 At a TSWG meeting, September 2006. From left: (back) Alex Saragoza, Naomi Leite, Jennifer Phelps Quinn, Alexis Bunten, Stephanie Hom Cary, Megan Willitams, Robin Turner, David Picard. (front) Bertram Gordon, Nelson Graburn, Mahlon Chute. The Tourism Studies Working Group is a network of more than 50 scholars throughout northern California. It includes faculty and graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines, among them anthropology, history, education, landscape architecture, sociology, political science, Spanish & Portuguese, ethnic studies, city planning, gender studies, and many others. While most members come from the UC Berkeley campus, they also hail from other Northern California campuses such as Mills College, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford, CSU-Stanislaus, and Sacramento State. Participants also include visiting scholars in residence at UC Berkeley and other Bay Area campuses. The TSWG is always open to new members. If you are engaged in academic research connected with any aspect of tourism or travel, enjoy cross-disciplinary collaboration, and will be in residence at a Northern California campus for the 2008-09 academic year, please contact us at tourism@berkeley.edu to learn about becoming a Core Member. ABOUT OUR CORE MEMBERS Co-Chairs, 2008-09 Jenny Chio Alexis Bunten Core Research Group Alexis Bunten Charles Carroll Rodrigo Grünewald (2005-06)Caroline Chen Jenny Chio Athinodoros Chronis Mahlon W.L. Chute Jennifer Devine Mark DeWitt Clare Fischer Bertram Gordon Nelson Graburn Stephanie Hom Cary Naomi Leite Jennifer Phelps Quinn Alex Saragoza Maki Tanaka Robin L. Turner Alex Westhoff Visiting Scholars Jinfu Zhang (2007) David Crouch (2007) David Picard (2006) If you are interested in post-doctoral/visiting scholar affiliation with the TSWG, please see our visiting scholar information before writing. ALEXIS BUNTEN  Alexis with Hone Mihaka of Taimai Tours, Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Alexis Celeste Bunten (Co-Chair, 2008-09) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley working with Prof. Nelson Graburn. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at UCLA, and a BA in Art History with honors at Dartmouth College. Her research interests include self-representation, cultural production, Native American Arts, cultural commodification, tourism and indigenous media. Before attending graduate school, Dr. Bunten worked in the heritage industry in Alaska. Her MA thesis focused on the conventional and innovative ways that Southeast Alaska Native people reincorporate commercial art objects (intended for non-Native consumption) into their everyday and ceremonial lives. A chapter based on this work is published in the 2005 Waveland Press anthology, World Art, edited by Robert Welsch, Eric Venbrux, and Pamela Scheffield Rosi. Her dissertation research examined processes of self-commodification in the Native-owned cultural tourism industry. She is currently embarking on comparative research in New Zealand. Throughout her academic path, Dr. Bunten has remained committed to her professional work with various Native American organizations to forward sustainable economic development in cultural tourism, heritage management, and traditional and innovative performing arts. Representative publication: "Sharing Culture or Selling Out? A Case Study of Self-Commodification in the Native-Owned Cultural Tourism Industry along the Northwest Coast of North America," American Ethnologist 35(3). abunten (at) berkeley.edu CHARLES CARROLL  Charlie and daughter "conducting field research" at the boat races in Sisakhet Village, Lao PDR. Charles Carroll is a Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Transformation, Political Economy, and Social Practice at UC Berkeley, and co-founder of the Tourism Studies Working Group. He holds a BA in Rhetoric and Communications from UC Davis, and an MA in Education from CSU Sacramento. He served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2003-04 and 2004-05. His research focuses on social transformations through changing practices of "development" in mainland Southeast Asia. He is currently conducting long-term ethnographic fieldwork on transforming practices of capitalism and cultural tourism within the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Additional recent research and writing projects have focused on tourism, Christian missionaries, and the production of ethnicity in Northern Thailand; changing mathematical practices in textile production workplaces; and schools, learning and the promotion of 'traditional crafts' in Northern Thailand. Representative publication: “My mother's best friend's sister-in-law is coming with us”: Domestic and International Travels With a Group of Lao Tourists,’ in Tim Winter et al., eds., Asia on Tour: The Rise of the Asian Tourist. New York: Routledge, 2008. ccarroll (at) berkeley.edu Caroline Chen is a Ph.D. student