CLAUDINO FERREIRA

Tourism, culture and urban policies

 

In recent decades, tourism and culture became major tools in the context of policies for urban regeneration and city image boosterism. Policies for economic and social regeneration of cities, based on investement in tourism, arts and culture, have been developed not only in cities in process of deindustrialization, but also in cities seeking to improve their image and position in international markets. The articulation between tourism, culture and urban policies define an interesting field of sociological enquiry, in wich  we can: (1) observe and further the discussion on contemporary trends of social, economic and cultural change related to tourist activity and processes of economic and cultural globalization; and (2) explore theoretical and analytical connections between the more specialized fiels of tourism, culture and urban studies, and also between these and other theoretical frameworks.

 

My main concern here relates to the way in which the effects of tourism oriented policies and strategies on urban life have been discussed and analysed, especially when issues related to globalization are at steak. In most studies, we can detect a general tendency to interpret effects of globalization and tourism in a quite mechanic way, reproducing a deterministic, and in many cases not empirically sustained, approach to social, economic and cultural change. My argument, then, is that we need to develop conceptual and analytical frameworks that, dealing with diverse fields of analysis and theoretical traditions, can help clarify empirically how urban and cultural changes related to globalization and tourism oriented strategies are socially produced and regulated in social practice.

 

In this sense, i suggest that the concepts of mediation and translation, as they have been developed within social studies of science and technology, can provide us with useful tools to understand the way through which social, economic and cultural change is generated in the context of processes or urban regeneration related to tourism and competitiveness of cities in global markets. This concepts, and the theoretical concerns they reflect upon, help both to: (1) understand the complex, contingent and non deterministic nature of processes of social and cultural change related with tourism and globalization; and (2) clarify the role that situated human and non-human actors play in those processes.