1st Edition

Globalized Nostalgia Tourism, Heritage, and the Politics of Place

By Christina M. Ceisel Copyright 2018
    164 Pages 32 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    164 Pages 32 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    In Globalized Nostalgia, Christina Ceisel shows how national identity is being remade for the global marketplace. Through media, cultural events, foodways, and personal narratives, we see how notions of the past are mobilized towards varied political, economic, and cultural ends.

    In Galicia, Spain, Ceisel points towards tourism as one mode of cosmopolitan engagement, revisiting food festivals, wine tours, fishing excursions and reality television shows. She identifies globalized nostalgia as a feeling deeply connected to national identity – that these ‘performances’ of tourist activity rely on claims to an authentic past based on "heritage" for value to the consumer. While such strategies work to brand the nation, Ceisel demonstrates how they may also be employed towards emancipation and an inclusive participatory democracy.

    Placing her own lived experience within the context of our historical present, relying on interpretive methods, including performance autoethnography, Ceisel highlights the tensions embedded in contemporary transnational cultural politics. Through the development of innovative methodological tools, Ceisel points towards new ways of thinking about the politics of belonging. Ultimately, Ceisel argues that we need to reorient our understandings of authenticity and heritage to accommodate the realities of hybridity and diaspora.

    Preface

    1. Introduction: The City of Culture

    2. The Library and Archive of Galicia: Memory, Heritage, and History

    3. Gaiás Center Museum: Cultural Performances

    4. Center for Creative Enterprising of Galicia: Transnational Commodity Culture

    5. Centre for Cultural Innovation: Cultural Policymaking

    6. Conclusion: Cantina

    Bibliography

    Biography

    Christina M. Ceisel is Assistant Professor of Communications at California State University, Fullerton. She holds her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a M.A. from the University of Chicago.