Untangling the tourism game: politics, development and local elites in Sighisoara, Romania

Author(s): Claudia N Campeanu 

Abstract

In 1999 the historical center of Sighisoara, Romania, joined seven of the surrounding villages on UNESCO's World Heritage list as a well-preserved example of the Saxon culture in Southeast Transylvania. Tourism development as well as international interest in heritage preservation and the German Saxon culture have already been present here for years, contributing to the local post-socialist transformations.



The heritage status of these sites has enabled and oriented multiple articulations between the state, various international organizations and institutions, the local as well as a globalized symbolic and material economy. Instrumental to these articulations were several of the local institutional and individual actors which have tactically doubled as both businesses and NGOs, business owners and members in the local council, as well as the local economic and political elite.



In this paper, based on eighteen months of fieldwork, I examine and untangle the formal and informal practices and flows linking these separate spheres. I pay particular attention to how tourist development—understood as preparing the site, in many ways, for tourist consumption—has been a mediator for drawing in state and international institutions and their resources, and introducing them in the local economy in ways that produce and reinforce local elites and hierarchies.

 Download PDF of paper

The politics of pollution at Lugu Lake

Author(s): Eileen Walsh 

Abstract

As mobility and consumption link to create the rush of domestic tourists across China, more and more "remote" peoples are called upon to commoditize themselves - both to package themselves and their group identity for tourism consumption as well as to present a packaged space for the "golden hordes" of wealthier tourists descending on their locales. As these locales become better known and widely visited, local, regional, and sometimes higher level players become involved in the decisions and policies that frame the changes and the "preservation" of these areas. In Yongning, northwest Yunnan, the Mosuo at Lugu Lake have attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists, and the rural infrastructure and culture has been obliged to accommodate the weight of these visitors. Romantic tourist notions of the lake include both a land of wise matriarchs and a feminist paradise or a land of frolicking maidens and a place for quick and easy trysts. Meanwhile, Lugu

Lake itself becomes increasingly polluted from the wastes of visitors, and performed Mosuo culture becomes increasingly accommodating to the tourist demands. Within this paper, I take a CCTV expose on pollution and prostitution at the lake as a starting point to explore the strategies of using pollution - environmental, cultural and moral - as means of jockeying for control over the lake area, and how it acts as a trope that locals, as well as county, provincial and national officials use to justify their decisions regarding this space.

 Download PDF of paper

Selling the revolution: the state's involvement in Cuban tourism

Author(s): Thomas Carter 

Abstract

Specifically drawing upon nearly a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Havana, Cuba and the burgeoning tourist industry on the island, this paper examines the role(s) of the post-Soviet Cuban state in structuring, promoting, and restricting the tourist experience. The particular concern here is an exploration of how the state itself acts as the primary agent in transforming specific segments of the Cuban populace into commodities, and how some Cubans resist their commoditization or, at the very least, turn their commoditization into a process for their own rather than the state's benefit. These contested processes reflect broader contests between the individual and the state in a twenty-first century socialist society. In so doing, I suggest that broader questions regarding the distributive use of power in tourist practices requires more incisive and informative ethnographic techniques for the elucidation and understanding of both state sanctioned and unsanctioned tourism-related activities not just in Cuba but throughout the global industry of tourism.

 Download PDF of paper

Destination enlightenment: branding Buddhism and spiritual tourism in Bodhgaya, Bihar

Author(s): David Geary 

Abstract

Within the last fifteen years India has been recast as a rising global super power through a mounting rhetoric of economic reform and increasing liberalization. This transitional narrative and optimistic horizon runs in contrast with the rural poverty, violent caste and class inflections and decaying state structures characteristic of Bihar. Although the state's rich 'civilizational' and spiritual heritage is the homeland of both Buddhism and Jainism, Bihar has remained ill equipped in its capacity to provide adequate infrastructure for the development of international pilgrimage and tourist sites. However, in recent years the site of Buddha's Enlightenment has seen a resurgence of transnational Buddhism and pilgrimage involving the (re)settlement of foreign monastic institutions which forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that extend beyond national borders. These institutions have played a proactive role in recreating the site as a World Buddhist Centre and have also precipitated the rise of new forms of social polarization, exploitation and competition among local stakeholders intertwined with tourism as a source of livelihood.



Drawing on recent ethnographic fieldwork this paper will contextualize these postcolonial and local/global entanglements in contemporary Bodhgaya. In line with this panel session, emphasis will be placed on the recent activities and political agendas of national and state tourism authorities in their efforts to tap into its rich vernacular heritage and spiritual past to boost the economy of Bihar through brand Buddhism. The recent 2002 declaration of the Mahabodhi Temple as a UNESCO World Heritage site will also be discussed in terms of the politics of representation, management and implications of future conservation strategies.

e-paper The significance of dark tourism in the process of tourism development after a long-term political conflict: an issue of Northern Ireland

Author(s): Senija Causevic 
Paul Lynch 

Abstract

Dark tourism is defined as "visitation to places where tragedies or historically noteworthy death has occurred and that continue to impact our lives" Tarlow 2005:48). Inherently, dark tourism conceptualises the consequence of a long-term conflict. This paper addresses the under-studied area of dark tourism in this context, focusing on its relevance in a re-emerging tourism economics. The fieldwork follows a qualitative methodological approach required in order to gather complex information concerning dark tourism issue in a post-conflict society. It involves in-depth interviews with tourism decision makers and tour providers and participant observation of the tours and sites in Northern Ireland.

Dark tourism is evidently a concept which emerges from a developed western society perspective and associated academic discourse. However, this type of tourism ascription rarely enjoys support from the governing bodies, official tourism associations and local communities in the specific society. This research points to polarised understanding of the concept between academic and developed societies on one side and tourism destination stakeholders on the other, who assess the concept as being detrimental in a process of destination image formation after a political conflict.

Excluding a small niche segment, this study finds that dark tourism is not a motivator for visiting the destinations. Yet once tourists are there, most of them would pay a visit to "dark tourism" sites. Therefore, "dark tourism" is not a part of the process of image formation after a conflict. The study suggests "phoenix tourism" as image formation tool instead. However, tourist interest in such sites suggests that "dark tourism" is a real chance for local communities to directly participate in tourism development. As it is managed now, tourists do not stay in the area where those sites are located, as they lack appropriate tourism infrastructure. The study concludes that official tourism bodies need to recognise the existence of dark tourism demand, fully integrate the local community in decision making and provide the area with appropriate tourism infrastructure. It will result in community revitalisation and regeneration. Regarding the academic discourse, the study finds the concept of "phoenix tourism" to be more appropriate in the process of re-imaging destinations after the conflict.





Key words: dark tourism, post conflict society, community development, phoenix tourism, Northern Ireland

 Download PDF of paper