Special session for the Conference, ?Tourism and Seductions of Difference?
1st Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network Conference
Lisbon, Portugal ? 10-12 Sept 2010
Session Premise
Pilgrimage is perhaps the most emotional, most seductive of touristic
interactions; it is known to generate intense feelings of ecstasy and
transcendence, self-inflicted suffering and penitential pain. Drawing
on Eliade and van Gennep, Victor and Edith Turner considered
pilgrimage in terms of structuralist binaries, as predicated on
difference: Pilgrimage, they argued, is a movement from profane to
sacred; from periphery to center (or vice-versa); from quotidianity to
liminality. Complicating their notions of difference is V. Turner?s
assertion that pilgrimage, by its very nature, creates communitas, a
sensation of human commonality that transcends the daily differences
inherent in social structure. However, critics of this assessment,
particularly Eade and Sallnow, argue that difference is actually
intensified during pilgrimage, as various individuals and communities
utilize pilgrimage for asserting social status claims, for generating
economic profit at others? expense, or for political purposes.
Pilgrimage sites, too, employ a variety of symbols to differentiate
?true? pilgrims from secular travelers; the most well-known, of
course, is the ?passport? carried by Caministas on the way to Santiago
de Compostela, which entitle them to nearly free lodging along the
way, special blessings upon arrival, and an official certificate to
take back home.
Pilgrimage research has also contributed to complexifying the academic
study of tourism. Graburn and others have utilized the Turners?
binaries to productively analyze the ?secular ritual? of touristic
encounters. Analyzing different cultures? conceptualization of
pilgrimage as ?contemplation while viewing,? Di Giovine has linked
Turner/Graburn, and Urry?s famous ?tourist gaze??itself predicated on
difference, on separating out the picturesque from the mundane. Yet as
Crick pointed out long ago, while pilgrimage is a time-honored topic
of scientific investigation, there remains a general apprehension in
academia to fully engage in tourism research.
This special session is envisioned to both complement and call into
question common ways of thinking about the conference theme?tourism
and the seductions of difference?by exploring, unpacking, and
critically rethinking the established analytical premises concerning
the intersections of pilgrimage and tourism, the relationship between
seductive emotions and pilgrimage, and the contested binaries commonly
employed to analyze pilgrimage as a ritual structure.
Suggested Themes
In addition to the themes suggested in the conference?s general CFP,
suggested subject matter for this panel include, but are not limited to:
Phenomenologies of tourism and pilgrimage: similarities, differences,
methodological intersections; secular pilgrimages/religious tourism
Communitas, social structure, and difference
Sacred vs. profane geographies, practices, discourses in pilgrimage sites
?Profanity? and illicit activities at sacred sites
Emotion, devotion, and seduction in pilgrimage
Suffering, salvation, penance in pilgrimage discourses and practice
Cross-cultural / comparative pilgrimage practices
Political economy of pilgrimage sites, site management,
revitalization/development, heritage designations
Reconceptualizing pilgrimage: new theories and methods for the study
of pilgrimage
Publication Possibilities
As with all accepted conference papers, there will likely be several
publication possibilities, in addition to conference proceedings.
Furthermore, it is hoped that this special session can provide the
core of a possible edited volume based on the conference theme,
?seductions of difference.?
Additional Information
Interested parties should send a150-word abstract by 31 March 2010 to
the session director, Michael A. Di Giovine (digiovim@uchicago.edu).
(PLEASE NOTE this differs from the general conference deadline). Late
abstracts may be accepted.
Conference CFP: ?Tourism and Seductions of Difference?
Please find below a CFP for TOURISM AND SEDUCTIONS OF DIFFERENCE, an
international conference jointly organised by the
Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network (TOCOCU), the Centre for
Tourism and Cultural Change (CTCC) at Leeds Metropolitan University,
and the Centre for Anthropological Research in Portugal (CRIA).
The conference will take place at the New University of Lisbon, in
Lisbon, Portugal, 10-12 September 2010. The deadline to submit
abstracts is 20 March 2010. In addition to the general CFP, a number
of special interest panels are being proposed as part of the event
(with a different deadline; see below). Please find updated
information about the conference at www.tourismcontactculture.org.uk.
As tourism research spreads into the social sciences, the aim of this
Conference is to bring together social scientists studying tourism and
related social phenomena from different disciplinary perspectives. The
focus on ?seductions of difference? tackles one of the central
ontological premises of tourism, the relations to ?Others? ? people,
spaces, times, objects ? and the way in which these enable the
constitution and maintenance of Selves. Tourists travel to, and
through, spaces ?different? from those they inhabit most of the time.
