Rituals at Thiepval Memorial on the Somme
Battlefield, 2013 | A. Hertzog
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destinations. Some places of memory are very
attractive for small communities: located outside the
spaces of official or visible tourist enhancement, but
invested with strong and identity-based meanings;
without monuments or museums, but invested by
discreet and often ephemeral memorial practices
(flower deposits…), «turning them into attractions
of sorts completely outside the vision of official
tourism authorities» (Marschall, 2015), such as
the villages of Silesia visited by german tourists or
the ruins of Palestinian villages Israel, visited by
Palestinians in exile.
The globalization of tourism associated with
places of memory thus leads to new polarities, in
constant evolutions. The research could investigate
2/ Tourism, places of
memory and politics: The
tourist attractiveness of places
of memory is part of complex
processes where memory work
and tourism development
interact, in response to
numerous challenges, revealing
the political dimension of
tourism.
more of these global processes of recognition and A place can be characterized as a “destination” if
dynamics of memory, which lead to an emergence actors invest on it with meaning, deploy mobility,
of “mass destinations”, as well as a growing and articulate it with tourism development
fragmentation of geography of remembrance practices. These can be very diverse and require
tourism. Some places of memory have become global a series of voluntary and intentional actions on
destinations because of the unpreceted violence the part of a whole series of actors to develop the
of which they were the theaters for humanity, but visibility and the attractiveness of the place. By
also according to the international recognition they focusing on policies to enhance tourism in places
benefit – which leads us to the second aspect of this of memory, some studies explore the explicitly
contribution. political dimension of tourism, showing how tourism
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 3