"Contested Destinations: Geopolitics, Public Discourse, and the Media Production of Tourist Images". Invited lecture and presentation with plenary discussion, HSLU - Lucerne School of Business
Type
presentation
Date Issued
2026-06
Author(s)
Abstract
This seminar lecture develops a single, deliberately uncomfortable thesis: travel decisions are never fully neutral. Where we choose to go — and where we pointedly do not — reveals political worldviews, mediated images, historical narratives, and geopolitical power relations. Tourism thus operates at once as cultural practice, economic act, political statement, symbolic consumption, and instrument of international relations.
Drawing on critical geopolitics, Urry's tourist gaze, MacCannell's staged authenticity, Said's imagined geographies, and Nye's soft power, the lecture reads destinations as discursively constructed images. Six contemporary cases — South Korea's K-pop diplomacy, China, post-2022 Russia, North Korea's controlled opening to Russian visitors, Qatar's World Cup, and the coordinated 2025 overtourism protests alongside the "silent boycott" of the United States — trace how political events reshape destination images and how nation branding and public diplomacy converge in moments of conflict.
The lecture closes on the normative question its analysis makes unavoidable: if every journey carries a political dimension, what responsibility do we bear as travellers?
Drawing on critical geopolitics, Urry's tourist gaze, MacCannell's staged authenticity, Said's imagined geographies, and Nye's soft power, the lecture reads destinations as discursively constructed images. Six contemporary cases — South Korea's K-pop diplomacy, China, post-2022 Russia, North Korea's controlled opening to Russian visitors, Qatar's World Cup, and the coordinated 2025 overtourism protests alongside the "silent boycott" of the United States — trace how political events reshape destination images and how nation branding and public diplomacy converge in moments of conflict.
The lecture closes on the normative question its analysis makes unavoidable: if every journey carries a political dimension, what responsibility do we bear as travellers?
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to education
Refereed
No
Subject(s)
Division(s)