Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Film Tourism (Worlds of Imagination. A Comparative Study of Film Tourism in India, Brazil, Jamaica, South Korea and the United Kingdom.)

Teaser

\"The research project “Worlds of Imagination” focuses on film tourism: the phenomenon of people visiting locations from popular films or TV series. Recent years have seen explosive growth in this type of tourism, with far-reaching implications for the experience and...

Summary

\"The research project “Worlds of Imagination” focuses on film tourism: the phenomenon of people visiting locations from popular films or TV series. Recent years have seen explosive growth in this type of tourism, with far-reaching implications for the experience and organization of landscapes. This project investigates why and under what circumstances films or TV series give rise to new tourism flows, and which variations can be found based on the specific characteristics of the films/series, local film or tourism policies and the tourists involved.

Our premise is that every person possesses a geographical imagination: a cohesive picture of places, regions and countries. The construction of this geographical imagination is increasingly reliant on media images. This development has led to a widespread desire for a personal, unmediated experience of lieux d’imagination: actual locations that can serve as material validation. What we are asserting in this project is that the emergence of these lieux d’imagination is not a univocal process, but involves significant variations depending on, amongst other, cross-cultural differences in the current global society.

Film tourism has received a growing amount of attention from scholars in various academic disciplines. However, the existing knowledge about this phenomenon is still highly fragmented and mostly based on individual case studies from Western countries. This project is the first to adopt an international comparative approach, involving an analysis and comparison of film tourism in five countries of varying size and wealth from different continents. By investigating commonalities and differences, we highlight how media stimulate the geographical imagination and literally ‘move’ their audiences in a variety of contexts. The research is based on a combination of qualitative content analysis, ethnographic fieldwork and experimental methods.

The \"\"Worlds of Imagination\"\" project focuses on the phenomenon of film tourism in five locations, divided over five sub-projects. In addition, the Principal Investigator tackles more general questions, based on cross-project comparisons.

The sub-project taking place in Brazil investigates the sustainability of media tourism in sensitive areas through in-depth interviews with various actors involved in the media (and) tourism industries. Presently, four rounds of fieldwork were conducted (for two case studies), which so far yielded one academic paper (submitted for publication, forthcoming). The PhD candidate Débora Póvoa continues to gather and analyse data for upcoming publications.

The India sub-project looks closely at the influence of the Bollywood cinema. Until this point, PhD candidate Apoorva Nanjangud conducted fieldwork in the Netherlands, with a focus on the cinematic imaginations of India among the Dutch-Hindustani Indian diaspora; and in Iceland, with a focus on Indian tourists visiting Iceland under the influence of Bollywood cinema. The in-depth interviews conducted with various stakeholders so far resulted in the publication of one academic article (2019) and the submission for publication of a second article (forthcoming).

The first case study in the UK sub-project addresses the ways in which the tourist gaze is constructed within film tours. For this investigation, PhD candidate Rosa Schiavone conducted participant observations in Edinburgh, gathering an extensive collection of field notes, personal voice recordings, online itineraries photographs, screenshots and information brochures. This resulted so far in one academic publication (submitted, forthcoming). Her second case study focuses on the ways in which heritage sites in Scotland make use of popular culture in the re-telling of local histories. The fieldwork will take place in 2019 and will include methods of site analysis, qualitative interviewing and thematic analysis of secondary documents.

For the sub-project addressing film tourism in Jamaic\"

Work performed

Since the beginning of the project, the team has registered several notable accomplishments. First, the conference “Locating Imagination: Popular Culture, Tourism, and Belonging”, organized by the Principal Investigator in April 2017, was a highly successful event, bringing together more than hundred excellent researchers from around the world to discuss the interconnections between the fields of tourism and popular culture in the current media age and providing the perfect stage for the kick-off of our project (for more information, please visit http://www.nefca.eu/page/popcom_1.aspx.). Moreover, the invited experts provided valuable feedback for the starting phase of the individual projects. Secondly, the team has been meeting on a monthly basis to discuss state-of-the-art literature and to monitor the progress of research and future actions. These meetings have been an important space for team consolidation and have resulted in productive plans of action, such as the development of workshops and academic seminars that can aid the dissemination of information among scholars as well as the broader public. Lastly, using a multidisciplinary approach, the team has collected and analysed a rich corpus of data that resulted in several academic publications.

