Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
a contemporary salience. Certainly, the battle of metaphors in contemporary human geog-
raphy seems rather unnecessary if we acknowledge that being-in-the-world is always simul-
taneously performative and representational. This underpins action, and is consistent with
Heidegger's '
Dasein
' (1967)'. As M. Crang (1997: 365) argues, 'images, sights, activities are all
linked through the embodied motion of the observer'.
As urban tourists we create an 'intentional arc' that 'projects around us our past, our
future, our human setting' (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: xviii). Visitors link together sites, sights,
activities and events in order to cast an environment in their own image. It is as if cities no
longer existed in themselves. Visitors to Manchester (UK), for example, may create 'Gay
Manchester', 'Football Manchester', 'Shopping Manchester', 'Indie-music Manchester', or
any number of 'being-scapes' that refl ect their identities. As Kelly (1955) argued, the reality
of an environment cannot reveal itself to us; instead, it is open to as many ways of construing
it as we can invent.
Phenomenology avoids other dichotomies that hinder a cultural understanding of urban
tourism. As Schutz and Luckmann (1974: 3) argue, 'everyday life is . . . fundamental and
paramount reality'. As Bhabha (1994) suggests, seemingly mundane events and everyday
actions contribute to the identity of both people and places. Consuming urban tourism draws
upon vast collections of both immediate and mediated experiences, termed the 'stock of
knowledge' (Schutz, 1972). This develops with new experience, whether immediate or
mediated, representations or practice (see Selby, 2004). In familiar situations, place consumers
rely upon previously proven 'recipes' for acting, and these are usually socially transmitted.
The performances at the Taj Mahal (see Edensor, 2000), for example, are underpinned by
the recipes provided by the various ethnic, social and cultural groups with which the visitors
identify. Promotional messages may be relatively insignifi cant overall, but the use of cliché by
marketers deliberately draws upon the visitors' stock of knowledge, encouraging them to 'step
back in time' or 'trace the steps' (see Voase, 2000). Place consumers experience urban tourism
partly individually, and partly through an intersubjective 'natural world' view. The latter
accounts for habitual behaviour by urban tourists, something the literature rather struggles
to conceptualise. It is signifi cant that an individual glides effortlessly between immediate
and mediated knowledge. Not only are they interrelated, but in the age of social media there
has been a signifi cant blurring of boundaries. Urban tourism also demonstrates what Schutz
and Luckmann (1974: 264) term 'objectivation' - the 'embodiment of subjective processes
in the objects of the everyday lifeworld'. Buildings, monuments and whole landscapes offer
the possibility of experiencing 'results of acts' (ibid.: 271) that 'leave behind traces in life
worldly objects' (ibid: 272). These in turn infl uence practices that take place within urban
spaces.
As Franklin and Crang (2001: 6) argue, in contrast to Urry's (1990) conceptualisation,
travel is fi nely engrained into everyday life, and on cold, dark winter evenings (in the UK, at
least) we produce 'a phantom landscape which guides our understanding of what we eventu-
ally see'. The act of consuming urban tourism is projected in the future perfect tense, 'onto
the screen of the imagination' (Schutz and Luckmann, 1974: 69).
Conclusion
The chapter has addressed geographical approaches to conceptualising and researching urban
tourism. Whilst an exhaustive review of urban tourism geographies is beyond the scope
of a short chapter, an effort has been made to engage with three broad genres of research -
functional, representational and non-representational approaches. Whilst each has important
