Reflections and Representations
Asynchronous Session
Featured The End of Tourism and the Limits to Sustainability: Courting New Worlds and Intercultural Imaginaries through Dialogue and Dissent View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chris Christou
The COVID-19 pandemic proved the tourism industry to be a house of cards, and yet it has returned with a vengeance. Concealed in each argument between tourism’s sustainable visions and degrowth dialogues is the refusal to question the industry’s unconsidered origins, consequences, and existence. The critiques of tourism, brought together prove there is no sustainable path forward for the industry, locally or globally. Surely, a better world is possible, but without a collective imagination that roots itself in post-capitalist, post-industrialist possibilities, the interculturality and responsibility so often sought after is dead on arrival. Our solutions and the epistemologies that breed them are deeply impoverished by a lack of imagination. Ideology holds the possibility for new worlds hostage. Our work is not simply to debate the equity and equanimity of the matter, but to discover how our own ideologies are imaginaries that subvert imagination. If, at its core, the world’s biggest industry is unsustainable, then arguing for sustainability or degrowth is, fundamentally, no more sustainable. For social movements to succeed in the face of overtourism invasions and cultural extractivism, our modus operandi must proceed first and foremost from the poverty that sprung them. Then and only then can we begin to conjure ways of being and belonging together, ways of hosting the other deeply informed by what it means to be a guest in our own homes and neighbourhoods.
Atlantic City - the Past Is Prologue: The "Media and Tourism Renaissance" Attempt of the 2010s View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sheyla Moroni
The subject of this research is how TV series and movies can influence the tourism industry and the identity proposed by tourist places. An iconic city in the industry, Atlantic City, is analyzed. This case study focuses on the presumed or actual impacts on the tourism industry of the New Jersey City through the appeal of the TV series "Boardwalk Empire" (2010-2014) and the movie "American Hustle" (2013). The two cultural products, not filmed in A. C. but recounting it, evoke the 1920s and 1970s. These authorial narratives "piloted" and "accompanied" the attempt to bring a new tourism to a city that was partially "reborn" in the 1990s and 2000s, but in the 2000s again entered a major crisis due to natural, economic and financial disasters. Both the city and tourists have come to terms with the image it would like to renew, while the concentration of disadvantaged and unemployed citizens increases. Atlantic City appears to be suspended between being the playground of the United States and the "historically intriguing" embodiment of some dark and fascinating moments in U.S. history; it relied ten years ago on the major film and television majors to try to reconstruct one that was also felt by the public/tourists as attractive-a challenge not entirely met. The primary sources on which the topic is studied include: local and national periodicals (years 2000-2010); films (not only those mentioned); excerpts from the annual "Atlantic City: Past, Present and Future" conferences; and excerpts from City Council minutes.
The Scope of Online Experiences in Online Tourism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lara Mertens
The ethnographic research explores the dynamics of Airbnb Online Experiences, a form of experiential online tourism precipitated by COVID-19 and facilitated by Zoom. Through video calling technology, online experiences feature synchronous and omnidirectional viewing of participants, hosts, and their at-home surroundings, signaling a shift in host/guest dynamics and expanding the scope of tourism experiences. I present the ethnography through a framework I suggest and term, scope, to discuss what is accessibly viewable in online experiences, the context it provides, and the unseen it makes apparent. Scope conceptually refers to the means and the extent of viewing and is accompanied by a paradox: scope provides enlightening, far-reaching, and magnified vision while simultaneously elucidating a curious blindness to that which exists outside of it. Video calling technology as a scopic technology in the case of online experiences enables expanded visuality (exposure to touristic destinations one is not physically located in and simultaneous access into the intimate spaces of both host and guests) while also making apparent the blind elements of the touristic experience’s digital nature. It does so by revealing only that which is visible within the screen’s frames, leaving that which is left unseen, unknown, and unexplored to the imagination. By framing online experiences through an anthropological lens in the context of emergent online tourism developments, the research expands current knowledge of online tourism activities while contributing to existing scholarship that reconfigures conventional tourism paradigms based in rigid dichotomies (corporeal/noncorporeal, uni/bidirectional host/guest gazing, everyday/extraordinary, virtual/actual, etc.).
Ageless Tourism: The Case for Intergenerational Tourism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Gonçalves
Intergenerational tourism is a growing, though underexplored and underexamined travel trend involving tourism and leisure experiences where different age groups participate and interact with one another. This type of tourism has been gaining momentum due to changing demographics, with ageing societies and different generations coexisting together, together with a desire for more enriching travel experiences throughout the lifecycle. Through analysis of specific examples where tourism and intergenerationality are brought into play, this paper examines the motivations, benefits, and challenges associated with intergenerational tourism. Motivations often stem from a desire to strengthen family bonds, create lasting memories, and expose generations to diverse cultures and environments. Additionally, this paper advocates that intergenerational tourism can produce a variety of social and cultural benefits, both for tourists and host communities. By contesting traditional forms of tourism, it can foster more memorable and meaningful connections, shared experiences, and mutual understanding among people of all ages, while engendering more sustainable tourism practices for destinations. Yet, intergenerational tourism is not without its challenges which include, for instance, the need to cater for diverse interests and activity levels, dealing with generational conflicts, and ensuring the integration of all participants. In a nutshell, intergenerational tourism can offer unique opportunities for social cohesion, cultural exchange, and personal exchange and growth that must be considered by tourism providers and policymakers, thus allowing for new approaches, concepts, and frameworks to tourism and leisure throughout the lifecycle.
