[URBANTH-L] CFP: Things that Move: The Material Worlds of Tourism and Travel

[Angela Jancius]

Things that Move:
The Material Worlds of Tourism and Travel
19 - 23 July 2007, Leeds, United Kingdom

Whatever the prophecies of 'virtual' reality, we inhabit and move
through the 'real' world of objects. Though tourism and travel are bound
to concepts of time and space, they are also rooted in the material
world - a tangible world of places, things, edifices, buildings,
monuments and 'stuff'. The relationships we develop and share with these
things varies from the remote to the intimate, from the transient to the
lasting and from the passive to the passionate. Within the practices of
tourism and its use (and non-use) of the material world, and, through
the act of travel, objects are given meaning, status, and are endowed
with symbolism and power. Objects construct, represent and even define
the tourist experience. Our journeys through the world of objects
generate a plethora of emotions - pleasure, attachment, belonging,
angst, envy, exclusion, loathing and fear - and feed on-going discourse
and narratives. Moreover, through tourism, and our touristic encounters,
the material world itself is challenged and changed.

CALL FOR PAPERS

In this, our fifth annual international research conference, we seek to
explore the multi-faceted relationships between tourism and material
culture - the built environment, infrastructures, consumer and household
goods, art, souvenirs, ephemera and landscapes. As in previous events,
the conference aims to provoke critical dialogue beyond disciplinary
boundaries and epistemologies and thus we welcome papers from the
following disciplines: aesthetics, anthropology, archaeology,
architecture, art and design history, cultural geography, cultural
studies, ethnology and folklore, history, heritage studies, landscape
studies, linguistics, museum studies, philosophy, political sciences,
sociology, tourism studies and urban/spatial planning.

Key themes of interest to the conference include:
* Histories, mobilities, and the symbolic/political economies of
tourism objects
* The dialectics of tourism objects and places / spaces
* Structures / infrastructures of international tourism -
building / architecture / design for tourism and tourists
* Tourism in the museum
* Tourist art and art for tourists
* The performance of material culture in the tourism realm
* Language and the translation of objects in tourism
* The tourist souvenir - commodity fetishism and religious relics
* The tourist object as metaphor and memory
* Ownership, display and interpretation - contested pasts and
present
* Curating for tourism - collecting the worlds of the tourist
* Overcoming the material through the virtual - future realms of
tourist experience

Please submit your 300 word abstract including a title and full contact
details as an electronic file to Professor Mike Robinson
(ctcc at leedsmet.ac.uk) as soon as possible but no later than March 23rd
2007.

More information on this conference can soon be found at
www.tourism-culture.com <http://www.tourism-culture.com/> .