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- Convenors:
-
Reza Masoudi Nejad
(SOAS, University of London)
Tom Selwyn (SOAS)
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- Stream:
- Movement
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 15 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel looks at the reports and performances by historic and contemporary travellers (from Heroditus to Ibn Battuta to Mark Twain to modern tourists and pilgrims to assess the extent to which they are not only shaped by the world but also actively shape it.
Long Abstract:
This panel discusses the extent to which "imagined geographies" (to follow Said) shape and re-shape global, regional, and local landscapes. The reports, writings, and practices of travellers - from Heroditus to Ibn Battuta to Mark Twain to contemporary tourists and pilgrims - will be explored with a view to identifying how their differing views of the world have taken part in the shaping of global power relations, regional divisions and alliances, and local constructions of identity. In short, the panel invests travellers with active force in reshaping global, regional, and local political geography. It seeks to illustrate/inform this theoretical framework with detailed ethnographic examples ranging from the negotiation of urban landscapes to the shaping of meaning in pilgrimage sites to the formation of global dispositions about the politico-economic geography of the world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 15 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
This paper considers the role of walking and hiking as performance associated with the imagining of both internal and external geographies. It builds on the biblical/qur’anic accounts of Abraham’s journeys from his home in the Chaldean city of Ur through Canaan to Egypt and back to Hebron and also the reflections by JJ Rousseau in his Memories of a Solitary Walker. It contrasts the role of walking tours in Israel and Palestine, reflecting on their distinctive ideological end products, the former with ideas of nation and nationalism, the latter with cosmopolitanism and cultural pluralism.
Paper long abstract:
The journey of the prophet Abraham from the Chaldean city of Ur, through Canaan, to Egypt, and ending in Hebron is described in both bible and Qur’an. This iconic journey inspired the founding in 2006 of the Abraham Path Initiative by colleagues from the Harvard University Negotiation Project as a means of encouraging walking on the re-imagined route of the prophet as a means of knowing and understanding the region better. In 2014 Masar Ibrahim al-Khalil, a specifically Palestinian version of that part of Abraham’s journey through what is now Palestine - co-founded by Ra’ed Sa’adeh, chair of the Rozana Association and other organisations (notably the Network for Experimental Palestinian Tourism Organizations (NEPTO)) supporting Palestinian identities, culture, rural tourism, fair trade, and the arts - was launched with a World Bank grant to “encourage economic development in fragile communities”. Since then Masar Ibrahim has developed from strength to strength and has become the subject of a number of subsequent projects and work by researchers and writers in Palestine and beyond, including the UK.
Inspired by the story of Abraham’s journeys, Rousseau’s Memories of a Solitary Walker, and other walking and hiking projects within and outside the region, this paper considers how walking tours in both Palestine and Israel have become significant activities concerned with the expression of socio-cultural identities. However, the ideological productions of the walking/hiking projects in both countries differ. While walking tours in Israel are associated with nationalist ideas and practices, walks in Palestine – in particular on the Masar Ibrahim – are framed by emphases on cosmopolitanism and cultural pluralism. Reflecting on these distinctions allows us to explore the role of walking in both internal psychological reflections (a la Rousseau) and in performances of external geographical and political exploration (as in Masar Ibrahim).
Paper short abstract:
Exploring walking as performance in Romantic and suburban spaces, this paper considers how a 21st century mother might respond to constructions of the maternal role inherited from earlier artists' descriptions of these geographies.
Paper long abstract:
The travelling poets of the Romantic movement imagined the English landscape as a silent benevolent maternal background for the vulnerable yet heroic male wanderer or artist; "Dear Nature is the kindest mother still", exclaims Byron. The landscape as a mother to this childlike subject remains a powerful cultural reference; she is nation, home, the domestic. In the 20th century, rock and punk musicians maternalised spaces again; this time identifying themselves against the monotony and smothering convention of suburban geographies, from which they desired to escape. This paper takes these pathetic fallacies as a starting point to consider how geographical notions have shaped middle class English motherhood, and to reflect on ways in which a human mother might travel in maternalised landscapes in order to perform her own responses to these conceptions.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation will analyze the role of tourist practices and performances and their capacity - real and potential- to resignify and transform the physical, social and cultural landscape of tourist favelas in Rio de Janeiro.
Paper long abstract:
Slum tourism is a controverted type of alternative tourism that since 1990 has been rising in popularity and sites in urban destinations north and south of the world. This phenomenon was studied in different fields and from multiple perspectives for over thirty years. However, this ongoing research will focus on the networks stitched between human and non-human actors through tourist practices and performances in favela -slum- Santa Marta, located on the edge of one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro. The effects and affects of these connections will be analysed to draw on the potential of tourism to shorten the symbolic and physical distances between the formal and informal city. The presentation will show the results of ethnographic fieldwork carried out by the author for six months in this community which had been carrying community-based tourism officially since 2010. While doing tourism, tourists themselves become co-producers of spatial and symbolic realities, making people, places and narratives visible or invisible, trivial or relevant. Is during this negotiation that favela dwellers have the opportunity to create their narratives, give voice to their struggles and promote their cultural production. Yet, the need for public institutions to regulate this sensitive kind of tourism will be highly recommended to prevent communities from being banalised and exploited.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how student teachers' 'geographical imaginaries' influence not only where they choose to go in the context of educational internships abroad, but also their actions during the stay, as well as what they expect to learn based on their imaginaries of the chosen destination.
Paper long abstract:
Based on three months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines and Denmark, this paper examines how student teachers' 'geographical imaginaries' influence on choice of destination, actions, and expectations of learning, in the context of educational internships abroad. In a context of increased internationalisation of higher education (IoHE), it is relevant to explore how this instrument of internationalisation and the students who engage in educational internships shape the world.
By employing spatial and mobilities theories, I focus on the movement of people, knowledge, and educational practices, in order to disrupt the flat and spatial fixities, which are often found within research on IoHE (Larsen 2016). Salazar (2012), Kölbel (2018), and Thompson's (2017) ideas about geographical imaginaries inspire the study.
Based on the material, I argue that 'geographical imaginaries' shape not only Danish students' choice of destination for outgoing mobility, but also what they find possible to learn during their stay abroad. The study shows that using geographical imaginaries as an analytical perspective can capture the historical and political influences on students' motives for choosing a certain part of the world to travel to and that students' actions are influenced by imaginaries about the correct way of teaching, the good pupil, and good teacher.
The study contributes to the existing field of research within IoHE with empirical knowledge and with new perspectives of what influence student flows and students' decision-making. This provides a critical North-South perspective to the predominant understanding of educational internship as a way to achieve personal and professional development.