in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley. She holds an MLA in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a BA in Practice of Art (Sculpture) and German Studies from UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on ways in which people use designed spaces in improvised or unexpected ways, with emphasis on the implications of such unintended use for landscape architects and planners. Her dissertation, tentatively titled The Danceable City: Improvised Uses of Space by Niu Yangge Fan-Dancers within the Urban System, examines unintended consequences of the "greening" of Beijing -- particularly in anticipation of the 2008 Olympic Games -- for the everyday practices of residents of that city. Representative presentation: "Dancing in the Street in Contemporary Beijing: Improvised Uses and Long-Life Practices within the Urban System." Paper presented at the Sixth Conference of the Pacific Rim Community Design Network, Quanzhou, China, 2006. carolinechen06 (at) berkeley.edu JENNY CHIO  Jenny Chio (Co-Chair, 2008-09) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. She received a BA in Anthropology from Brown University and a MA in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2007-08. Her research interests focus on the study of tourism, media, identity, and landscape in Southwest China. She recently returned to Berkeley after conducting ethnographic fieldwork in two rural villages in Guizhou province and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The aim of her project is to examine how ethnic minority villagers understand tourism and travel against the backdrop of China's development, recent surges of internal migration, and changing conditions of mobility in Chinese society. She has made one film in conjunction with her MA thesis, on China's ethnic minorities in ethnographic films, and aspires to make more films in the future. Representative publication: “The Internal Expansion of China: Tourism and the Production of Distance”. In Tim Winter et al., eds., Asia on Tour: The Rise of the Asian Tourist. New York: Routledge, 2008. jchio (at) berkeley.edu ATHINODOROS CHRONIS  Athinodoros Chronis is Assistant Professor of Marketing at California State University, Stanislaus. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Prof. Chronis’ research interests embrace the experiential aspects of tourism consumption at the junction of history, geography, and material culture. His work examines tourism narrativity, embodied performances, and consumption agency. He has studied extensively the active role of consumers in the construction of cultural imaginaries at multiple heritage sites both in the United States and Europe. He has conducted fieldwork at Gettysburg, the most heavily-visited Civil War battlefield in the United States and he has theorized the co-constructed nature of tourism (Annals of Tourism Research, 2005). His most recent work on collective memory appears in Tourist Studies (2006). Representative publication: "Co-Constructing Heritage at the Gettysburg Storyscape." Annals of Tourism Research 32(2005): 386-406. achronis (at) csustan.edu MAHLON W.L. CHUTE  Mahlon Chute is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at UC Santa Barbara. He holds a BA in Art History from UC Santa Cruz and a MA from UC Santa Barbara in the History of Art and Architecture. Mahlon also teaches two tourism-related courses at UC Santa Cruz: "Tourism and the Built Environment in the United States" and "The Built and Social Environments of Las Vegas." He is currently studying United States architecture, urban planning, and social movements. His specific research interests are located at the intersections of urban planning schemes, critical theories of space, the effects of tourism on material culture and the built environment, negotiations of identity, and notions of routine or civilized violence. His dissertation, tentatively titled "Mississippi of the West": Architecture, Tourism and Segregation in the Las Vegas Valley, 1930-1970, examines the architecture, planning, and social choices that contributed to the creation of a landscape of inequity in southern Nevada. Representative Exhibition: "Wonderlands: Theme Parks, Fairs, and Urban Visions from the Smith and Williams Architectural Archives," University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara, June 1-August 28, 2004. lapis (at) umail.ucsb.edu
