TOCOCU 2012 - 2nd Biannual Conference on Touristic Resource, Ideological Instrument

The Value of the Image: Touristic Resource, Ideological Instrument
TOCOCU 2nd Biannual Conference
REGIMES OF VALUE IN TOURISM: CONCEPTS, POLITICS, PRACTICES
SION, Switzerland, 2-4 JULY 2012-01-25
Convenors:
FABIOLA MANCINELLI (Universitat de Barcelona)
SAIDA PALOU (Universitat de Girona)
SHORT ABSTRACT: This panel aims to explore the different values, strategies and impacts that lie behind the creation of tourist destination images, taking into account their social and political implications. We encourage a confrontation among empirical case studies, from all domains of social sciences, that can open a debate about the behaviour of induced images, either from a historical or contemporary perspective, and both from an institutional point of view or through the impacts on local populations.
LONG ABSTRACT: Tourism is a system of production, distribution and consumption of images. Images are important all along the tourist’s experience ? as expectations, dreams and impressions in the consumer’s mind, as filters which shape his actual experience and as tangible and intangible memories of the journey. The concept of image thus combine a variety of shifting meanings that can be analyzed from multiple perspectives, as the image is an element of value both in the subjective tourist experience and in the process of creation of destinations.
Among other things, images are not only important instruments for defining and promoting the touristic resources of a territory, but also elements of power in themselves. Destination images combine together different elements ? visual, emotional and psychological - which create and articulate a discourse and a form of representation of the identity of people and places they represent. These kinds of induced images can become powerful ideological means, instrumental both to stakeholders and local communities’ members, a circumstance that remains often invisible or insignificant for the tourist. The creation of a destination image is a complex process that involves different kinds of public and private institutions - local and foreigner - sometimes not directly related to the tourism business: cultural policy makers, heritage site managers etc. The result is very often a hegemonic version of identity, which, although supposed to be plural and heterogeneous, respond to a static, ahistorical and oversimplified version of reality. This produces a variety of effects over local populations, from the appropriation of official narratives to strategies of resistance or negation.
So, while the use of the image allow to exploit specific tangible and intangible elements of a destination, it can serve, at the same time, as an instrument of international promotion of a place, for the definition of its identity and/or for achieving a political and social visibility for its population. For all this, we can assume that tourist image, and tourism in itself, take part in wider processes related to the making of identity.
This panel calls for papers that can help to reveal and understand the different values, strategies and impacts that lie behind the creation of tourist destination images, taking into account their social and political implications. How does the creation of value work in the construction of a destination image? Who participates, directly and indirectly, in its construction and how? Which values govern each process and why? How do images become elements of power? And how do they function as heritage-making strategies? What kind of reactions and effects do they produce on local communities (appropriation, ethnogenesis, resistance)? We encourage a confrontation among empirical case studies, from all domains of social sciences, that can open a debate about the behaviour of induced images, either from a historical or contemporary perspective, and both from an institutional point of view or through the impacts on local populations.
CALL FOR PAPERS ENDS 15 MARCH 2012
Further information
fabiolamancinelli-AT-yahoo.it
saida.palou-AT-udg.edu
For full details: CFP Regimes of Value in Tourism, 2-4 July 2012, Sion Switzerland (https://sites.google.com/site/tourismcontactcultur...)
PANEL: CFP The value of the image: touristic resource, ideological instrument (https://sites.google.com/site/tourismcontactcultur...)
To propose a paper through the TOCOCU website: ABSTRACT SUBMISSION (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formk...)