Understanding self and others: new touristic, domestic, international practices and touristic promotion of the heritage in East Africa
Comprendre soi-même et l’autre : nouvelles pratiques touristiques, domestiques et internationales, nouvelles valorisations patrimoniales et touristiques en Afrique de l’Est
Published on Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Abstract
This symposium will gather researchers and professional actors of the tourism with different events (symposium, exposition, public conference, field day) around the theme of the new practices and forms of touristic and patrimonial promotion in East Africa. The touristic studies are fast growing in the main universities in East Africa with the emergence of new forms of tourism. Those countries are in their national construction and decentralization phase that vivify feeling of national belonging with territorial, regional or even ethnic resilience. Therefore the developing tourism of the natural and cultural heritage becomes a serious challenge for national and regional public policies.
Announcement
Symposium 15th- 18th July 2014, Nairobi, KENYA
Argument
In the East African Community’s countries, with some regional and national variants, one can notice new touristic practices with the rise of a domestic tourism and the diversification of the international touristic demand beyond or in complement of the dominant modes and models.
These new practices follow, reproduce, seize the dominant modes (destinations and consumptions: natural reserves, seaside resort, sites...) while modifying them and experimenting new paths (cultural, identity, memory, heritage tourism).
The new touristic policies of the States in the EAC try to take into account this new order, to respond to those expectations with patrimonial, museographic or eco touristic offers.
Those new usages, with different effects (economic repercussions and impacts on the sites) highlight new publics, new customers: middle class, students, international tourists who spread new models, new consumptions (excursionist, associative, participative, memory based) but also new processes (native, equitable tourism).
Those new dimensions start to be analyzed: the rise of seaside destinations (invention of a specifically African seaside culture since 15 years), the frequentation of parks (a rising number of parks mainly visited by tourists and Kenyan students), the success of regional cultural sites of memory, commemorative museographic projects (from Rwandan genocide to the Mau Mau sites, sacred forests etc.)Those new dimensions deserve to be discussed, evaluated put into perspectives to the extent that they constitute or will constitute a touristic resource and also an economic one, in the national and regional level.
The poorly study angle is the cultural and political resonance of these new practices: self-awareness and awareness of the others and their impacts in the collective identities construction (local, regional, national, universal) but also their perversions (folklorisation, increasing tension over identity) and finally the choices in terms of promotion (museography, ecotourism) deserve to be addressed.
In the countries of the East African Community, those new touristic practices question our understanding of the societies. The affirmation of the urban middle class leads to the establishment of a touristic transition. The emergent middle class (mainly in Kenya, country in advance compared to the others of the community) are the main actors of the rise of a domestic tourism. This “leisure class” has revenues, time that they can devote in priority to safari, secondly to seaside activities and finally to the visit of the sites of memory of the different ethnic groups.
This new phenomenon (especially in Kenya) lies in the rising frequentation of heritage sites by this middle class. This interior tourism is based mainly on roots tourism that is the result of a fast metropolisation of the country, of the urban implantation of the population, and this trigger a deep identity questioning within this middle class. The national museums of Kenya can be taken as an example. Indeed they have done an important inventory of real property, transferable, natural and landscape heritage of the country and they have required the ranking of the main sites in the title of national monuments. The institutions and the authorities of these five countries have understood that the culture, the heritage are vector of development in two levels: in one hand the touristic and economic opportunities and on the other hand the self-esteem and the consideration of the others thanks to the recognition in terms of identity that is generated.
All the minorities claim their part of the past and a new recognition. This interior tourism of memory wanted or denied according to the human groups will it be a way to promote understanding between ethnic groups, a way to provoke pride, unity, construction of national culture? What will be the role of the domestic tourism in the national construction of the states in the EAC, in a way will we go beyond the ethnicity and see more national even regional identity?
The symposium will be organized around 4 themes:
Theme 1: Tourism coming from local communities: in reference to different concepts: pro poor tourism community based tourism, ecotourism
Theme 2: cultural, domestic tourism and tourism of memory and identity and construction national unity of the states of the East African States.
Theme 3: Tourism of domestic parks, international with the new trends: conservancies parks, interactive landscape
Theme 4: The system of the 6S for the international tourists. Emergence, in parallel, in the African population of a seaside culture associated with a safari tourism
This thematic approach by the types of sites of uses and of consumption ,addressed for the five countries will deal with practices and perceptions, their promotion and their economic, patrimonial and ecological (natural and cultural diversities ) and finally their political and cultural resonance. These new challenges will be analyzed in a prospective away in the light of the innovations in progress, of the public projects and policies in the EAC and the experience of animation, mediation, and marketing but also in a comparative way by using the experiences and trajectories in the surrounding countries.
Provisional planning
- Inaugural seminar and vernissage of the exposition (national Museums of Kenya)
- Symposium in Kenya
- Field day in Kit Mikayi with professionals under the supervision of the tourism department of the University of Moi
- Public conferences to present the collective books in the partner universities (University of Maasai Mara (Narok), Kenyatta University (Campus of Mombasa), Moi University (Eldoret), Alliance Française de Nairobi.)
Submission guidelines
Proposed papers and abstracts (Word 12, title, name, first name, occupation, country, e-mail address, 6000 words maximum, and 5 keywords) should be sent in French or in English
before 27 February 2014
to tourism.symposium@ifra-nairobi.net
Organizing Committee
IFRA, National Museums of Kenya
Scientific Committee
- Jean Pierre AUGUSTIN, Université Bordeaux 3 (France)
- Christine CABASSET, Centre Asie du Sud Est, UMR 8170 (France)
- Bernard CALAS, Université Bordeaux 3 (France)
- Christiane GARNERO Morena, UNESCO (France)
- Damiannah KIETI, Moi University (Kenya)
- Asborn MISSIKO, Mimathi University of Technology (Kenya)
- Jean RIEUCAU, Université Lumière Lyon 2 (France)
- Simon SENO,School of Tourism, Masai Mara University (Kenya)
- Christian THIBON, IFRA Nairobi (Kenya)
- Philippe VOISENET,cabinet DGCA Tourisme Lyon (France)
Subjects
Places
- Nairobi, Kenya
Date(s)
- Thursday, February 27, 2014
Keywords
- tourisme, patrimoine, Afrique de l'Est, identité, construction nationale et régionale, classe moyenne
Contact(s)
- Salimata Sow
courriel : tourism [dot] symposium [at] ifra-nairobi [dot] net
Reference Urls
Information source
- Salimata Sow
courriel : tourism [dot] symposium [at] ifra-nairobi [dot] net
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Understanding self and others: new touristic, domestic, international practices and touristic promotion of the heritage in East Africa », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, December 17, 2013, https://doi.org/10.58079/oyb
