Commodification of contested borderscapes for tourism development: Viability, community representation and equity of relic Iron Curtain and Sudetenland heritage tourism landscapes

Arie Stoffelen, Dominique Vanneste

OnderzoeksoutputAcademicpeer review

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Tourism can symbolically underpin policies for economic and political cross-border cooperation but the resulting rhetoric may not be supported by all tourism-related stakeholders. Our research on the viability, community representation and ethical components of the Iron Curtain Trail and the European Green Belt in the German-Czech borderlands shows that these tourism projects commodify conflictive borderland histories to gain support for a European-wide cross-border cooperation discourse. Despite these efforts, both projects are contested on local levels. The contestations result from the selectivity of EU-inspired memory politics and lacking participative governance across the border. This combination undermines the capacity to deal with (i) different socio-spatial identities, creating challenging encounters between commodified borderland histories and locals with their memories; (ii) development and promotion challenges of the tourism projects, potentially undermining their viability as tourism products. In the light of these contestations, defining when EU-inspired borderland tourism projects are successful becomes a political issue with important moral questions regarding whose memory should be commodified, and for which purposes.
Originele taal-2English
TitelBorderless worlds for whom? Ethics, moralities and mobilities
RedacteurenAnssi Paasi, Eeva-Kaisa Prokkola, Jarkko Saarinen, Kaj Zimmerbauer
Plaats van productieLondon
UitgeverijRoutledge
Hoofdstuk10
Pagina's139-153
Aantal pagina's15
ISBN van elektronische versie9780429427817
ISBN van geprinte versie9780815360025
StatusPublished - 2019

Publicatie series

NaamBorder Regions Series
UitgeverijRoutledge

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