Critical Considerations
University of Granada
Trading Paradise for Palestine: Tourism and Media in the West Bank View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexis Whitacre
The perennial obsession with dark tourism sites, like concentration camps or battlefields, has evolved to include not only these sites of temporally distant violence but also those of visible violence acting upon living bodies. This new trend towards conflict tourism compels tourists to seek modern, tangible human suffering. In the West Bank, conflict tourism is aided by the proliferation of new media and has become a phenomenon used by Palestinians to invite foreign tourists to actively produce media that constructs or relays particular arguments about the nature of the occupation. Drawing from media studies and tourism studies, this paper analyzes how foreign tourists to refugee camps use social media to engage with the traumascape of the refugee camp and represent the Palestine-Israel conflict. In what ways are tourists used to receive, produce, or disseminate narratives about military occupation, or national identity in conflict zones? How does the widespread availability of digital media that can be produced by tourists themselves change the way that tourism functions as a form of political communication? By asking whether the variable use of media in the camp by Palestinians and tourists is exploitation or advocacy, the research asks whether new forms of media activity by tourists constitute activism or normalization of the conflict. Noting how tourists and their media production help shape representation and perceptions of the Palestinian/Israeli situation contributes to the understanding of this complex and enduring conflict, as well as show the serious effects of tourism and new media on local Palestinian communities.
Rural Tourism and the Camino: The Case of Foncebadón, Spain View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mc Kew Devitt
Foncebadón, a small town located in the northwest corner of the autonomous region of Castile-León, serves as an example of one possible solution to the demographic crisis in Spain, characterized by abandoned towns throughout its rural regions. I examine what factors contributed to the survival of the town, including the redefining of traditionally Catholic practices, and the legacies of hospitality that form part of its history. Finally, I consider the role that rural tourism (RT) plays in Spain’s tourist industry and what examples may exist of the country’s reaching the third stage of maturity in the RT industry. Thirty years ago, I walked through Foncebadón on my way to Santiago and witnessed first-hand an abandoned town. Twenty years later I led a group of university students through the same town and saw the transformation that had occurred: Foncebadón now offered both food, in a tavern specializing in medieval cuisine, and several different options for lodging, including pilgrim refugios and small inns. This change is due in no small part to the drastic increase of pilgrims on the Camino over that time, the 1990’s to the 2010’s, from only a few thousand to over 200,000 annually. After considering the reasons for the increase in participation in the Camino, I answer the following: How does the significant number of tourists impact local communities and what conflicts arise between these localities and their regional governments? What role will RT play in the future of tourism in Spain, both on and off the Camino?
Affective Assemblages, Tourism and the (Re)production of Heritage: The Transformative Conservation of Yazd’s Karkhaneh View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Somaye Seddighikhavidak, Jaume Guia, Tazim Jamal
This research examines the cultural heritage of weaving and textile manufacturing in karkhanehs (workspaces in home domiciles) in Yazd, Iran, as the result of complex transformations over time: first when enmeshed in industrialization and more recently through tourism development. The notion of affective assemblages, as derived from Deleuze, is then explored to re-interpret heritage conservation as a transformative practice and heritage as the product of change. These transformations are examined through the words of ordinary people, rather than planners and policymakers; architectural methods; and the analysis of other secondary data with which the deep interconnectedness between humans, tangible objects, and all types of intangible practices (e.g. rituals, practices, processes) is examined. The changing role of historical textile practices is described as shifts occur from the home domicile of karkhaneh to the adjacent neighborhoods (kargah) and then to modern factories. Similarly, the advent of tourism produces an alteration of the historic buildings to accommodate new services, and also fosters gentrification. Heritage is thus re-produced according to tourism’s own needs, and weaving becomes a gendered, performative, and vibrantly material heritage product, now entangled in a network of re-created built heritage (vernacular karkhaneh architecture), people (weavers, residents, UNESCO, tourists) and historic cultural practices and related materials (e.g., artisanal looms, dyes, silk, etc.). New ‘transformative’ conservation practices are thus introduced for the vernacular architecture which involve the vibrant materiality of the karkhanehs, looms, ancestral dyeing and weaving practices, heritage hotels, and other touristic spaces.
