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Accepted Paper:
The right price: local bargains for global players
Victor Alneng
(Stockholm University)
Paper short abstract:
The fact that, unlike commodities in general, the souvenir does not appear at first as a trivial thing but as immediately extraordinary and exclusive, needs to be unpacked.
Paper long abstract:
The fact that, unlike commodities in general, the souvenir does not appear at first as a trivial thing but as immediately extraordinary and exclusive, needs to be unpacked. A souvenir is a souvenir only to the degree it can be made to stand in for the successful establishment of real social relations in a world where commercialism otherwise prevails. Hereof consists the Gordian Knot of the souvenir - as a symbol of a successful going-beyond what Marx famously dubbed commodity fetishism, that is, the de-humanizing displacement of relations between people onto relations between things, the souvenir is a reified social relation existing in order to efface the causes of its existence.
Taking as its starting point the above mentioned structural-dialectical paradox of the souvenir, the proposed paper examines bargaining as the method of choice for many western tourists to elevate a commodity to the level of souvenir status and, in the process, establish memorable authentic social relations with the locals. It is argued that undergirding this symbolic production of the souvenir is the excess production of the touristic Others as simultaneously both authentic over-chargers and intrinsically poor. Accordingly, the intended critique of commercialism of budget travellers is exemplified as reconciling with a global economy where disruptive hierarchies are set flexibly as seemingly opposed fields of interests join forces and, from different flanks, impede and command movements while administer one-way global flows of wealth. The enduring result, however accidental from the point of view of the souvenir-hunters, is a safeguarding of capital and a division of labour with which the global poor are required to submit themselves as local - exotic, authentic, cheap, cost-effective, bankable - in relation to the plutocratic global.
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed
The cultural politics of touristic fantasies: addressing the 'behind-the-scene' scene
EPapers