Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
According to Thrift and Dewsbury (2000: 425) there are certain places where these
performances are acted out, and these 'vortexes' are particularly common in urban tourism
destinations. The performances of urban tourism are particularly apparent in spaces such as
Djemaa el Fna in Marrakesh. This large and busy square is a meeting place for a wide variety
of inhabitants and visitors, including magicians, story-tellers, snake charmers, food sellers,
dancing boys, fortune tellers and medicine sellers. The experience is inherently multi-sensual,
and a place where numerous performances are played out. Likewise, a visit to Petaling Street
market in Kuala Lumpur would be meaningless without the exaggerated haggling perform-
ances of both visitors and market traders.
As Crouch (2010: 59) explains, the last two decades of cultural geography have 'disrupted
the habitual practices of the visual and its representations, not in any way to reject their role,
but rather to adjust our reading of their signifi cance in meaning and identity'. This is a more
fundamental contribution than merely concentrating on the performative. There is an
acknowledgement of the active role of place consumers in making space, and in our case,
doing
urban tourism.
Applied to urban tourism, this facilitates perceptive work such as Cohen's (2007) study of
the cultural and creative activities of small groups during the lead-up to Liverpool's year as
European Capital of Culture in 2008. Space is considered as a complex conduit for 'producing
the world, that is of making sense of it, of making tourism' (Cohen, 2007: 45). Urban tourism
destinations are therefore negotiated, contested, subverted and transgressed (Aitchison
et al.
,
2000) by different groups of visitors and inhabitants who participate in that space.
Of course, not all visitors or inhabitants can participate. Whilst the objectifying infl uence
of the male gaze was of interest to feminist (and early cultural) geographers (e.g. Rose, 1993),
gender and sexuality are also particularly pertinent to the performances of urban tourism.
Wilson (1992: 98) was an infl uential critic of the '
fl a n e u r
' in urban tourism, exercising and
exploiting his 'masculine freedom' in the city. A performative perspective, however, demon-
strates how heterosexuality tends to be normalised within the urban tourism landscape,
through 'dominant and repeated performances of sexuality' (Aitchison
et al.
, 2000: 161).
Place consumers 'inscribe and repeat particular forms of spatial identity' (Aitchison
et al.
,
2000: 161).
Social exclusion on the basis of sexuality is well documented, but so too are performances
aimed at (re)claiming gay and lesbian spaces in cities (see Johnston, 2005; Hughes, 2006;
Waitt,
Chapter 10
in this volume). The results of such processes can be observed in many
cities, such as in San Francisco's Castro District (USA), Sydney's Oxford Street (Australia) or
Manchester's Canal Street (UK). Of course, there is also a risk that such spaces will be
re-appropriated by straight visitors (see Pritchard
et al.
, 1998). The exclusion and claiming of
the city by people with disabilities has also been an interesting direction for urban tourism
research (e.g. Yau
et al.
, 2004). As G. Shaw (2007) argues, issues of power and powerlessness
are often more important than merely accessibility (see also Ray and Ryder, 2003).
Massey (2005) conceptualises space as a dynamic produced by interrelationships of life,
with space constantly being produced and reproduced by actions. In a study of Angkor Wat
in Cambodia, Winter (2007) demonstrates how visitors consume in an embodied way, doing,
feeling and thinking as they experience the site. Often, the spatial practices of urban tourism
enable visitors and residents to express their emotional relationships with others, and make
sense of themselves as well as the landscape. Urban tourism encounters are shaped by the way
the body is positioned in space. Game (2001) coined the term 'material semiotics' when she
explored the experience of Bondi Beach (Sydney, Australia). It is about the feeling of moving
through and with the surf, walking on sand, and lying on the beach. As Crouch (2010)
