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and also to the dialectics between agreement
and differentiation that society, at different
levels, has to manage (Featherstone, 1990;
Anderson, 1991; Appadurai, 1996; Luhmann,
1998; Beck, 1999).
This work can be placed in a theoretical
framework that, having a clear image of world-
society, adopts a perspective of observation
starting on one hand from the local reality and
from its capability of being (a knot of the global
communication net) and on the other hand, of
showing itself as a specifi c identity core.
This theoretical framework is a particu-
larly useful approach to the topic of this analysis
that focuses on the local side of a process -
tourism - increasingly characterized by the
logic of global communication. In other words,
tourism is a form of consumption connected to
spare time (Dumazedier, 1974; Corbin, 1995;
Mothé, 1997), even more crucial for the con-
struction of identity of the modern individual.
It is not by chance that the most advanced
refl ections on contemporary consumption, which
obviously includes tourism, uses the term 'voca-
tion', meaning the process with which the mod-
ern consumer, increasingly demanding and
conscious, 'chooses' from a range of equivalent
and contingent possibilities, those that have sense
for him or her, for their needs, for the defi nition of
himself (Gemini, 2006). In a word: their identity.
In this sense, the research of authenticity of
a place, its tradition, the local population and its
habits of life seems to be one of the most effec-
tive elements from which contemporary market-
ing of tourism draws (Di Nallo, 1998). This may
be interpreted as a demand of tourist consump-
tion oriented both to the possibility of meeting
habits, historical, cultural and environmental
heritage and humanity that produces it all.
On this basis, the research starts with the
theoretical and empirical assumption that place
identity cannot be separated from its inhabit-
ants and their communication.
Within the context of globalization, recall-
ing the paradox mentioned above, this aspect
seems to be more true than the local/stranger
duality (Simmel, 1989), a leading distinction in
tourism analysis, that becomes an even more
reversible relationship, changing according to
the perspective of observation adopted. Local
residents also represent its most demanding
'inner customer', both when demanding ser-
vices and when carrying on activities connected
with the tourist supply chain.
This means that anyone can activate their
own tourist gaze (Urry, 1995), the capability -
or better to say the vocation - of observing a
place with 'new eyes', of seizing the 'elsewhere'
in a well known location knowing how to give
value to beauties, specifi cities and richness with-
out taking them for granted.
In this way, consuming a place is no more
connectable and reducible to the simplistic sup-
ply/demand relationship understood by visitors.
The active, interactive and creative participa-
tion of the locals is an indispensable dimension
for giving value to a place and its performances.
Consequently, it is necessary to consider the dif-
ferent needs that the same place could satisfy
but at the same time could express.
Although most advanced marketing research
(including that undertaken for destinations), rec-
ognizes the weakness of the target approaches
(as a category even more indefi nable and undis-
tinguished), conversely it is possible, thinking
from a inner point of view that a territory may
count not as much on a simple typology of tourist
(constructed on social and personal criteria, for
example) but on the idea of a vocational tourist,
oriented to a particular touristic experience
(Pine II and Gilmore, 1999; Schmitt 1999) and
to a way of experimenting a kind of 'somewhere
else' that has its specifi city and its uniqueness.
Therefore, starting from the circularity of the
tourist gazes, from the 'real' meeting between
visitors and inhabitants, place identity becomes
its main resource as well as the element experi-
enced vocationally. All this can be translated - in
a more strategic and effective manner - as giving
importance to the fact that tourism, in its differ-
ent aspects and facets, is a crucial economic sec-
tor precisely because it is based on desiderata,
seemingly embedded in our society.
The case of Levanto is a particularly well
fi tting example of the dynamics described
above. The possibility of verifying empirically
the territorial identity seen as communicative
life-experience 1 means for this research trying to
1 The idea of communicative life-experience - as conceptualized in Boccia Artieri et al . (2004) - has to be seen
as the process of defi nition of the subject's identity, as the observation of the self in the world and as a
 
 
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