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Accepted Paper
Where in Scotland is Dumfries and Galloway? Tourism as a vehicle for locating and challenging national and local politics, economics and identity in periphery Scotland
Broughton Anderson
(University of Massachusetts)
Paper short abstract
In the midst of a national tourism plan, periphery regions often find themselves at a crossroads. Though tourism is an important economic endeavor it also highlights how regions who do not "fit" the tourist expectation, struggle to compete for profits.
Paper long abstract
To the tourist, Scotland, as promoted by its national tourist site, elicits a distinctive picture: castles, tartans, bagpipes, the highlands and kilts. However, regions on the periphery of the nation often struggle to attract tourists because they do not always "fit" this national picture. I examine Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland as a site at the crossroads of national tourism: an important economic endeavor that concomitantly highlights how marginalized regions struggle to compete for tourism profits and challenges national policies designed to promote economic development. As an archaeologist, I approach tourism, its practices and processes, as artefacts/material culture that reveal local agency in the midst of hegemony. The use of ethnography uncovers locals' everyday experiences with their past and present landscape revealing a diverse but no less intimate relationship with the changes brought about by tourism. Tourism thus becomes a vehicle for exposing deeper political, economic and social issues at play in Scotland's development as a nation.
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed
Tourism as social contest
EPapers