Can cultural economy be social? Discussing about the rural heritage of Greece

Μπορεί η πολιτιστική οικονομία να είναι και κοινωνική;Συζητώντας για την αγροτική πολιτιστική κληρονομιά της ΕλλάδαςΤο άρθρο εξετάζει το τοπίο της πολιτιστικής διαχείρισης στην Ελλάδα, όπως αυτό διαμορφώνεται από κοινωνικούς, πολιτικούς και οικονομικούς παράγοντες. Σχολιάζει την αναδυόμενη λογική της κρατικής πολιτικής, η οποία εναρμονίζεται όλο και περισσότερο με τα νεοφιλελεύθερα προγράμματα των οικονομιών δυτικού τύπου. Δεδομένων των προεκτάσεων για το μέλλον της πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς, το παράδειγμα των κοινών παρουσιάζεται ως εναλλακτικό παράδειγμα για την προστασία και την ανάδειξή της. Όπως υποστηρίζεται, το μοντέλο των κοινών,  μέσω των κοινοτήτων και των αρχών της κοινωνικής και αλληλέγγυας οικονομίας, αποτελεί βιώσιμη επιλογή που χρήζει περαιτέρω διερεύνησης. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο, αναλύεται η μελέτη περίπτωσης της αγροτικής κληρονομιάς της Νάξου.This article examines the landscape of heritage management in Greece, as shaped by social, political, and economic factors. It deconstructs the emerging state policy rationale and its ambitions for the sectors’ economic role, tuned to the neoliberal agendas of western-type economies. Considering ramifications for the future of cultural heritage, the idea of commons is analyzed as an alternative paradigm-solution. As it is argued, community-led governing models, following social and solidarity economy principles within a commons structure, could suggest a viable heritage management option that is worth exploring. This is further illustrated through the example of Naxos’ rural heritage

Sustainable heritage tourism: Towards a community-led approach

This doctoral thesis explores community participation in heritage tourism planning as a sustainable solution to real-world cultural heritage problems, such as neglect and degradation at economically-deprived areas. In particular, the study examines how the strategic design of heritage tourism can accommodate the active involvement of destination hosts, such as local residents and business owners, and their meaningful collaboration with heritage managers and policymakers. The literature suggests that destination communities are heavily affected by tourism activity and their contribution to tourism planning is vital for achieving commitment to sustainability goals. Although the theoretical grounds of community involvement are well set, heritage tourism management has been slow in applying participatory approaches. Consequently, there is little empirical work on the practical implications of realising a more pluralist governance for heritage tourism and limited evidence to convince current ‘power-holders’ such as state officials to share their power with non-expert stakeholders. This project aspires to fill this void by exploring the process and particularities of instigating community participation at destination level in areas with no previous participatory experience. By adopting the case-study approach, it explores Kastoria, a peripheral emerging destination in Greece, conducting for the first time an ex-ante assessment of the challenges and complexities involved in pursuing community involvement on Arnstein’s (1969) rungs of ‘citizen power’. Following a novel mixed methodological approach, the study generates primary fieldwork data through semi-structured interviews, an attitudinal questionnaire survey and a quasi-field economic experiment applied to the tourism field for the first time. By doing so it provides important empirical evidence and draws useful theoretical and practical conclusions that increase our knowledge of community-inclusive planning in critical issues, such as the drivers of participation and the dynamics of collaborative decision-making

Heritage spectacles: the case of Amphipolis excavations during the Greek economic crisis.

This article explores the ways in which the archaeological excavations at Amphipolis, Northern Greece, were transformed into a ‘heritage spectacle’ during the summer of 2014. The article argues that the spectacularisation of Amphipolis excavations constituted a powerful, political medium for dis-orientating the wider Greek public from issues related to the severe economic crisis of the country. Although the practice of heritage spectacularisation is not new, the media spectacle of Amphipolis introduced an advanced mechanism for spectacularizing archaeological research and the past. The article deconstructs this mechanism through a thematic content analysis of about 100 newspaper articles published in the Greek press, filtered through the lenses of spectacle theory. As it is demonstrated, the spectacularisation process of Amphipolis excavations is embodied by emotive dramatisation, banal cultural symbols, escapism and power imbalances. The article concludes with an interpretive framework for heritage spectacles while highlighting ethical and practical implications regarding the role of archaeologists and heritage practitioners towards political ‘abuse’ of heritage in times of socio-economic and political crises

Drivers of community participation in heritage tourism planning: an empirical investigation.

