Typically, conferences on tourism and its many iterations are fun, splashy, and include exhibit halls where you can bring back some trinkets for the kiddies.  Not this one.  The  “Tourism and Seductions of Difference: A Critical Tourism Studies Conference” sounds incredibly interesting but why does my brain hurt looking at what they are tackling at this meeting?  In any case, we applaud this work and hope to be doing similar noggin-crushing soon!

The Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change (CTCC), the Network Centre for Anthropological Research (CRIA) and the Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network (TOCOC) invite you to join TOURISM AND SEDUCTIONS OF DIFFERENCE, an international critical tourism studies conference that will take place in Lisbon, Portugal from 10 to 12 September 2010. The Conference builds on previous events organised by the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change (CTCC) at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK and will bring a long established tradition in tourism anthropology research at the Portuguese Network Centre for Anthropological Research (CRIA) to a wider international audience. The Conference will also mark the establishment of the Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network as an international group of university researchers interested in critical tourism research.

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 relations 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 reshaped 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?

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:

- The ontological work seduction: maintaining boundaries, differences, separations, times, 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

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.

Contact:

Dr. David Picard

CRIA/FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon

Email: tourismcontactculture@gmail.com

Web: http://sites.google.com/site/tourismcontactculture/

Partner Websites:

Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change

Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia 

Tags: centre for tourism and cultural change, CRIA, CTCC, network centre for anthropological research, portugal, TOCOC, tourism and seductions of difference, tourism-contact-culture research network

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.