Representing New Zealand:: Tourism Imagery and Ideology

, Travel and tourism has become one of the largest industrial complexes and item of consumption in modern Western economies. It is argued here that, to date, geographers studying tourism have done so without fully grasping the fact that tourism is an important avenue of capitalist accumulation. I contend that if this weakness is rectified the geographic analysis of tourism could provide important contributions to contemporary debates in geography, In an attempt to integrate critical theory and political economy into the study of tourism, two themes are developed: the capitalistic nature of most travel and tourism production and consumption; and the contribution of tourism to the analysis of territorial competition and economic restructuring. The core of the argument presented is that the study of tourism assists us to recognise how the social meaning and materiality of space and place is created, and how these representations of place are explicitly incorporated into the accumulation process. To understand how tourism is involved in this, we need a thcorisation that recognises, and unveils, tourism as a capitalistically organised activity driven by the inherent and defining social dynamics of that system, with its attendant production, social, and ideological relations.

This paper examines images of nationhood in the capital citie s of the USA and Australia -Was hiJl gtlln, DC (herca lk r re ferred to as Was hi ngton) and Canberra, respectively. The images examined hav e gcncrally orig inated liom the plans of architects, yet they have been endless ly repli cated vi a images in brochures, wc bsites, postcards and othcr forms of tourism p romotion. This pape r examines architectural s ignifi en. of th ese two national capital c ities by und erta kin g an analysis of significa nt landmark s and mo nulllcn ts in Washin gton and Canberra (a nct bo w these represent the nati on and nation al identity). Textual analysis, in pm1icula r, semioti cs (examining how s ign s genenl te meaning), is a suitable Illethodology for dccons true ting rep rese ntations o f na tional image ry. A combination of obse rvati onal research, secondary research and sem iotic analysis is undertaken to analyse the ways in which national identity ha~ been co mmun icated to touri sts in the s imila r capital cities of th e S A and Austral ia. Th is paper focu ses on ' Rcp resenta tion a nd Na tion al Image! Identity ' an d 'The Role of the Bu ilt Enviro nment in Image an d Representati on ' two o f th e research themes ide ntified for thi s 'Global Change and Tourism in Nationnl Capik1ls' spec ia l edrtion of Current Issu es ill Tourism .

Sociologia Ruralis, 2003

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2006

Economic geographies involve the struggle to consume, exchange and produce value through the social construction of material circuits of value capable of being sustained across space and time. They are performed and practised through a constant tension between certain material imperatives of societal reproduction, the potentially infinite, day-today variability of economic practice, social relations and conceptions of value, and the regulatory and calculable frame of 'the economy'. Thus economic geographies are subject to more-or less-politically reflexive modes of evaluation and regulation involving multiple, simultaneously-practised forms and relations of value. They are, therefore, part and parcel of everyday social life, always hybrid and always in a state of becoming. Three vignettes illustrate economic geographies as complex social practices with a constant tendency to incoherence. They demonstrate, thereby, the ordinariness of economies.

Annals of Tourism Research, 2002

Regional Studies Association International Conference …, 2005

2006

Towards Effective Place Brand Management