Despite increased emphasis on community participation in tourism planning, our current knowledge of community attitudes and their motivations to engage in such collaborative governance is limited and fragmented. This paper explores the role of heritage values, tourism and community perceptions held by destination hosts as drivers to willingness to participate in heritage tourism development. Such enquiry aims to enhance our current knowledge of community views and their potential to influence involvement in participatory decision-making in order to inform policy approaches to collaborative heritage tourism strategies. Using a relatively inexperienced destination community (Kastoria, Greece), the study collects quantitative data via an attitudinal survey. Our findings suggest that intentions to participate are mainly driven by community ideals while their positive influence is more evident on community members with high place attachment. Heritage values play a significant role; however, their effects do not always favour participation as they can also act as barriers to involvement. On the other hand, tourism perceptions are found to be mainly insignificant in shaping intentions to participate. Finally, the paper presents and discusses variations between different demographic groups and draws implications for policy

Managerialism in UK business schools: capturing the interactions between academic job characteristics, behaviour and the ‘metrics’ culture

Recent decades have seen the evolution of UK business schools into international mass education providers. This transformation has developed against a background of institutional changes that jeopardise work conditions in academia. As few studies have examined the relationships between organisational, social and psychological aspects of academic work life, this paper employs the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model to explore empirically the interplay between business school workplace conditions, burnout and retention rates, based on a national sample. We show that higher demands and lower resources are significant in increasing burnout and turnover, whereas the ‘metrics’ culture has done much to increase workloads and reduce academic freedom and workplace support. These negative impacts can be offset by creating a collegiate and engaged work environment that promotes greater skills utilisation, autonomy and recognition. Such findings are reported for the first time in the literature with important implications for higher education and the academic community

Sentiment, Mood and Outbound Tourism Demand.

We investigate spillover effects from sentiment and mood shocks on US outbound tourism demand from 1996 until 2013. We use the Index of Consumer Sentiment and Economic Policy Uncertainty Index as proxies for sentiment and the S&P500 as a proxy for mood. We find a moderate to high interrelationship among sentiment, mood and outbound tourism demand. More importantly, sentiment and mood indicators are net transmitters of spillover shocks to outbound tourism demand. The magnitude of spillover effects sourced by sentiment and mood is time-varying and depends on certain socio-economic and environmental events. Our results have important implications for policymakers and travel agents in their efforts to predict tourism arrivals from key origin countries and to plan their tourism strategy

Time-Varying Interdependencies of Tourism and Economic Growth: Evidence from European Countries

In this study, we employ the novel measure of a VAR-based spillover index, developed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) to investigate the time-varying relationship between tourism and economic growth in selected European countries. Overall, the findings suggest that (i) the tourism-economy relationship is not stable over time in terms of both its magnitude and direction, (ii) the relationship exhibits patterns in its magnitude and/or direction during major economic events, such as the Great Recession of 2007 and the Eurozone debt crisis of 2010, and (iii) the impact of these economic events on the relationship between the tourism sector and the economy is more apparent to Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Spain, which are the European countries that have experienced the most severe economic downturn since 2009. These results are important to tourism actors and policy makers, suggesting that they should pay particular attention to this time-varying relationship and the factors that influence it when designing their tourism strategies. In addition, the findings of this study carry significant implications for researchers, as they underline a strand of the literature which deserves further attention

Community participation in heritage tourism planning: is it too much to ask?

Considering the complications of collecting empirical data on community participation, this study proposes a new methodological approach that departs from the current literature. For the first time, an experimental procedure is adopted to conduct a direct comparison between participatory and non-participatory decision-making in the context of heritage tourism planning. Contrary to previous work, this is the first ex-ante assessment of community participation at a destination with no such prior experience. The analysis relies on behavioural data on choices, deliberation and conflict studied in the context of a controlled collaborative environment. The findings suggest that choices and deliberation between participatory and non-participatory groups exhibit no statistically significant differences although participatory groups were more susceptible to conflict. However, interestingly, conflict was constructive as it increased provisions for heritage goods. Furthermore, intra-group heterogeneity did not always affect collective decisions negatively whereas trust and institutional credibility played a major role in influencing both individual and collective preferences. These findings have important implications for research and policy, opening a novel avenue for the systematic study of participation dynamics to inform the instigation of participatory endeavours

Tourism and economic growth revisited: Empirical evidence from a Panel VAR approach

The current literature on the tourism-economic growth causal relationship has not yet reached to a clear empirical consensus. The aim of this paper is to revisit this ambiguous relationship by examining the dynamics between tourism and economic growth from a more holistic view. In particular, we focus on 113 countries over the period 1995-2011, which we group into clusters based on six different criteria. A Panel Vector Autoregressive model is employed to reveal the tourism-economy interdependencies across these clusters. Overall, our findings cannot support the tourism-led economic growth hypothesis in any of our clusters. Rather, the economic-driven tourism growth hypothesis seems to prevail is most cases, although some short-lived bidirectional causalities are also identified. Thus, depending on the level of tourism competitiveness and economic development different policy implications apply