Tourism in a nature-based destination: the human versus the ecological perspectives

In the tourism studies literature, wilderness has been addressed from two perspectives. From the first, human, perspective wilderness is a social, subjective construction that exists only in the mind of its users. From the second, ecological, perspective it is a material, objective reality. Here, we compare these two perspectives based on data collected in one of Poland's most popular nature-based destinations, The Great Masurian Lakes region, and develop a methodological framework which would operationalise this comparison and make it measurable. The research approach combined a survey of tourists and mapping of natural features. The data was analysed, first, to verify whether stated preferences regarding nature and the natural features surrounding tourist accommodation were coherent; this resulted in the construction of a Coherence Index (CI). Second, we analysed how stated preferences with respect to nature were linked to outdoor recreational activities; this was measured by a Nature Cruciality Index (NCI). Finally, both indexes were mapped and their spatial distributions were analysed. The findings showed that the subjective, social construction of wilderness does not always correspond to objective reality. Although tourists declared natural environment to be very important to them, in some cases the analysis found a lack of consistency between expressed preferences and the natural features found around accommodation. The phenomenon was mainly found in towns, where tourists were most nature-indifferent. Moreover, they were not interested in activities with high NCI. In some cases, however, the two perspectives were coherent, especially among nature-oriented tourists who stayed near lakes and those who stayed in villages (who were most conscious of their choices). Tourists who stayed near lakes undertook the most nature-crucial activities. These findings can be used to enhance local planning, management and marketing strategies for nature tourism.     

Translating the Word: Dialogism and Debate in Two Gikuyu Dictionaries

Much of the literature on missionaries and translation in colonial Africa has tended to view missionary or colonial authored texts (Bibles, dictionaries, and grammars in particular) as instruments through which foreign ways of thinking were imposed upon unsuspecting Africans. In a detailed comparison of two Gikuyu dictionaries—one authored by an Anglican missionary and the other by a Presbyterian missionary some ten years later—this article locates significant contradictions in meanings, particularly in words associated with religion and authority. By situating these contradictions within the social history of early twentieth-century Gikuyuland, the author is able to demonstrate that these contradictions are not "mistakes"; rather, such inconsistencies evidence the complex ontological and political debates provoked out of early evangelistic activity. For the author, who draws theoretical insight from Homi Bhabha and M. M. Bakhtin, mission texts like dictionaries are fundamentally dialogical, the product of sustained and contentious conversations between missionaries and African interlocutors. Thus, they not only shaped Gikuyu life, as earlier scholarship contended, but were profoundly shaped bycontemporary Gikuyu debates over religion, power, and authority.     

TV News Hyper-coverage and the Representation of Place: Observations on the O.J. Simpson Case

From June 1994 until October 1995, the television news industry constructed and sustained a window of saturating hyper-coverage surrounding the O.J. Simpson double-murder case. Coverage of the Simpson case provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the contemporary media practice of hyper-coverage and its possible effects on the frequency and manner in which places are reported and hence represented in television news broadcasts. Drawing from published critiques and statistics of the Simpson coverage and a preliminary content analysis of ABC World News Tonight broadcasts, this theoretical paper offers three observations: (1) the Simpson hyper-coverage altered the frequency, prominence, and metaphorical context of news about Los Angeles; (2) the Simpson hyper-coverage reduced the frequency of non-Los Angeles domestic news coverage and eclipsed the prominence of international news locations; and (3) the Simpson hyper-coverage led to the Simpsonization of domestic news (i.e. television journalists using the events in Los Angeles as a central metaphor around which to contextualize the presentation of other national news events and locations). Exploration into the Simpson media event provides insight into contemporary television journalistic conventions and how these news organization practices shape the representation of places in American popular culture.     

The Rohingya crisis

Myanmar's recent ethnic cleansing of its Rohingya people, in which more than 600,000 people have been forced into Bangladesh, has shocked the world. This guest editorial considers some potential root causes driving the violence, principally the combination of economic precarity felt by average Burmese people, affective and participatory deficits within Burma's current democratic experience, ethno‐nationalist mobilizations, and Islamophobia. These factors are combining to produce the Rohingya not only as foreign ‐ not a part of the fabric of the Myanmar nation ‐ but as a threat to that nation worthy of expulsion.     

“Partitioning the Sensible” at Park 51: Rancière,Islamophobia, and Common Politics

Abstract: This paper uses Jacques Rancière's conception of the partition of the sensible to interrogate the aesthetic regimes and spatial coordinates that animated public debate about Park 51—the Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Understanding conflicts over mosques as potential struggles over the conditions of membership in a community, I suggest that many of the arguments in favor of Park 51 reinforced a partition of the sensible in which Islamophobia could resonate. At stake in these debates—which turned on different understandings of the distance that separated the proposed center from the WTC site—is the relationship between American Muslims and the narratives of trauma constructed around the September 11th attacks. I conclude by exploring the projects proposed by Park 51 organizers as potential sites of everyday micropolitics that could subtly “jolt” existing orders in the interest of reconfiguring the “common sense” of a community.