Performing national identities in spaces of tourism

Abstract

A contemporary way of understanding tourism is to approach travel as a means of creating new societies. Instead of looking at cultures commodified as destinations for tourist consumption, it is worth exploring tourism itself as emergent culture. This paper goes beyond ‘destinations’ to explore national tourism discourses and practices by situating interactive and embodied spaces invested with emergent meanings. It focuses on the relationship between the constructions of national identity and tourism and situates the study in Singapore to investigate discursive spaces in terms of visualities, materialities and reflexivities. The research critically evaluates the relationships, experiences and performances that inform a bricolage research methodology. Through questioning the relationship between Singapore’s nation building project and tourism policy, tourist practice is understood in the context of the everyday through ‘local’ consumption, its translation into tourist identities and vice versa.