SP UNITED KINGDOM
For the UK sub-project, the researcher so far conducted fieldwork for two case studies. The first case study explores how the tourist gaze is constructed within film tours in (the proximity to) Edinburgh. For this study, Schiavone explored four online film tours through participant observation. During these tours, the researcher observed the tours in terms of elements they consisted of, the way they were structured, the kinds of narratives that are provided. The primary data gathered from this fieldwork consists of extensive field notes, screenshots from the apps and online itineraries and personal photographs. In a second fieldtrip, Schiavone participated in four film tours in and around Edinburgh (a combination of a walking tour and a bus tour). The primary data gathered from this fieldwork consists of extensive field notes, personal voice recordings with methodological and theoretical reflections, photographs of the filming sites and information brochures. All data is stored in the Erasmus secure data vault, which is only accessible to the World of Imagination research team.

Currently, Schiavone is working on her second case study that explores the ways in which heritage sites in Scotland make use of popular culture in the re-telling of local histories. Fieldwork for this case study will start from June 2019 onwards. The main methods that will be deployed are site analysis, qualitative interviewing and thematic analysis of secondary documents. A selection of heritage sites in Scotland will be subjected to a site analysis. Moreover, interviews will be conducted with people working at these heritage sites. In addition, promotional material in the form of for example brochures or advertisements will be thematically analysed.

SP INDIA
For the India sub-project, the first case study involved interviewing people from the Dutch-Hindustani Indian diaspora to understand their cinematic imaginations of India. Nanjangud’s fieldwork was conducted with Hindustani people in the Netherlands and took place in different cities across the country. 17 interviews were conducted and later transcribed and analysed. This resulted in a research paper, which was submitted to the International Journal of Cultural Studies. Unfortunately, the paper was recently rejected by the journal. Nanjangud is currently revising the paper based on the reviewers’ feedback and preparing a new submission to an alternative journal later this month.

For her second case study, Nanjangud focused on the emergence of Iceland as a tourist destination among Indian tourists under the influence of Bollywood cinema. Moreover, she looked at the idea of re-enactments of Bollywood songs by the touris

Final results

General
Since the beginning of the project, the research team has adopted an innovative approach to the study of film tourism. Our international comparative approach delivers a fundamental contribution to a growing but fragmented field of research. Not only does this approach challenge the Western bias of film tourism studies, it also, for the first time, brings the (often uneven) global politics of film tourism to the fore. Secondly, this project delivers a theorization of the role and importance of the imagination, a universal concept that has been largely under the radar of social and cultural scientists. Thirdly, based on a multidisciplinary approach, this project combines new methods such as cultural mapping with more traditional methods as participant observation and interviewing. Finally, this project offers an analysis of the growing influence of popular media culture on perceptions of belonging and related notions of local, regional or national identity in a globalized world. This theme is not only theoretically relevant but also of practical use for cultural heritage institutions, policy makers and other stakeholders on tourism and culture. Moreover, each sub-project contributes with its own unique features to furthering the state-of-the-art knowledge in the field.

The Brazil sub-project contributes to a scarce body of academic literature that deals with locals’ perceptions about film tourism, investigating the particularities of filming locations and the related tourism practices in sensitive territories of Brazil. Moreover, the sub-project brings a valuable contribution to the field by underlining the need for a holistic understanding of the ecology of film tourism and by considering the power dynamics and potential tensions between all the actors involved in the process.

The Jamaica & Caribbean sub-project brings a relevant novel contribution to theoretical conceptualizations of film tourism by addressing this phenomenon form a “demand-side perspective” and by contextualizing, historicizing and critically approaching the research objects within the study of the creative industries (as a means of development) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Caribbean.

The United Kingdom sub-project expands the current theoretical debates by thoroughly examining the conflation of representative space and physical space within (film) tourism practices. Moreover, it generates valuable new empirical insights through the use of ethnographic methods, elucidating the specific ways in which this this conflation can be observed in the practice of film tours.

The South Korea sub-project zooms in on the scarcely discussed work of K-drama location bloggers, whose largely unpaid work to identify and collate filming locations online is crucial in facilitating media tourism flows. Moreover, the sub-project innovatively applies ethnographic interviewing to online fandom, allowing for highly relevant insights into the motivations, judgements and justifications given by fans themselves with regards to their work of location blogging.

In addition to its imperative scholarly contribution to the study of Bollywood tourism and the Indian diaspora, the India sub-project laid the foundation for a collaboration with Savitribai Phule Pune University, India. This is an important way of giving back academic input and generating global and local knowledge on the topic of Bollywood tourism, thereby adding to the holistic value of the project.

Similarly, the development of the new master’s course ‘Media tourism’ by the Principal Investigator is a highly valuable tool for the dissemination of the state-of-the-art knowledge generated by the ERC project and its transfer to new
generations of international students.

Website & more info

More info: http://worldsofimagination.eu.