They voluntarily expose their bodies to different environments, ingest
different foods, live in a different temporality, and meet different
people. Many authors have studied how such differences are socially
construed, how people, temporalities and places are experienced and
brought into being through the perceptive realms of the journey, but
also through the political agendas of stakeholders acting within the
field of tourism planning and cultural policy. The cultural history of
tourism indicates that tourists are ?drawn in? by certain types of
places ? forests, mountains, rivers, churches and religious shrines,
stately homes and palaces, ancient monuments, ruins, waterfalls,
seashores, countrysides, islands, cities, etc. Some psychologists, for
instance, have observed how some places ? such as Florence, Jerusalem,
or Paris ? trigger quasi-Stendhalian epiphanies among certain tourists
who often do not seem to share more than a common nationality. Who, or
what are they seduced by? What constitutes this arousal? How do
tourists learn what to be seduced by? How is the tourist experience
and the temptation to travel culturally framed? What can these
attractions tell us about the moral order of tourism and modern
culture? How are forms of local, ethnic, gender and national self
being worked and shaped in the contact zones of tourism? How are
tourist attractions assembled to entice tourists? Seduction is no
isolated act but always has some form of consequence and usually
demands compensation. In the same vein, touristic consumption is not
free, and in different senses implies forms of expected reciprocity.
What are the moral obligations of those who lure tourists to a
symbolic death by singing a siren song? How are tourists resuscitated,
and how do they buy their freedom? What are the threats and
consequences of seducing tourists? What happens when tourists seduce?
How does tourism seduce all sorts of people and who rejects seduction?
What kinds of society result from tourism?
CONFERENCE THEMES
Along with studies on methodological issues in tourism research, we
welcome papers that address issues related to the theme of the
conference. Indicative topics of interest include:
- Seduction as ontological work: maintaining identity, socialising
time and space, others
- Formations of seduction: social assemblages, contact cultures, attractions
- Fields of seduction: gender, houses, heritages, nations,
territories, classes
- Mediums of seduction: texts, bodies, arts, architectures, foods and natures
- Techniques of seduction: performance, flirtation, enticement,
friendship, magic, concealment
- Emotions of seduction: temptations, transgressions, ingestions,
emancipations
- Threats of seduction: spoliation, contamination, exclusion, death,
degradation
- Politics of seduction: hospitality, containment, kinship, power
- Moralities of seduction: values, reciprocity, obligations, co-habitation
- Consequences of seduction: mobilities, cosmopolitanisms, world society
GENERAL CALL FOR PAPERS
To propose a paper, please send a 250 word abstract including title
and full contact details to tourismcontactculture@gmail.com. The Call
for Papers for this event will initially be open until 20 March 2010.
Late abstracts may be considered. All abstracts will be peer-reviewed
by the academic committee.
CFP FOR SPECIAL INTEREST PANELS
There is also an option to submit papers to SPECIAL INTEREST PANELS
organised as part of the conference. These panels work as double or
triple sessions (6 or 9 papers) and are fully integrated to the
general conference programme. While thematically connected to the
overall conference theme, these panels aim to deepen a particular
theoretical or thematic aspect, or explore new ideas or hypothesis.
The organisation of these special interest panels is semi-autonomous;
each has its own panel director(s) and most have launched their own
call for papers. The deadline for submitting abstracts (150 words +
full contact details of authors - directly sent to the panel
directors) to these special interest panels may be after the deadline
for the general call for papers. More details and information at our
website.
List of Special Interest Panels:
1. Slumming: Tourism and the Seductive Marginal (Panel directed by
Fabian Frenzel, Bristol, and Ko Koens, LeedsMet, UK)
2. Seductions of History: Visitors? Motives and Experiences in
Historical Destinations (Panel directed by Luis Silva, CRIA /
FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
3. Seducing Bodies (Panel directed by Valerio Simoni, CRIA-ISCTE,
Lisbon, Portugal)
4. Rethinking Pilgrimage, Seduction and Difference (Panel directed By
Michael A. Di Giovine, Dept of Anthropology, University of Chicago,
discussant Regina Bendix, Univ Goettingen, Germany)
5. Borders, Unfamiliarity and (Im)mobilities (Panel directed by Bas
Spierings, Urban and Regional Research Centre Utrecht, Faculty of
Geosciences, Utrecht University)
6. Seducing Wilderness (Panel directed by Dennis Zuev, CIES-ISCTE,
Lisbon, Portugal)
7. Cartographies of Seduction: Tourism, Objects and Places (Panel
directed by Filipa Fernandes, ISCSP - Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa,
Portugal)
8. Seductions of Ugliness (Panel directed by Tamas Regi, CTCC, Leeds
Met, UK and David Picard, CRIA-UNL, Lisbon, Portugal).
PROCEEDINGS
Fully revised papers accepted at the conference will be published in
the conference proceedings (ISBN referred electronic format with
international distribution). We are also exploring opportunities to
publish an edited book and special issues of peer reviewed academic
journals based on a selection of papers (developed into full
articles). More info on this shall be available shortly after the event.
CONTACT
Carina Amaral and David Picard
Conference email: tourismcontactculture@gmail.com
Website: tourismcontactculture.org.uk
Address:
CRIA/FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Lisbon, Portugal
CTCC, Leeds Metropolitan University,
Leeds, United Kingdom
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