Dear All,
Kalissa Alexeyeff and I wish to finalize our panel on Touring Pacific
Cultures, which is to be held at the University of Wollongong on April
12-14, 2012. For anyone who would like to join us at the conference,
we heartily invite you to send us a title and brief abstract by the
end of this week. The panel themes are as follows:
Panel Title: Touring Pacific Cultures
Co-convenors: Kalissa Alexeyeff k.alexeyeff@unimelb.edu.au and John
Taylor john.taylor@latrobe.edu.au
This panel explores new directions in understanding how culture is
defined, produced, experienced and sustained across tourism-related
contexts. In particular, we ask, how is cultural value, ownership,
performance and commodification negotiated and experienced in actual
lived practice? Tourism is vital to the economies of most Pacific
nations and as such is an important site for the meaningful production
of shared and disputed cultural values and practices. This panel
invites participants to consider the link between culture and tourism
in terms of the critical intersection of three key themesâ€"mobility,
engagement and value. This thematic triad signals our desire to push
both methodological and analytic visions beyond the divisive
standpoints of academic cultural critique and
industry/development-related economic concerns, such as have
characterized the vast majority of previous approaches within tourism
studies internationally. Instead we seek to pursue the cross-currents
of culture and tourism as vital sites in the meaningful production of
localized, mobile and dynamic value.
Possible topics could include (but are not limited to):
•
Issues of' ownership and copyright (infrastructure, land, cultural
performances, objects and knowledge).
•
Commodification (the significance of exchange value, its centrality in
debates about authenticity).
•
How tourism shapes cross-cultural understandings of work and leisure,
notions of economic development and culture difference more generally.
•
Tourism as a crucial site for the meaningful engagement of strategies
towards personal livelihood, community development and the sustainability
of cultural heritage.
•
Local tourism (such as the return of Pacific Islanders who live abroad to
home islands for holidays).
•
The performance of culture across tourism-related and non-tourist
settings.
•
Transnational or trans-local cultural performances and festivals.
Many thanks,
Dr. John Taylor
Lecturer, School of Social Sciences
La Trobe
University Bundoora 3086Ph. (03) 9479 6696
