Embodying the Map: Tourism Practices in Berlin

Abstract

Maps are often considered by tourism scholars as superimposed representations that reduce\ud visitors to passive executors of pre-designed routes. Combining new post-representational\ud perspectives in map studies with a concept of tourism as a corporeal, vividly lived and active\ud experience, this article highlights the tensions between representation/power and practice/\ud resistance within tourism cartography. The case study of the German capital is used to illustrate\ud the concept that tourists can experience a ‘flirtatious’, intentional and enriching encounter\ud with their destinations ‘dwelling in’, rather than passively enacting or subverting cartographic\ud representations. Through an autoethnographical account and a cinematic-cartographical reading,\ud the author explores the role of actual and virtual embodiment in the experiencing of map spaces,\ud suggesting that Berlin’s ‘cartographic anxiety’ need not be understood as a form of tourism’s\ud power of seduction

Placing Nature(s) on Safari

“…One safari goer whom I interviewed post safari showed me a map he had purchased, on which he had inscribed the route the safari had taken through the NCA-the roads were highlighted in dark pen, and the campsites were circled. The signification of road and roadside places on this visitor's map, made moot as an instrument to guide travel by his status as a passenger, exemplifies the idea of cartographic "dwelling in" post safari (Rossetto, 2012). In aggregate, roads form one of the principal places emplaced, traversed, and categorized on safari.…”

Mapscapes on the Urban Surface: Notes in the Form of a Photo Essay (Istanbul, 2010)

“…The map seems to function less as a despotic technology that forces passive visitors to spasmodically follow predetermined routes than as a comfortable space to ''dwell in'' (Rossetto 2012). The postures and rhythms of map practitioners are highly indicative: they can communicate, for instance, anxiety or quietness, a nervous state or astonishment.…”

The strange and spooky battle over bats and black dresses: The commodification of Whitby Goth Weekend and the loss of a subculture

“…This dark side to performativity is associated with instrumentality: the control of the tourist industry, the bottom-line economics that put profit before anything else, and the ways in which individual agency has been limited to making meaningless choices in a (post)modern market. This fear of instrumentality is expressed by many researchers in tourist studies (Rojek and Urry, 1997;Rossetto, 2012;Urry, 1990), and has led some to argue that all tourism by definition is instrumental and hegemonically Western (Smith, 2012). The very notion of being a tourist is problematic, despite the arguments of Crouch et al (2001) that travel and tourism can be meaningful encounters for both sides of the encounter: tourists and travellers might think they are exploring themselves and others and contributing to the betterment of human relations, but they visit the places they travel to with money and power.…”