Life as itinerary: tourism, personal narratives and gratification in a culture of the continuous present.

It is argued that the proliferation of personal communications technology is effecting a change in the condition of life. Usage of these devices sequesters personal time and removes delay, with negative consequences for gratification. The ‘culture of the continuous present’ draws an analogy with the present tense in the English language: the simple present, ‘I do’, gives ground to a continuous present, ‘I am doing’, wherein the mind is engaged and unavailable for reverie, anticipation and recollection. Life, it is suggested, is analogous with a journey, punctuated by ‘landmark’ experiences by which individuals construct personal narratives and thereby make sense of their lives. Gratification in life thrives on anticipation and thus depends on delay, but is threatened by a growing culture of instant gratification. The proliferation of ‘happiness’ surveys may be secondary evidence of this problem. Tourism is largely insulated from these changes: trips are the subject of daydreams, and require planning; they are long in duration, and recorded photographically; are remembered long afterwards; and are thus powerful contributors to personal narratives. Tourism, therefore, enjoys augmented salience in a culture in which gratification is otherwise compromised

La vie comme voyage: la route touristique, le soi étendu et la mémoire externe

Ce chapitre vise à présenter la vie comme un voyage métaphorique. Il traite de la construction d’un « soi étendu » à une époque qui considère le tourisme comme une forme d’exploration et un romantisme renouvelé. Une attention particulière est portée aux événements touristiques inattendus, et à leur saillance dans la construction d’une « narration personnelle ». L’influence des développements sociotechnologiques récents sur l’expérience touristique est également prise en compte. L’idée d’une « culture du présent continu » et le développement de ce qu’on va nommer une « mémoire externe » sont finalement exposés

Lesser narratives writ large: attention-seeking and the event economy.

“There is no such thing as a measure of quality, only a measure of how much attention something gets”. Nathaniel Tapley, writing recently in The New European, articulates a Zeitgeist for our times: attention, and how to attract it. Lyotard, writing in the 1980s, saw the ‘grand narratives’ of society – major religions, science, collective identities offered by mass trade unions – being broken up and replaced by their debris, the lesser narratives. Debord’s anticipation of a ‘society of spectacle’ delivered a Stichwort for our present times. A highly visual culture gives licence to lesser narratives screaming for attention. Manifestations include cultural hyper-individualism, economic fragmentations engendered by neo-liberalism, fundamentalisms in major religions, and the contrived spectacularities of reality television. The effects are amplified through informational exchange via social media. Rojek has written of a ‘gestural economy’, in which events are vehicles for attracting attention to moral positions that are competitively traded in pursuit of symbolic and economic capital. This paper seeks to open a debate. Are we in the events business, or the attention business

Holidays under the hegemony of hyper-connectivity: getting away, but unable to escape?

Holidays have been imagined as occasions of escape and liminal leisure. This conceptualisation requires re-evaluation as a consequence of the widespread adoption of portable communication devices (smartphones) and the use of Web 2.0 interactive platforms (social media). Studies suggest that the gratifications of contact with the ‘other’, and the 10 enjoyment of the licence associated with the liminal condition, are compromised by endemic contact with the domicile. An analysis draws on the work of Heidegger and Althusser, and is supported by insights from Foucault, Arendt and Lacan. It is argued that users are ‘enframed’ and subjected by their devices. This re-imagining is representative of an 15 evolving change in the human condition, of which the compromising of tourism-as-escape is but one manifestation

The television entrepreneurs: social change and public understanding of business [Boyle, R. & Kelly, L.]

Review of a book which seeks to understand the relationship between television representations of the world of business on UK television. The book is based on research funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant. The review highlights a transition from a genuine documentary approach to business television programming, to its incorporation into the contemporary programme format known as 'reality television'. The review highlights the ways in which this kind of television programming has merged with a pervasive celebrity culture

Addressing sensibilities: a rationale for an 'inclusive' approach to festival programming and promotion

Abstrac

Psychological environment: cultural trends in Northern Europe and their influence on motivation and fashion in holiday-taking

The paper discussed the rapid expansion of the middle-class in the outbound-tourism-generating economies of northern Europe, and how changing tastes in destinations could be attributed and linked to a growing individualism accompanying these changes. The mass-market beach holiday, though attracting greater volumes of consumers than ever, was being eclipsed in terms of fashionability by new media-enhanced tastes for the unspoilt, the unpackaged and the unvisited. It was appropriate to speak of 'new' tourism

The imagination rediscovered? The long-term implications of popularism, marketing practice and 'packaging' in the cultural industries

This paper speculates on the future for cultural consumption. One prediction is the emergence of a 'thoughtful consumer', who, disenchanted with passive fun, embraces active learning; others foresee Baudrillard's 'silent majorities', saturated and driven into passivity by a surfeit of image and information. The issue was investigated in the context of the consumption of live drama through theoretical investigation drawing on the work of Bourdieu, and through semi-structured interviews with directors of producing theatres in the north of England. The conclusion was that audiences consume drama in terms of three dimensions: the inspirational, the collective and the symbolic, proliferation of 'core' audiences and a demand on the part of an expanding middle class for authenticity of experience

Kulturtourismus: Grundlagen, Trends und Fallstudien [Thomas Heinze (Hrsg.)]

Diese Sammlung von Aufsaetzen besteht aus vierzehn Kapiteln mit Beitraegen zum Kulturtourismus aus Deutschland, Oesterreich und ...Besprechung [Book Review]: . Muenchen/Wien, Oldenbourg 1999, 407 Seiten, geb., ISBN 348625108