Jennifer Devine is a doctoral student in Geography at UC Berkeley. She holds a MSc in Human Geography Research and a MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Geography and International Studies from the University of Washington. Broadly speaking, her research focuses on contemporary dynamics and trajectories of social, political and economic development in Guatemala and Central America. These interests include: tourism, neo-liberalism, multiculturalism, the social production of difference, labor market experiences and discrimination, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) and the politics of research and knowledge production. jendevine (at) berkeley.edu  Mark F. DeWitt holds MA and Ph.D. degrees in Ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley. He received BS and MCP degrees in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MM in music theory from New England Conservatory. He lectured in ethnomusicology at Ohio State University for two years. Dr. DeWitt's research focuses on music's evocation of faraway places, for people who have lived in those places, for those who have never been to them, and for tourists. The activities of folk revivalists, both musicians and dancers who spend significant amounts of time learning and doing cultural activities that were not part of their family background or upbringing, are also phenomena that command his attention. These interests stem from his dissertation field research, which took place among Creole and Cajun immigrants from Louisiana and Texas, along with many folk revivalists, who play and dance to Louisiana French music here in northern California. His forthcoming book, Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California: Modern Pleasures in a Postmodern World (University Press of Mississippi), explains how ethnicity, tourism and revivalism--i.e., both insider and outsider perspectives--can work together to sustain social dance and music-making far away from a culture's place of origin. Representative publication: "Heritage, Tradition and Travel: Louisiana French Culture Placed on a California Dance Floor." the world of music 41.3(1999):57-83. dewittmf (at) earthlink.net
CLARE BENEDICKS FISCHER  Clare Benedicks Fischer, Reinhardt Professor of Religion and Culture Emerita at the Graduate Theological Union, is currently Visiting Professor in the Gender and Women's Studies Department, UC Berkeley. Prof. Fischer has recently completed an essay on tourism after the bombing of Kuta, Bali, which was published in the journal Journeys (2006). Her interest in the connection between acts of terrorism and tourism continues and she will be expanding her studies to incorporate the role of women and expats in efforts to reinvigorate Bali's tourist industry. She is currently conducting research on commemorative efforts around landmark sites associated with Rosie the Riveter in Richmond, California. Representative publication: "Remembering Bali as Paradise: The Bombing of Kuta and the Recovery of the Balinese Tourist Identity." Journeys 7(2006):129-150. cfischer (at) sksm.edu
BERTRAM M. GORDON  Bertram M. Gordon is Professor of European History and Chair of the Social Sciences Division at Mills College. He is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Tourism History and the Bureau of the International Commission for the History of Travel and Tourism, and serves as co-editor of the H-Travel internet discussion network. He holds a doctorate from Rutgers University and regularly teaches a course entitled "Men, Women, and Travel: Tourism in Europe Since the Renaissance." A specialist on World War II France, he has written on war-related tourism in that country and, more recently, the emergence of "mass tourism" and Mediterranean tourism. His current research focuses on gender and its depiction in cinema imagery in relation to tourism; and tourism in relation to the May-June 1968 Paris student revolt. In 2001-02 he was Chercheur associé étranger at the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent, C.N.R.S., Cachan, France. His books include Collaborationism in France during the Second World War (1980) and The Historical Dictionary of World War II France: The Occupation, Vichy and the Resistance, 1938-1946 (1998). From 1999 to 2001 he was Provost (chief academic officer) at Mills College. Representative publication: "Destinations and the Woman as a Motif in Film and Tourism," in Laurent Tissot, ed., Construction d'une Industrie Touristique aux 19e et 20e Siècles, Perspectives Internationales/Development of a Tourist Industry in the 19th and 20th Centuries, International Perspectives (Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Alphil, 2003), 359-370. bmgordon (at) mills.edu NELSON GRABURN
