Tourism and Heritage Journal

Recovery from genocide through tourism: Srebrenica City of Hope Project

Chiara Nencioni — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This manuscript is about how to recover from genocide through tourism. The focus is on Srebrenica, where genocide was committed by Serbs-Bosnian troops in July 1995. Tourism is a form of dealing with the genocide That is what Srebrenica City of Hope project does, fostering remembrance into the future, developing sustainable tourism, and strengthening the region economically. Focus is on community development, as well as natural and cultural heritage protection. In order to host visitors, 12 wooden houses were rebuilt according to traditional architecture. Tourists have the opportunity to stay overnight with host families, take part in guided excursions, enter in touch with the traditional soul of Bosnia, all of this while a new source of income opens up for the locals. The core of the project is the Srebrenica Memorial Centre and Cemetery in Potočari, whose aim is to preserve the memory of the genocide and fight against denial on the path of transitional justice and peace-building. Srebrenica City of Hope promotes tolerance, dialogue, and collective healing and moves forward by creating a network of people working together to cope with distressing memories. To this day, more than 2,600 persons joined the project, collecting visitors from five European countries.

Between cinema and literature: tourism around the figure of Marcel Pagnol in Provence

Yannick Gouchan — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) is an important figure of 20th century French culture as he played a considerable role in cinema from the 1930s to the 1950s and published an autobiographical literary work. Visiting Pagnol’s places allows to follow the itinerary of a playwright, then of a director, screenwriter and film producer, and finally of a writer who left a lasting mark. The article intends to show how Pagnol’s memory is enhanced today by elements relating to interplay (intermediality) between cinema and literature, so as to build a ‘popular-classic’ author figure. The article presents the link between Pagnol’s works, the tourist places and the tourist activities offered by the city of Aubagne around the author, considering that the intermediality at the heart of Pagnol’s artistic works is reflected in the organization of visits to tourist sites. These evoke simultaneously the locations of the films, the author’s biographical sites and the places transfigured by the books. Literary and film tourism around Pagnol in Provence has three main aspects, depending on the objectives sought by visitors: visiting the biographical authentic places, experiencing the places that correspond to imaginary territories in films and books, discovering an original landscape.

Witchcraft tourism in Catemaco, Mexico: a liquid modernity perspective

Mark Speakman — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The picturesque town of Catemaco in Mexico is popular with nature enthusiasts. However, it is also known as the “Land of the Witches” and has become a centre for witchcraft tourism. While most who participate in witchcraft are involved in innocuous white magic rituals, others are motivated by black magic, engaging in what is labelled malevolent tourism, rather than dark tourism. The study investigates, from a societal perspective, why individuals travel to take part in witchcraft practices in Catemaco. It uses Zygmund Bauman’s liquid modernity as a lens from which to view contemporary Mexican society and to consider whether the increasingly fluid, dynamic, and changing nature of society, which can result in personal distress and uncertainty, is a contributing factor towards witchcraft tourism at Catemaco. A qualitative approach is adopted that involves interviews conducted with participants who have travelled to the annual International Witchcraft Congress at Catemaco with the intention of participating in brujeria, along with further interviews undertaken with residents and a witchcraft practitioner. Findings suggest that witchcraft serves as a coping mechanism for certain individuals facing social challenges that have arisen from liquid modernity, such as relationship problems and work-related issues. While most of the participants required white magic rituals, a smaller, yet significant proportion were driven to indulge in black magic.