Y Wladfa Gymreig:Outbound diasporic tourism and contribution to identity

Diasporic tourism is acknowledged as a powerful force in travel, but there has been more focus to date on inbound forms. Significant outbound Welsh diasporic tourism takes place to the colony known as Y Wladfa Gymreig in Argentinean Patagonia, founded in 1865. The Welsh Patagonian example is interesting because it is a settlement-based phenomenon, which has had less academic focus than those centred on ‘homecoming’. Travelling to a place of dispersion may also generate strong cultural attachment and emotional connection, particularly where identity politics in the origin has become diluted through globalisation. Using Bond and Falk’s tourism and identity-related motivation theoretical framework, we examine tourists who have visited this unusual destination. Questionnaires with potential tourists as well as interviews with visitors are combined with a research visit to the region to investigate the framework aspects of identity development; identity maintenance and identity moderation and reconstruction. Attributes that framed identity construction were experiencing Welshness, personal connections, events, nostalgia, novelty, language, and loyalty. We also found the potential for such visits to unsettle identity, so that ultimately articulation of ‘home’ is far from being fixed or permanent in the tourism context. These findings illustrate the dynamic and hybrid nature of identity, and the importance of tourism in its negotiation

Understanding students’ learning experience on a cultural school trip: findings from Eastern Indonesia

Despite the current increase of studies on school trips and experiential learning, questions remain about what aspects of school trips best contribute to students and how it affects students’ learning experience. This study attempts to explore students’ learning experience participating in 1-day cultural school trips in Papua, eastern Indonesia. Conducting trips to two cultural venues (a cultural museum and cultural village) and integrating topics in secondary schools’ curriculum (Papuan local content and Papuan art and culture), we evaluated student learning experiences against Bloom et al.’s (1956)taxonomy of educational objectives. The study found several emergent categories: students’ previous experiences, emotional experiences, impressions on seeing new perspective, reidentifying cultural identity, cultural awareness, personal effect, and framing and comparing learning strategy. The results provide insight into the effectiveness of school trip in the cultural setting in less developed countries and suggest areas for further study

The complexity of ffotography: conceptualising Welsh photography as a complex adaptive system

This thesis is a transdisciplinary inquiry into expressions of national identity present in photography generated in and of Wales. It operationalises applied methods informed by complexity theory to conceptualise ‘Welsh photography’ as a complex adaptive system and in doing so makes contributions to the sub-fields of applied complexity, photography, and Welsh national identity. Ontologically, both Welshness and photography exhibit characteristics that are indicative of complex systems. Traditional attempts to apply positivism to Welsh identity and photography have resulted in fracture and polarisation, both of which now demonstrably characterise these phenomena. Complexity theory advocates a dynamic approach to ontology that rejects traditional epistemological reductionism (in which phenomena are understood through their constituent components) in favour of a systems-based approach which accounts for dynamic constructionism, holism, and emergence (Cilliers, 2000). Complexity theory is particularly suited to phenomena that are irreducible, contingent, and dynamic; it places epistemological importance on interactions between components within a system, and offers strategies for apprehending, rather than solving complex phenomena. Complexity-informed research mobilises reflexive inquiry-led methods, in which the researcher and participants have an explicit and collaborative role in the generation of knowledge. To this end, this thesis makes use of unstructured interviews and photo-elicitation to characterise photographic expressions of national identity as an ongoing complex process consisting of a variety of system components and operating within a specific but open environment. This thesis concludes that as Welshness itself is increasingly conceptualised as multiplicitous, so is Welsh photography. Specifically, this thesis contends that photographic Welshness is a negotiated phenomenon, that is continuously constructed and deconstructed through a series of non-linear, dynamic, and fed-back interactions which can be understood as occurring between components within a complex system of photographic practice and wider contextual discourse