Prof. Graburn has taught at Berkeley since 1964, with visiting appointments at the National Museum of Civilization, Ottawa; Le Centre Des Hautes Etudes Touristiques, Aix-en-Provence; the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka; and the Research Center in Korean Studies, National University of Kyushu, in Fukuoka, Japan. He is a founding member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, the Research Committee on Tourism (RC-50) of the International Sociological Association, and the Tourism Studies Working Group, and serves on the editorial board (for anthropology) of Annals of Tourism Research. Prof. Graburn's recent research has focused on the study of art, tourism, museums, and the expression and representation of identity. He has carried out ethnographic research with the Inuit (and Naskapi) of Canada (and Alaska and Greenland) since 1959. He is now working with the Inuit cultural organizations in Nouveau Quebec and Nunavut, Canada, on aspects of cultural preservation and autonomy, and on contemporary Inuit arts. He has done research on tourism and social change in Japan since 1974, and with students in China since 1991. In addition to articles and book chapters on ethnic and tourist arts, museums, modernity, identity, and theory and methods in the study of tourism, Prof. Graburn's publications include Ethnic and Tourist Arts (ed., 1976), To Pay, Pray, and Play: The Cultural Structure of Japanese Tourism (1983), and Relocating the Tourist (2001). His most recent edited volume, Multiculturalism in the New Japan, was published in 2008. graburn (at) berkeley.edu
STEPHANIE HOM CARY  Stephanie Hom Cary is Assistant Professor of Italian in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at the University of Oklahoma, and co-founder of the UC Berkeley Tourism Studies Working Group. She holds an MA and PhD in Italian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA with honors in International Relations from Brown University. She served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2003-04, 2004-05, and 2005-06. Her current research projects explore the relationships between modern mass tourism, colonialism, and national identities. She is the author of several articles on such wide-ranging topics as tourist narratives and constructions of subjectivity, the vocabularies of nationalism in the work of Ippolito Nievo, and the discourse of metaphor in the "Mediterranean." She is currently at work on two book projects. The first book, tentatively titled Touring Italy: Toward a Discourse of Italian Travel, maps out the representations and practices of travel—namely through mass tourism—that have shaped Italy as a modern and mobile imaginary. The second book, as of yet untitled, traces the evolution of Italian colonial travel writing between the Mediterranean (Rhodes, Libya) and East Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia). Her interests include tourism and travel theory; travel literature; Italian anthropology and folkore; Italian theories of post/modernity; the Risorgimento; Italian fascism; neorealism in literature and cinema; the Italian colonial experience; and theories of space/place. Representative publication: "The Tourist Moment." Annals of Tourism Research 31(2004): 61-77 shcary (at) berkeley.edu NAOMI LEITE
Her research interests include social memory, globalization and diaspora, ethnic and religious identities, kinship, language and culture, and material culture/materiality. Her tourism-related work has focused on constructions of heritage and place, museums, and issues of identity and experience for both tourists and their "hosts," particularly in their interactions with one another. Her ethnographic focus is Portugal and the Portuguese diaspora. Her dissertation, Global Affinities: Memory, Materiality, and Kinship in the Portuguese Marrano-Anusim Revival Movement, examines a global movement devoted to recovering "lost" pre-Inquisition Portuguese Jewish heritage. Based on multi-sited fieldwork in several countries, including 18 months in Portugal, the dissertation explores the role of tourism, the internet, and other forms of international contact in forging affective ties among movement participants and shaping their experiences of self, kinship, and belonging. Dissertation fieldwork: “From 'Jewish Blood' to Transnational Ties: The Portuguese Marrano-Anusim Revival Movement in Global Context.” Research Report, Portuguese Studies Program, UC Berkeley, 2006. Representative publication: "Travels to an Ancestral Past: On Diasporic Tourism, Embodied Memory, and Identity." Antropologicas 9(2005): 273-302. leite (at) berkeley.edu
JENNIFER PHELPS QUINN  Jennifer Phelps Quinn is an MCP Candidate in City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. She holds a BA in Chinese History, also from UC Berkeley. Having come to urban planning after several years in the travel industry, including three years leading adventure tours in China and Vietnam, Jennifer combines a critical interdisciplinary perspective with a commitment to applied work. Through planning and urban design, she hopes to help local governments and peoples to limit the negative impacts of tourism while augmenting the positive effects on local communities. She believes that by balancing environmental, social, and economic needs of communities, tourism can be as sustainable as it is important to local economies. jennphelpsquinn (at) gmail.com ALEX SARAGOZA  Alex Saragoza is Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American history from the University of California, San Diego. A specialist on modern Mexico, Prof. Saragoza's research has examined the structural origins of Mexican migration, focusing on the role of the state in the process of the concentration of wealth and power in Mexico. In addition, he has done research on the transnational aspects of cultural formations in Mexico, including work on Mexican cinema, radio and television. His recent work has encompassed research on cultural linkages among Spain, Mexico, and Cuba. He is currently at work on a comparative study of the history of Mexican and Cuban tourism. Representative publication: "The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929–1952." In Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, eds., Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 91-115. alexsara (at) uclink.berkeley.edu
