In this chapter I discuss the relationships between tourism, nation-state building and development processes in the Eastern Adriatic (although North-Eastern Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia shall also be included). In the first subchapter I intend to frame the relational and interactive context of interplay between tourism, cultural identities, technological-economic development and nation building. Particularly, I highlight the ambivalent role of the sea and the unexpected outputs of the material and symbolic national appropriations of the littoral areas. In the second subchapter, I address the topic of the rediscovery of the sea by sketching out the ways the Adriatic sea has been imagined since the time of the Empires till the present days. In this context, I shall point out how social representations of ethnic relations have been interwoven with the social construction of the sea and the sea dwellers, throughout a historical process of terrestrial conversion of the maritime-based social relations. The following two subchapters deal more specifically with the case studies and are mostly focused on the areas of Croatian Istria, Slovenian Istria (or Slovenian littoral), the city of Trieste and its gulf. In the subchapter (3) I try to disentagle the notion of authochtony and its impact on tourism oriented representations thorugh the reconstruction of a process displacements and dislocations across multiple borders. Then (4), I continue on the same issue while I discuss the rural-urban divide and the ways it overlaps present day national and ethnic clevages. Also, in the same subchapter I am concentrating my attention to a case of ethno-national revival of maritime-based narratives, that is to say the case of SloveniaFinally, I believe I should be able to show how the Adriatic region, with special regards to the former Austrian and Venitian territories, deserve to be addressed as a frontier place, where cultural processes are substantially articulated into local, national and Imperial dimensions. Tourism, as any other form of branding or institutional identity-making strategy, cannot but take this threefold relationship between territory and identity into account.[...]
Touring the Frontier: Reinventing the Eastern Adriatic for Tourism
COCCO, EMILIO
2012-01-01
Abstract
In this chapter I discuss the relationships between tourism, nation-state building and development processes in the Eastern Adriatic (although North-Eastern Italian regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia shall also be included). In the first subchapter I intend to frame the relational and interactive context of interplay between tourism, cultural identities, technological-economic development and nation building. Particularly, I highlight the ambivalent role of the sea and the unexpected outputs of the material and symbolic national appropriations of the littoral areas. In the second subchapter, I address the topic of the rediscovery of the sea by sketching out the ways the Adriatic sea has been imagined since the time of the Empires till the present days. In this context, I shall point out how social representations of ethnic relations have been interwoven with the social construction of the sea and the sea dwellers, throughout a historical process of terrestrial conversion of the maritime-based social relations. The following two subchapters deal more specifically with the case studies and are mostly focused on the areas of Croatian Istria, Slovenian Istria (or Slovenian littoral), the city of Trieste and its gulf. In the subchapter (3) I try to disentagle the notion of authochtony and its impact on tourism oriented representations thorugh the reconstruction of a process displacements and dislocations across multiple borders. Then (4), I continue on the same issue while I discuss the rural-urban divide and the ways it overlaps present day national and ethnic clevages. Also, in the same subchapter I am concentrating my attention to a case of ethno-national revival of maritime-based narratives, that is to say the case of SloveniaFinally, I believe I should be able to show how the Adriatic region, with special regards to the former Austrian and Venitian territories, deserve to be addressed as a frontier place, where cultural processes are substantially articulated into local, national and Imperial dimensions. Tourism, as any other form of branding or institutional identity-making strategy, cannot but take this threefold relationship between territory and identity into account.[...]I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
