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Accepted Paper:

The village that wasn't there: the narrative appropriation of a tourist destination  
Adam Kaul (Augustana College)

Paper short abstract:

Using ethnographic accounts of a local planning process in Ireland and its implementation, this paper tracks the essentialization and appropriation of a tourist destination. I analyze the process of physical appropriation, but also the narrative appropriation of the definitions of the village, which created a village that wasn’t there before.

Paper long abstract:

Corporate and government appropriations of tourist destinations are often characterized as exploitative of local people who are often displaced, commodified and/or essentialized. But what happens when it is the local people themselves who appropriate their own spaces by transforming a collection of grassroots tourism-related commercial interests into a fully-fledged corporate-led tourism industry in a matter of only a few years? What impact does the appropriation of the physical spaces of a destination have on the narrative about what the place is 'about'? Conversely, how do changing discourses about a place change physical spaces?

In 2003, locals in the village of Doolin in County Clare, Ireland began a months-long process to create a development plan. Since then, more development has occurred than ever before in the history of the village. Using ethnographic accounts of the planning process and its subsequent implementation, this paper tracks the transformation, the essentialization, and the auto-appropriation of a tourist destination. I analyze not only the corporate appropriation of the physical spaces of the village, but more importantly, the narrative appropriation of the definitions of the place, and how contestations over those definitions literally and figuratively created a village that wasn't there before. In other words, I examine a process of discursive 'emplacement' that began long before it culminated in the concrete reality of development.

Panel P38
Appropriating spaces of leisure and creative practice
  Session 1