Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
enact them: they become alive and transformed each time that new plays begin, face-to-
face proximities are established and new objects are drawn in. As Edensor argues:
The nature of the stage is dependent on the kinds of performance enacted upon it. For
even carefully stage-managed spaces may be transformed by the presence of tourists
who adhere to different norms. Thus, stages can continually change, can expand and
contract. For most stages are ambiguous, sites for different performances.
(Edensor, 2001: 64)
Tourist places are continually reproduced and contested through being used and performed.
Places only emerge as tourist places - stages of tourism - as and when they are performed
(Bærenholdt
et al.
, 2004).
6. . . . emphasises how objects and technologies, such as cameras, guide buses and cars, are
crucial for making tourism performances
happen
. They enhance the physicality of the
body beyond its capabilities and enable it to do
new
things and sense
other
realities. There
are complex connections between bodily sensations and senses and various technologies.
Many bodily tourist performances are 'unperformable' without such non-human compo-
nents or quasi-objects (see Haldrup and Larsen, 2010: Ch. 4).
7. . . . does not see tourism as an isolated island, but explores connections between tourism,
the everyday and signifi cant others such as family members and friends. Most tourism
performances are performed within teams and this sociality is in part what makes them
pleasurable
and
occasionally annoying. Tourism is not only a way of consuming (new)
places, but also an emotional geography of sociability, of being together with close friends
and family members. And with whom we perform is as important to the quality of the
experience as is the object of the gaze (Haldrup and Larsen, 2010: Ch. 2).
8. . . . lastly, destabilises readings of places and the idea that we 'can read off the feeling, style
or atmosphere of a particular place as the 'effect' of some already determined relations'
(Degen
et al.
, 2008: 1909). The focus is upon how places are used and lived with in prac-
tice. It examines the many performances of service workers, locals and tourists that contin-
gently make tourism and tourism spaces, including the 'tactics' (de Certeau, 1984) through
which tourists perform out of tune with the offi cially inscribed signs, objects and places
(Cloke and Perkins, 2005; Edensor, 1998). Similarly to non-representational geography,
performance studies are 'busy, empirical commitments to doings near-at-hand, in ordi-
nary and professional settings, and through material encounters' (Lorimer, 2005: 84).
Having outlined its main components, I now turn to some ethnographic studies of tourist
performances.
'Ethnographies'
There is a body of literature exploring the 'production side', examining how places are mate-
rially and symbolically staged and how key personnel perform the tourist product and main-
tain scripts. Edensor shows how tour guides choreograph tourists' spatial movements, their
inter pretat ion of places and appropr iate behav iour. He says : 'The stage-management of tour ist
space, the directing of tourists and the choreographing of their movement can reveal the
spatial and social controls that assist and regulate performance' (Edensor, 2001: 69).
Services necessitate some social interaction between producers and consumers at the point
of production and require what is called emotional work (Hochschild, 1983), aesthetic labour
