8 research outputs found

    The relationship between place attachment and return visits to heritage sites : A case study of Ras Al khaimah

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    Over the past decade, heritage tourism has become a significant growth industry worldwide. Fuelled in part by nostalgia for the past, tourists seem to have the desire to visit archaeological sites. A review of the literature reveals that many visitors return to heritage places repeatedly over a short period of time. While the reason visitors return to heritage sites vary and may be individualistic; place attachment may be a major intrinsic element. The main purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between place attachment and tourists’ intentions for return visits to heritage sites. The overall objectives of the research include to (a) clarify the intrinsic reasons why tourists tend to associate themselves with a place and subsequently revisit that site, (b) develop a model based on an adaptation of the theory of planned behaviour to understand people’s intention to revisit heritage places in the United Arab Emirates and specifically in Ras Al khaimah (RAK), and (c) determine whether the addition of place attachment to Shen’s previously modified theory of planned behaviour adds significantly to the explanatory power of the model. This research addresses visitors’ intentions to revisit heritage sites in Ras Al khaimah (RAK), one of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as a case study. The study explores the impact of heritage tourism on the economy of RAK. In order to develop a sound framework for the research, the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), which has been used to explain behaviour in a variety of contexts, is utilised as the basis for the framework proposed for this study (Ajzen, 1991). This theory, however, was adapted to include the additional construct of place attachment (Shen, Schuttemeyer, & Braun, 2009). The design of the study includes both quantitative and qualitative methods for data analysis. The data for the quantitative portion of the study was obtained via a self– administered questionnaire utilising a convenience sample of 392 tourists visiting RAK. The qualitative methodology consists of interviews with four Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of the tourism department and 13 private tourism agencies of the four major emirates in the UAE, which are: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and RAK. The findings of this study revealed that the main relationships between the respondents and the place were positive. Correlation analysis and a series of multiple regressions were conducted to explore the relationship between place attachment and intentions for return visit to heritage sites. The results indicate that the impact of place attachment on intention for return visit to heritage sites were significant predictors of different periods after the first–time visit. Additionally, there was a significant positive relationship between tourism and the economy of the UAE in general and RAK in particular through increasing the numbers of international and resident tourists. The potential implications of the study clarified that a number of plans should be considered by the Government to develop and increase the number of visitors to RAK. The cooperation between government departments and travel agents within and external to the UAE was considered to be the most important focus for future planning

    Semiotics of Monuments: Politics & Form from the 20th to the 21st century

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    Introduction

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    Building The Plane as We Fly It : The Promise of Persistent Identifiers

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    This report is the main outcome of a study commissioned by Knowledge Exchange (KE). The study was aimed at investigating “Risks and trust in pursuit of a well functioning Persistent Identifier infrastructure for research”. The investigation set out to analyse the current state of the Persistent Identifier (PID) landscape in the six Knowledge Exchange partner countries and beyond, taking emerging PIDs particularly into account and examining the roles of relevant stakeholders as PID service providers, higher education institutions, researchers, publishers and national libraries. The report examines the PID landscape and provides a detailed look at what can go wrong with an unreliable PID service. In addition, a series of recommendations aimed at each stakeholder group are presented. Seven complementary case studies accompany the report, helping provide a deeper insight into specific areas of activity, workflows and stakeholders within this wider PID landscape. Each can be accessed through the report

    Re-imagining Westphalia: Identity in IR and the discursive construction of the Russian state.

