CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

The 'Things' of Tourism Cultures

Organisers: Chris Wilbert and David Crouch

Wilbert, Chris (Anglia University, United Kingdom) TOURISM, MEMORIES, AND HYBRIDITY
Tourism is coming to be recognised as a field full of hybrids - where the human, the technological and the natural are complexly mixed together. Moreover, tourist experiences are also increasingly viewed as decentred in time and place, many tourist activities occurring far from resorts or the holiday period. Many of these activities involve memories and objects of memories. Similarly, mass media technologies are also powerfully involved in making attractions and producing ever more memories / history for consumption. In this paper we discuss tourism in relation to contemporary memory culture in terms of how aspects of memory making in tourism practices may act as a bulwark to shrinking horizons of time/space, just as tourism in general is part of that wider increasing speed of change.

Crouch, David (University of Derby, United Kingdom) TOURISM PRACTICES AND GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGES

Donaldson, Andrew (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom) WHOSE LANDSCAPE IS IT ANYWAY? 'OPERATION CHOUGH' AND THE TOURIST PRODUCT IN CORNWALL
This paper considers some aspects of the links between the Cornish landscape and tourism. Cornish language place-names directly describe the landscape; coupled with the remnants of traditional industry and Celtic heritage they create a hybrid identity, a sense of difference that is played on in tourist marketing. However, ownership of Cornish 'things' in the landscape is contested: they are part of the lived experiential networks of Cornish people as well part of a tourist product. This is highlighted by examination of a recent campaign by the activist group, the Cornish Stannary Parliament ('Operation Chough') which involved the removal of English Heritage signs throughout Cornwall. The signs were vital elements of a tourism network to some and symbols of oppression to others.

Martinsson, Tyrone (Hogskolan Skovde, Sweden) BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
Cultural history in the far north has lately seen an increasing interest in the market of adventurism and travel opportunities. When entering the north we expect what has been promised in travel commercials, nature programs, books and magazines. Memory recordings through photography is a practice. But sometimes there is an almost emotional process of gaining "relics" from remains left and scattered in the landscape. Obviously photographs are not enough but collecting items as part of private travel collections and authentication or emotional memory value of "I have been there" seem important. And after all collecting when travelling is part of a long history of our culture defined through displays in museums and collections. But what is collected and why? How is the insight provided that a place is always better left as it was found and that image technology of today is more than enough when creating private memory collections?