The relationship between heritage and tourism has essentially been analyzed as a “defensive” one. Even if the economic contribution of tourism is considered necessary to insure the conservation of heritage sites and objects, tourism is at the same time suspected to be invasive, destructive and dangerous for the sites’ “authenticity”. This session aims at understanding the processes through which tourism (seen as a system of places, stakeholders/actors, public, practices and imaginaries) becomes a major “heritage producing machine” and identifying what these new production are.

Argument

The relationship between heritage and tourism has essentially been analyzed as a « defensive » one. Even if the economic contribution of tourism is considered necessary to insure the conservation of heritage sites and objects, tourism is at the same time suspected to be invasive, destructive and dangerous for the sites’ “authenticity”. More recent works stress however the fact that tourism is not an a posteriori phenomenon which occurs once the heritagization process is completed, but that it interferes, a priori, with heritagization. Tourism starts to be fully understood not only as a heritage consumption phenomenon, but also as a heritage production factor. This approach reinterprets the heritage-tourism relationship and sheds light not only on the role that tourism has played historically (through the production of major tourism icons in the 19th and 20th c.) but also on the role it plays today in the context of globalization and generalized mobilities.  

Though the dominant discourse of major heritage players such as UNESCO stresses the importance of local communities, heritage production (as a social and cultural phenomenon) does increasingly occur through the action, incentive or prescription of transnational and/or globalised fluxes: transnational (tourism) elites, globalized capital, international NGOs, diasporas, etc. 

This session aims at understanding the processes through which tourism (seen as a system of places, stakeholders/actors, public, practices and imaginaries) becomes a major “heritage producing machine” and identifying what these new production are.

Main themes

The session welcomes both theoretical works and case studies on the following themes (the list is not exhaustive):

•  Transnational elites, tourism and heritage
•  Role of NGOs in producing/diffusing a globalised heritage paradigm
•  Post-colonial heritage and tourism
•  Heritage restoration, recreation, re-enactments and international tourism
•  Imaginaries of heritage and international tourism
•  Social media, international tourism and heritage production
•  Global heritagescapes and tourism
•  Diaspora and the (re)production of heritage 

Submission Procedure

Please submit abstracts for this session (max. 250 words) by

15 February 2016

directly on the abstract submission website:http://www.igc2016.org/dct/page/70047

Make sure you follow the editing guidelines.

Authors will be notified by 16 April 2016. 

http://www.igc2016.org/dct/page/1

Organizing and scientific committee

• Maria Gravari-Barbas (Eirest, Université Paris 1-Sorbonne);
• Linda Boukhris (Eirest, Université Paris 1-Sorbonne);
• Sandra Guinand (visiting scholar, CHNC, Johns Hopkins, Associate Eirest, Université Paris 1-Sorbonne)