The Mediterranean Refugee Crisis: Heritage, Tourism, and Migration

The Mediterranean Sea has become a huge cemetery: many thousands of migrants have lost their lives trying to cross it in search of a better future. In 2015, more than a million migrants and refugees reached Europe through irregular means, but almost 4,000 went missing and probably drowned. In 2016, 364,000 arrived in Europe and more than 5,000 were lost en route. The arrivals in Italy by sea were 181,436 in 2016 and 119,369 in 2017. While UN organizations and EU governments seem unable or unwilling to face this epoch-making drama, the culture industry has begun to exploit it. Migrant tragedies have inspired books and events, exhibitions and art installations, films and TV series. This article analyses the Mediterranean crisis, focusing on Lampedusa, a small Italian island between Sicily and Tunisia. Lampedusa seems to be an easy gateway to Europe but reaching it from Northern Africa is not easy. Thousands of asylum seekers have met their death on that route, sinking in deflated rafts or trapped inside old boats. The media coverage of these events has turned the island into a global icon, especially after the great events of 2013: the visit of Pope Francis on July 8 and the shipwreck with 366 fatalities on October 3. The article, based on personal field research, shows the complex relations between residents, tourists, and migrants. It also dwells on the use of migration by the culture industry: Ai Weiwei’s installations in Berlin, Vienna, and Florence; Jason deCaires Taylor’s sculpture The Raft of Lampedusa in the underwater museum of Lanzarote; the award-winning films by Emanuele Crialese and Gianfranco Rosi; the glossy TV series Lampedusa. In 2016, the island itself hosted a special exhibition, which was presented as the first step of a transnational and mobile intercultural museum

In Search of Atlantis: Underwater Tourism between Myth and Reality

In post-modernity, the millenarian search for mythical sites has become a tourist attraction and the process of culturalization of consumption has created and is creating a new global heritage. Places already celebrated for leisure have been reinvented as mythical and archaeological sites. A good example is the Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas. Here, Plato’s mythical Atlantis has inspired an underwater pseudo-archaeological reconstruction of a civilization that most likely had never existed. The myth-making force of the sea transforms the false ruins and affects how they are perceived. This is quite consistent with a tourism where authenticity has lost its traditional value and sensory gratifications have replaced it. A more recent Atlantis Hotel in Dubai and another one under construction in China show the vitality of this myth and the strength of the thematization of consumption. Other examples confirm this tendency in even more grotesque ways. At the core of this process there is the body: the tourist’s and the consumer’s body. The post-modernity has enhanced its use as tool and icon of consumption

Il ruolo emergente dell’edutainment nella fruizione del patrimonio culturale

Nella realtà “liquida” della post-modernità l’educazione tende a diventareedutainment, cioè un mix, più o meno articolato, di educazione e intrattenimento.Ciò emerge, fra l’altro, nella pratiche ormai presenti (anche in Italia)in molti musei e in molti siti archeologici. L’edutainment non va demonizzato,come spesso si fa per snobismo culturale, parlando ad esempio di disneyizationdella cultura, ma va utilizzato nelle sue significative potenzialità, non solo nell’educazione, scolastica e no, rivolta ai più giovani, ma anchenell’educazione permanente, e in particolare in quella che concerne lafruizione del patrimonio culturale. In questo contesto particolare attenzioneè dedicata al re-enactment e alla living history, di cui esistono formeseriali (specialmente nei festival proliferati in molte città e in molti borghistorici), ma anche forme più meritevoli di apprezzamento, per il loro impegnoalmeno tendenzialmente scientifico. In ogni caso, si tratta di processi da governare

The Unknown Carnival of Terceira Island (Azores, Portugal) : Community, Heritage, and Identity on Stage

Terceira Island hosts a Carnival that enjoys unique features in the landscape of European folklore. It involves a major share of the resident population, it takes place on stages scattered all over the island, and it involves a blend of dancing, music, and acting. This paper presents the preliminary results of a collaborative project between native and foreign scholars, with the activist goal of providing Terceira’s Carnival with visibility in order to ensure its preservation. Documentary evidence and fieldwork activities undertaken in 2020 provide grounds to interpret Terceira’s Carnival as a multi-modal endeavour that nurtures social cohesion through mythopoesis, subversion of hegemonic roles, and the distribution of leadership to folk elites. As such, we argue that Terceira’s Carnival does not fit traditional scholarly views on European Carnivals. Additionally, we show that, thanks to its ability to trigger identity-making processes, this Carnival is a case for cultural sustainability: in fact, it ensures the preservation of communal bonds in face of changing global and regional social landscapes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

In Search of Atlantis: Underwater Tourism between Myth and Reality

In post-modernity, the millenarian search for mythical sites has become a tourist attraction and the process of culturalization of consumption has created and is creating a new global heritage. Places already celebrated for leisure have been reinvented as mythical and archaeological sites. A good example is the Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas. Here, Plato’s mythical Atlantis has inspired an underwater pseudo-archaeological reconstruction of a civilization that most likely had never existed. The myth-making force of the sea transforms the false ruins and affects how they are perceived. This is quite consistent with a tourism where authenticity has lost its traditional value and sensory gratifications have replaced it. A more recent Atlantis Hotel in Dubai and another one under construction in China show the vitality of this myth and the strength of the thematization of consumption. Other examples confirm this tendency in even more grotesque ways. At the core of this process there is the body: the tourist’s and the consumer’s body. The post-modernity has enhanced its use as tool and icon of consumption

Heritage and Tourism. Global Society and Shifting Values in the United Arab Emirates

Cultural heritage was a major factor in the formation of politics and identity for nation-states. Yet in Europe, a gradual overcoming of old nationalism has paved the way for its postmodern iteration, where it is interwoven with tourism, the market, leisure, and entertainment. As such, monuments, museums, and archaeological sites have become important elements to thematize tourism and consumption.Over the past decades, some rich Middle East countries—including the United Arab Emirates—have adopted a similar use of heritage: it has been used to build or reinvent national identity, and to promote recreational and tourist activities. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are two significant cases. Their intangible heritage helps to build local identity and to attract tourism, together with the cities’ luxurious hotels and their ultra-modern shopping malls. Moreover, city administrations have even invited some major Western museums to open local branches, to increase tourism and confirm their new status as global cities

Le maschere della paura

Terrorism and migration flows, as well as the effects of the present international financial crisis, are deeply changing the life in European cities. New fears are creating (or recreating) new enemies, defined by their “otherness”. What happened at the beginnings of 2016 in Cologne (Germany), on the New Year’s Eve and during the Carnival, helps us to understand some aspects of this cultural change. The acts of sexual violence against women, probably due to groups of migrants and refugees, have roused a lively debate on the future of multicultural Europe. The fear of assaults and attacks has also exerted interesting effects on urban feasts and festivals, such as Carnivals. These events had already lost their traditional character and had become serial postmodern activities, embedded in tourist policies and urban marketing. The new fears seem to give a pre-postmodern value to these feasts, where it is perhaps possible to single out an aspect of the passing of the liquid and postmodern society