ROBIN L. TURNER  Robin L. Turner is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley. She received her BA from Duke University and MA in Political Studies from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2007-08. Robin’s research interests focus on the relationship between people, the state, and natural resources. This encompasses three themes: the political economy of resource-based sectors (nature tourism, mineral extraction), the politics of conservation, and urban environmental justice politics. Robin recently completed fieldwork for her dissertation, tentatively titled, Politics Where the Wild Things Are: Nature Tourism and Local Politics in Botswana and South Africa. This project seeks to answer the question, how does engagement in tourism affect local political relations? Robin conducted fieldwork in four nature tourism destinations -- the eastern Okavango Delta and Northern Tuli Game Reserve in Botswana, and Madikwe Game Reserve and Mapungubwe National Park in South Africa -- and ten nearby localities -- two freehold farming areas and eight villages. Representative publication: "Communities, Wildlife Conservation, and Tourism-Based Development: Can Community-Based Nature Tourism Live up to Its Promise?" Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy 7(2004): 161-182. rlturner (at) berkeley.edu MAKI TANAKA .jpg) Maki Tanaka is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. She received her BA from Waseda University, Japan, and MA in Social Anthropology of Development from School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She served as Co-Chair of the Working Group in 2006-07. She is interested in the ways in which socialist planning in tourism navigates the current moment of post-Cold War global political economy, especially in UNESCO World Heritage sites in Cuba, where she is currently undertaking long-term ethnographic fieldwork. She looks at tourism/urban planning in heritage sites as a means to imagine the future for the Cubans, as well as to demonstrate Cuban socialism to the global audience. Representative text: “Tourism Development in Socialist Cuba: Old Havana and Its Residents.” Research Report, Center for Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley, 2005. makitnk (at) berkeley.edu ALEX WESTHOFF  Alex Westhoff received a joint Masters of Landscape Architecture and Masters of City Planning in the Departments of Landscape Architecture/Environmental Planning and City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. He also holds a B.S. in Animal and Plant Systems from the University of Minnesota. His academic studies have centered around the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta area, regarding issues of urban growth containment, agricultural conservation, and riparian corridors. His thesis research focused on heritage tourism development in the Delta. Through this work he has developed recommendations to guide heritage tourism in the Delta in a way that will help preserve the many unique features of the region in a sustainable manner. Representative text: The Sacramento Delta National Heritage Corridor. Master's Thesis, Landscape Architecture/Environmental Planning and City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley, 2008. alexw (at) berkeley.edu VISITING SCHOLARS Jinfu Zhang Assistant Professor, Department of Tourism, Xiamen University, China Topic: Development and social impact of tourism in Tibet; sacred journeys and religious lives Period: January-December, 2007 David Crouch Visting Professor, Universities of Karlstad and Kalmar, Sweden; Professor, Cultural Geography, and Director, Applied Research Group in Tourism, University of Derby, UK. Representative publications: Co-editor, The Media and the Tourist Imagination (Routledge, 2005) Co-editor, Visual Culture and Tourism (Berg, 2003) Editor, Leisure/Tourism Geographies (Routledge, 1999) Period: April-May, 2007 David Picard Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds University, UK. Representative publications: Co-editor, Festivals, Tourism and Social Change (Channel View Publications, 2006) Co-author, Tourism, Culture and Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2006) Period: September-December, 2006 |
