Heritage tourism and its representations

Abstract

In the past I have explored the role of discourse with reference to heritage policy in the British context of New Labour government, concluding that a particular 'way of seeing' heritage plays a dominant and complex role in reproducing social relations of inequality (see Waterton 2010a). Significantly, this discourse has continued to dominate despite the new Conservative government's political strivings for community cohesion. And so it remains to this discourse that I turn in this chapter, pinpointing the role it plays within British cultural industries and, specifically, within heritage tourism. Why? Because ideas of heritage in Britain seem to operate in much the same way as Nietzsche's 'culture', only in this scenario it is the lie of heritage 'that poses as if it were the only reality' (cited in Webb 2009: 117). To make this case, the chapter closes in on a specific outcome of these mediated processes: the paint at which a handful of iconic images, awash with intimations of power, wealth, magnificence, spirituality and longevity, are equated with the complex material and social realities of 'being British'. Here, the rehearsed and repeated cultural symbols of a particular social group- the elite, middle-classes and the predominantly white -are peddled to international and domestic tourists alike, where their reiteration allows them to become 'obvious', 'true' or, at the very least, 'common sense'. While all manner of interesting things can be said about the messages such images convey to international tourists, my focus in this chapter lies with the domestic, because this same set of limited touristic symbols is also presented as 'the true test' of belonging (Hall l999: 24). Thus, through a process as adept at obscuring the past as it is at marketing it, Britain's multicultural citizenry are asked to positively respond to an exclusive set of representations somehow deemed capable of identifying the nation