Battlefield Tourism: History, Place and Interpretation (Routledge Advances in Tourism) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0080453627 ISBN 13: 9780080453620

Publisher: Routledge, 2007

Synopsis

Through a series of case studies that involve past conflict in China, the United States, The South Pacific and Europe, the nature of battlefield sites as tourist locations are explored. As places of past conflict and individual acts of heroism, these sites are places of story telling. How are these stories told? And for what purposes are the stories told? The acts and modes of interpretation are many, ranging from a discourse conducted through silences to the more complex nuanced story telling told through re-enactments of past battles. The book also asks where is the battle-field? - as case studies relate to conflicts that ranged over several hundreds of miles, to, on the other hand, acts of local civil disturbance that subsequently achieved mythic values in a history of national identity. The book is divided into 'acts', these being 'Acts of Resource Management', 'Acts of Silence', 'Acts of Discovery and Rediscovery', 'Acts of Imagination' and 'Acts of Remembrance' and embrace examples as diverse as an re-enactment of past battles on a New Zealand rural town cricket pitch to the towering strength of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, and from the Straits of Taiwan to the centre of Canada.

About this title

About the Author:

Professor Chris Ryan has been at the University of Waikato since 1998, having arrived from his previous post of Professor of Tourism at the Northern Territory University. Chris is the editor of 'Tourism Management', has written well over 100 academic journal articles, book chapters and conference papers and some books. In 1999 he was appointed to the APEC Tourism Minister's Advisory Committee by the Korean Social Science Association for Tourism for the 2000 APEC Tourism Minister's conference, and again for the 2004 APEC Tourism Ministers' Conference held in Chile by the APEC Centre for Sustainable Tourism. Other international work includes work for the World Tourism Organisation. Within New Zealand he has completed work for Tourism New Zealand, the Ministry of Tourism, Tourism Auckland, Tourism Waikato and individual private sector organisations. One of these pieces of work, in 2004, required a review of New Zealand's Tourism Research Strategy on behalf of the Ministry of Tourism. His experiences range from work involved in helping to establish a World Heritage Site to advising on pricing for a jet boat operation. Chris is an Hononary Professor of the University of Wales and visits the Centre for Tourism and Hospitality at the University of Wales Institute at Cardiff on an annual basis. He is interested in research methods and epistemologies, and in tourist behaviours and the consequences of those behaviours in terms of impacts - social, psychological and environmental; and in the business organisations that shape those tourist experiences. His social science background is in economics and psychology having degrees from London, Nottingham, Nottingham Trent and Aston Universities.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0080453627
• ISBN 13: 9780080453620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 316
• Editor: Ryan Chris