Local Perspectives on Cultural Tourism and Cultural Sustainability

Abstract

The objective of the chapter is to explore cultural tourism perceptions, practices, concerns, and prospects among local residents and business representatives in the Cyclades, specifically three sites (Andros, Syros, and Santorini), and to draw their implications for local cultural sustainability. For this purpose, it relies methodologically on an on-site intensive questionnaire survey, effectuated in the context of the SPOT HORIZON2020 EU project (2020-22) on cultural tourism. The findings show that the role of culture as an actual tourism attraction and the potential for further growth in cultural tourism, and consequently in local development, are broadly recognized from all sides involved in the survey. Conversely, the role of tourism in these destinations' cultural development, management, and appropriation is viewed with some trepidation and ambivalence, while, in the relative absence of the state, local residents and tourism- or culture-related businesses appear to have taken most aspects of cultural tourism planning and management in their hands.

‘Celtic Meets Slavic’: The Social Sustainability of Cornish and Silesian Heritage in Europe and Overseas

“…In this way, Terkenli and Georgoula (2022, p. 26) seek to emphasise the recentring of the concept of culture in the very study of sustainability, for culture "engulfs all tangible and intangible manifestations of human life and obviously permeates all principles and precepts of sustainability." We adopt this line of enquiry from Terkenli and Georgoula (2022), in that culture is a core pillar of sustainability (e.g., in the definition provided by the UN, 1987), and view this as an extension of Fishman's (1991) theorization (albeit from a different perspective) which sociolinguists are used to. Following Wells (2020), we use this broader idea of sociocultural sustainability in the understanding that, important as linguistic heritage is, if we 3 are to capture the full sociocultural dynamics of heritage in our respective sites, we must somehow look beyond ideas of language loss to a broader view on the sustainability of culture.…”