The development of tourist culture and the formation of social and cultural identities 1800 – 1914, with particular reference to Central Europe

Steward, Jill (2008) The development of tourist culture and the formation of social and cultural identities 1800 – 1914, with particular reference to Central Europe. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

The essays presented here for submission for the degree of PhD by publication were published between 1998 and 2006 and (with one exception) consist of sole-authored studies in cultural history focused on the development of tourist culture in the period 1800-1914. Cultural history as a field of academic study is a rich area for interdisciplinary research and these case studies draw on a wide range of disciplines — anthropology, cultural geography, the history of medicine, visual culture, media and literature for theoretical and methodological support. Together, they constitute a coherent examination of the material and cultural factors influencing the development and expansion of tourist culture across the European continent and an exploration of its role in the formation of the social and cultural identities of people and places in the period 1800-1914, in different contexts and from different perspectives. The essays fall into two main groups. The first focuses on material and cultural factors influencing the growth of tourism in central Europe: its relationship to the development of urban culture and nationalism in the region and to the discourses and practices relating to health and leisure that supported the spa trade. A particular concern is the contribution of a developing tourist culture to the formation of cultural identities within the Habsburg Monarchy in an era of growing nationalism. For the state, tourism represented an opportunity to counteract its growing weakness by capitalising on the imperial image (a key element in touristic images of Vienna), to bolster the image of the Monarchy abroad and attract valuable foreign currency. At the same time the growth of tourism contributed to that weakness by reinforcing perceptions of cultural distinctiveness in areas influenced by growing national and regional self-consciousness. The second group of essays focuses on the production of tourists and the creation of a market for different types of tourism through an examination of the discourses influencing tourist motivations and behaviours, the experience and performance of place and the broader question of how and why tourists were attracted to particular places. A theme running through both sets of essays is that of the way that the spread of tourist culture, geographically and socially, contributed to the formation of cultural identities as particular social groups incorporated tourist practices into their lifestyles, and the places they visited acquired distinctive tourist images. Key factors in this process were the media and cultural industries responsible for the production and dissemination of travel-related forms of literature and visual culture. These industries helped to shape tourism as an economic and social institution by influencing the way in which particular places were produced for tourists and the manner in which they were perceived, experienced and performed as, for example, in case of the relationship between the British and different parts of continental Europe.

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