Talking to others: analysing tourists’ communications on cultural heritage experiences

In the area of cultural heritage, tourists’ experiences emphasise not only the moment and its personal nature but also socio-cultural traits. These experiences when expressed (social communications) are an important gateway to knowledge about tourists’ sense-making processes. This paper reports on the mediation between tourists and heritage sites via comments on a digital platform (TripAdvisor) about two Spanish tourist destinations with opposing characteristics and four heritage sites, which are analysed. The methodology used seeks to transcend the individual and anecdotal aspects of tourists’ comments. Indeed, the results obtained show the relevance of the humanisation and the discursive weight of heritage contexts in emotional/personal stories. Tendencies observed in non-regulated contexts confirm the role of a complex negotiation at cultural heritage sites and highlight the need to explore possible exchanges of sense in tourists’ encounters with such sites.     

How do western democracies cope with the challenge of societal diversity?

In the modern era, the grand forces of modernism, liberalism and nationalism have opposed and minimized societal diversity in Western states. The Civil Rights Movement in the USA and the flow of millions of unassimilable immigrants, mostly Muslims, to Europe opened Western societies to cultural diversity. But liberal multiculturalism in the West consists mainly of endorsement of subcultures, non‐discrimination and inclusion. It falls short of instituting consociational components like cultural autonomy and power‐sharing. Fear and unease in the West increasingly give priority to majority over minority rights. While all Western democracies object to societal diversity, they differ in the way they handle it: liberal democracies deny it, consociational democracies institutionalize it and ethnic democracies partially allow and partially subordinate it. These three different strategies are evident in the way representative cases of Western democracies, namely the USA, Switzerland and Estonia, respectively, cope with societal diversity.     

Establishing a ‘Cultural Base’? The Creation of the Fulbright Program in Portugal

This paper deals with the cultural and educational relations between the United States and Portugal during the Cold War. It is built upon the premise that cultural policies and cultural relations between states are a fundamental part of international relations. History of International Relations, therefore, should overcome an analysis based only upon political and diplomatic dimensions to address what can also be referred to as ‘cultural diplomacy’. The Cold War period, because of its historical features, is particularly relevant to the study of processes of cultural diplomacy and some authors even consider it as the ‘golden age’ of cultural diplomacy.¹1. William Glade, ‘Issues in the Genesis and Organization of Cultural Diplomacy: A Brief Critical History’ in The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society (Winter 2010), vol. 39, issue 4, 242. For cultural diplomacy during the Cold War see Jessica Gienow-Hecht, ‘Culture and the Cold War in Europe’ in Leffler, Melvyn & Westad, Odd Arne, The Cambridge History of the Cold War Vol. i, (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 398–419; Akira Iriye, ‘Culture and International History’ in Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (ed), Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Richard T. Arndt, The First Resort Of Kings: American Cultural Diplomacy In The Twentieth Century (Virgínia: Potomac Books, 2005).View all notes