For the inaugural conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies on the topic of “Re-theorisation of Heritage” in Gothenburg, Sweden, 5-8 June 2012 (http://www.gu.se/infoglueCalendar/digitalAssets/1775484548_BifogadFil_Conference_Announcement_ACHS%202012_Third_CALL.pdf), I seek contributions to the following session:
When ‘the rest’ enters ‘the West’: Heritage in a Postcolonial Age
Since the beginning of modernity, international heritage tourists’ travel routes have typically led from “the West” to “the rest” of the world (“the West and the rest”, cf. Stuart Hall). In the last few years, however, the expansion and lower cost of travel opportunities on the one hand, and the economic upturn in parts of the global “East” and “South” on the other hand, have made western destinations accessible for more and more people from the former “rest of the world” in the framework of leisure-time travelling.
This session enquires whether and how western-influenced patterns of world order, constructions of identities, as well as interactions in tourist space change when “the West” no longer tours “the rest”, as has been practiced for centuries, but when “the rest” starts to knock on Western doors in order to consume locally, now in the role of tourists to be served,
– their own heritage in the western world, and/or
– “the West” in the variety of its local heritages.
With which consequences, re-establishing or thwarting existing power relations between cultures, will heritage(s) in these touristic settings be (re-)negotiated and (re-)experienced?
Particularly welcome are empirically oriented papers that examine the interaction of specific groups in tourist settings, such as travelers (from the global “South”/“East”), those visited (in the “West”) and those active in the service sector. Also very welcome are theoretically informed papers that criticize central concepts of heritage (tourism) studies – such as the tourist gaze, authenticity, experiential vs. educational tourism – for reproducing the West-rest-paradigm, or that challenge the West/rest dichotomy still noticeable in much heritage research.
In a nutshell, this session aims to bring together papers that take diverse “the rest and the West”-scenarios in the field of heritage tourism as a point of departure in order to
– a) critically reflect the “West-rest-paradigm” in the field of heritage research,
– b) sketch out new categories of scientific thinking and
c) set out to work on a new, postcolonial heritage research agenda.
Please send a title and abstract of no more than 250 words to Sybille Frank (Sybille.Frank@em.uni-frankfurt.de) by 28 January 2012. Thank you very much!
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
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Dr. Sybille Frank | Vertretungsprofessur für Soziologie des Raums |
Goethe Universität Frankfurt | FB Gesellschaftswissenschaften |
Robert-Mayer-Str. 5 | Postfach 11 19 32 | D – 60054 Frankfurt am Main |
Telefon +49.069.798-22929 / Sekr.: -22052 |
http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/fb/fb03/institut_1/sybille-frank/index.html
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