CATS will hold the CATS Tourism Online Forum Series (TOFS) vol.21 "Tourist Atmospheres" on Thursday, July 20.

Anyone is welcome to attend. We look forward to your participation.

Tourist Atmospheres

Abstract:
I argue that tourist theory has suffered from an over-emphasis on symbolic meanings and interpretations. However, I contend that tourism is as much about feeling as meaning; in this sense, tourism is concerned with seeking a temporary shift in emotional, affective and sensory experience. One approach to exploring these emotional, sensory and affective transformations is by considering tourist desires to enter different kinds of atmosphere. While atmospheres are difficult to describe, they are widely recognisable in many settings.  The lecture will start by providing a theoretical account of atmosphere, after which I focus on design of distinctive spaces to produce predictable, familiar tourist atmospheres but also how in other tourist contexts such atmospheres are more loosely regulated. Second, I emphasise that tourists are not passive but are co-producers of atmospheres. Third, I examine how tourist atmospheres are also unpredictable, perhaps shaped by concerns about the risks of terrorism, disease and violence. I conclude by claiming that for tourists, the positive experience of an atmosphere can be as fulfilling as an encounter with a meaning-ful historical or cultural attraction.

Hosted by:
Hokkaido University, Center for Advanced Tourism Studies (CATS)

Date/Time: Thursday 20 July 2023 | 18:30 - 20:00(JST)

Venue: Online (Zoom Webinar)

Language: English

Capacity: 50 persons

Participation fee: Free to join (pre-registration system)

Speaker: Prof. Tim Edensor
Bio:
Tim Edensor is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the Institute of Place Management, Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of Tourists at the Taj (1998), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2002), Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (2005), From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination and Gloom (2017) and Stone: Stories of Urban Materiality (2020). He is editor of Geographies of Rhythm (2010), and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Place (2020), Rethinking Darkness: Cultures, Histories, Practices (2020) and Weather: Spaces, Mobilities and Affects (2020). His most recent publication is Landscape, Materiality and Heritage: An Object Biography (2022), a book about a Scottish medieval cross.

Moderator: Dr. Meng Qu

Registration:
Please register at the URL below. Application deadline is Wednesday, July 19, 2023.

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Rj3HTFnbSf-10D9ax8CqqQ

Contact:
Hokkaido University, Center for Advanced Tourism Studies (CATS)
online-forum(at)cats.hokudai.ac.jp
※Please replace the (at) part with @.