heritage and tourism

Numerous studies of tourism in Luang Prabang World Heritage site in Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic are critical of the perceived impacts on heritage values of the city. Criticisms relate to the incursion of new buildings into the historic core, the loss of older dwellings, increases in foreigners renting and restoring properties as guest houses and restaurants and the movement of locals out of the historic core. Other criticisms relate to the effects on community support for the monastic communities that create the sacred and ritual geography of the city, the loss of community diversity within the World Heritage boundaries and increasing uniformity as the development of tourism continues apace. While our research does not challenge these observations it raises questions about the type of analyses and conclusions reached. Too often ‘heritage’, ‘tourism’ and ‘community’ are considered self-evident and bounded entities, with tourism something faintly alien that causes disruption to the urban fabric of Luang Prabang and, consequently, to the values for which it was inscribed. We propose a different way of conceptualising the relationship between heritage, community and tourism by examining the interaction between global, regional and local mobilities in the context of globalisation and under the aegis of modernity.     

Framing the past: time,space and the politics of heritage tourism in Ireland

Recent work has emphasised that heritage tourism is not just a set of commercial transactions, but the ideological framing of history and identity. While some commentators celebrate heritage as a complementary or alternative way of mediating the past to popular audiences, others regard it as little more than bogus history. Through an examination of a planning strategy devised by Bord Fáilte, the state's tourism board, this paper addresses the relationship between time and space in the development of heritage attractions in Ireland, and emphasises the mechanisms through which space is privileged over time in a manner that loses sight of the complexities of localised historical processes. This argument is illustrated through the example of an open-air museum which focuses on the display of material culture independent of the historical contingencies of its creation. By contrast, an examination of a stately home, opened to the public by an independent trust, demonstrates how the past can be provocatively explored to a mass audience by being anchored in local historical geography and eschewing an approach that reifies local events into national processes.     

Cultural tourism between local and transnational identities: Jewish heritage in Syracuse,Italy

Abstract

This article focuses on the management of heritage and cultural tourism related to the complex identity of minority groups, where different components tend to produce different visions and practices. It highlights the impacts of globalized transnational networks and influences on political, cultural and religious identities and affiliations over long distances. In fact, diverse views, approaches, perceptions and representations may lead to disagreement and conflicts even within apparently compact ethnic or religious communities. The issues related to dissonant heritage management strategies and the related authorized heritage discourse, in terms of unbalanced power relations and diverging narratives, are considered. The theme of Jewish heritage tourism (J.H.T) is analysed, with a focus on the case of Syracuse, Italy. This historically cosmopolitan and multicultural city specializes in cultural tourism and tends to develop niche products, including J.H.T, in order to strengthen and diversify its international cultural destination status. Different components of the Jewish world, as well as non-Jewish stakeholders, practice different approaches to heritage tourism. Actors, discourses and reasons behind Jewish culture management and promotion will be highlighted and the reactions, perceptions and suggestions by the various stakeholders and groups involved will be portrayed, with the aim of contributing to the discussion about the complexity of niche heritage tourism processes in a multi-ethnic site.     

An Unwanted Past: contemporary tourism and the heritage of communism in Romania

This paper considers how the legacy of communism and revolution has become the focus of interest among Western tourists in post-communist Bucharest. It argues that 'communist heritage' tourism - the consumption of key sights and sites associated with the Ceausescu regime and its overthrow - has emerged as a particular form of cultural or heritage tourism for special interest tourists. However, this is a heritage which is defined and constructed entirely outside Romania. Within Romania itself there is understandably little desire to remember the period of communist rule, and the legacy of this period is powerfully dissonant with the country's post-communist aspirations. Consequently, as a consideration of two case studies illustrates, there is no concern to interpret the legacy of communism for tourists; instead there is an attempt to deny or airbrush out this period of the country's history.     

A case of local rejection of a heritage tourism policy: tourism and dynamics of change in Abondance,French Alps

Despite the opportunities offered by developing and enhancing cultural heritage in the tourism sector, this article, based on a case study of a little town in the French Alps, shows that public policy of this type may also be subject to criticism and dispute. In the town of Abondance, a small ski resort being converted to cultural tourism site built around heritage, the demonstration observed involved both a desire to keep the skiing and a questioning of the political process, but also a rejection of the alternative solution involving the development of the cultural heritage of the Gothic Court of Savoy. During the qualitative survey of the social reactions, three types of arguments have been raised. (1) As summarised by one of the local leaders ‘the people do not believe in it’. Indeed, local shopkeepers are sceptical that cultural tourism will draw numerous visitors, and fear that is not economically viable. (2) In contrast to the ski resort, heritage tourism is only attached to the imagination of old age, immobility and even death, as if seniority of places necessarily corresponds to seniority of public and images. (3) For residents of the town, setting up a localised visit site has disadvantages because of the turnover of touristic traffic to which this type of tourism is exposed.     

Heritage Recycled: migration and tourism as factors in the heritage of vernacular settlements

Since the 1980s Greece has been the destination of many Albanian migrants in search of work and better living conditions. The research on which this study is based examines the case of Santorini, a small Greek island which relies heavily on tourism and is currently in the front line of migration. This paper focuses on the relationship between migrants and space, by considering the interaction between migration, tourism and heritage. Heritage brings tourism flows, tourism generates migration through the demand for labour which cannot be met by locals, and migration helps to keep heritage alive because migrants occupy the old deserted settlements and also provide the means for the revitalisation of traditional ways of production. Through research in three different locations on the island, it is suggested that, contrary to the common public perception that migrants operate in a destructive way towards the spatial, social and economic environments, they actually contribute to their revitalisation.     

Branded cities: outdoor advertising,urban governance,and the outdoor media landscape

Abstract: In many cities both rich and poor, new forms of outdoor advertising are emerging with potentially significant implications for the nature of the urban public realm. Public–private partnerships for advertising‐funded provision of basic items of urban infrastructure such as bus shelters, street signs and public telephones have grown as a result of structural changes in the advertising industry and shifts towards neoliberal forms of urban governance. This article critically interrogates the implications of these new outdoor advertising arrangements for the urban public realm, and argues that they have potentially harmful consequences for the accessibility and diversity of the outdoor media landscape. It then proposes three strategies for the democratisation of that landscape. These strategies are not premised on an outright rejection of outdoor advertising, but rather seek to contest the monopolistic capture of outdoor media by public–private partnerships involving urban authorities and outdoor advertising companies.     

Networked practices of intangible urban heritage: the changing public role of Dutch heritage professionals

This study examines the changing roles of heritage professionals by focusing on the participatory practices of intangible urban heritage. Developments towards democratisation in the heritage sector led to a growing expectation that heritage professionals would work with local publics. This democratisation is manifested in (1) the use of digital media for grassroots heritage practices, (2) the broader scope of what is defined as heritage, and (3) a focus on communities in UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Heritage professionals are thus challenged to develop inclusive heritage practices, particularly in cities, which are characterised by a dynamic nature and cultural diversity. In this article, I analyse how urban heritage organisations and professionals have responded to these developments. Drawing on interviews and a qualitative content analysis of these organisations’ policy documents, I examine the ways in which heritage professionals reconsider their public role through what I define as networked practices of intangible heritage. This concept captures the networked structure in which heritage professionals increasingly work, and also demonstrates how heritage is given meaning through public practices that take place in both the physical and virtual realms of contemporary cities.