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    This thesis examines assumptions about state and identity in constructivist IR theory and the analysis of Russian foreign policy through the looking glass of Russian representations of "state identity" - representations of the Russian state as "Russia" - in the political discourse of the Russian elite since the end of the Soviet Union, Drawing on empirical research into the discursive representation of the new Russian state, it shows that categories of statehood and identity are more variable in meaning and indeed more ambiguous than allowed for by current dominant conceptions of state identity in IR, which revolve around the categories of the Westphalian system. This becomes evident when studying Russia - a country which is at the same time outsider and insider, a constitutive part of the Westphalian system, defining the state in strongly Westphalian terms, and yet excluded from the West. In the case of Russia, instead of the clear-cut categories and binary distinctions of the Westphalian system there emerges a conceptual field in which inside and outside, identity and difference are inherently ambiguous and diffuse. It is argued that constructivist assumptions about identity face a problem of the relationship between theory and substantive research, insofar as theoretical commitments may obscure actual representations of identity in Russia, neglecting where and why categories of identity are actually produced, and equating categories of identity with identifications. They also face a normative problem, given that IR constructivism reinforces a problematic account of subjectivity inherent in the Westphalian narrative and is in danger of reifying a binary choice between identity and difference as the only possible relationship between the West and the non- Western world. The thesis develops a conceptualization of identity drawing on Gadamerian hermeneutics and a framework for empirical research based on conceptual history that allows for an investigation of the context-dependent meaning of categories of statehood and identity and can go some way to escaping the logic of binary oppositions that has characterized conceptions of identity in IR

    Between rent-seekers and free-marketeers: The economic policy preferences and political influence of German and Swiss pharmaceutical multinationals and banks.

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    The purpose of this study is to analyse the economic policy preferences and political influence of a sample of German and Swiss pharmaceutical multinationals and banks. Put differently, the goal is to examine whether these MNEs have the will, and the political clout, to promote a liberal economic order or whether they seek to distort, or even suspend, the free formation of prices. In a sense, this study is thus a two-step procedure: first, it will analyse the formation of MNEs' preferences and then, second, it will examine how these preferences translate into political influence and policy outcomes. The focus of the analysis will be on the home country and the EU level of policy-making during the period from 1985 to 1995. Economic policy preferences will be explained as the result of the interaction of three factors: the extent and nature of MNEs' internationalisation process, their business focus and sectoral characteristics. With regard to policy outcomes and MNEs' influence over them, it will be argued that also three factors need to be considered: interests, institutions that link MNEs to the policy-making process and changing economic and political circumstances, which affect perceptions of self interest and institutions. Particular focus will be on the impact of circumstances on the preferences of the government, the degree of opposition from other domestic groups and the extent to which MNEs can use their internationalisation process for political leverage. Regarding MNEs' economic policy preferences, it will be pointed out that both the six pharmaceutical MNEs and the six banks were generally supportive of free markets, although there were also a few grey areas. When it came to their political influence, the picture was less clear cut since the extent to which MNEs could shape policy outcomes varied not only between pharmaceutical MNEs and banks, but also across policy issues within the two sectors. In general, the proposed explanatory framework could explain many of these complexities, although there were a few exceptions and qualifications

    Socially inherited memory, gender and the public sphere in Poland

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    More recent theories of the 'revolutions' of 1989 in the societies of Eastern and Central Europe now suggest that the underlying dynamic was continuity rather than disjuncture in terms of social and political relations. Yet such theories fail to explain the nature of and the reasons for this continuity in terms of gender relations in the public sphere. The thesis suggests that the clue to understanding the nature of the gendered transformation in Poland's public sphere in its mediated aspects between the years 1980 and 1994 lies in the role of 'socially inherited memory'. Socially inherited memory is the dialectical and gendered process by which a given society both remembers and forgets past events, feelings, thoughts and knowledge through representations. The key to Poland's social memory concerns the repressed stories of political right developed during the nation's period of identity formation in the nineteenth century and interwar years. Certain aspects of this social inheritance were recalled by the Polish United Workers' Party and then by Solidarity to legitimize their power: Because Poland's social memory was formed around the public exclusion of women and Poland's ethnic minorities this resulted in the continuation of exclusionary mechanisms and public ghettoization after World War Two, and, in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the evidence of the thesis also suggests that there were sub-plots of women's resistance and inclusion within the public sphere from at least the nineteenth century onwards. Thus the exclusionary impact of socially inherited memory is not an inevitable historical process: At particular historical moments inclusive representations of women and ethnic minorities are recalled or reenacted in the form of Public organisations or alternative cultural productions. Socially inherited memory it is suggested may provide a useful concept for examining the (en)gendering of the public sphere in other societies
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