19 – 23 July 2007, Leeds, United Kingdom

Whatever the prophecies of ‘virtual’ reality, we inhabit and move through the ‘real’ world of objects. Though tourism and travel are bound to concepts of time and space, they are also rooted in the material world – a tangible world of places, things, edifices, buildings, monuments and ‘stuff’. The relationships we develop and share with these things varies from the remote to the intimate, from the transient to the lasting and from the passive to the passionate. Within the practices of tourism and its use (and non-use) of the material world, and, through the act of travel, objects are given meaning, status, and are endowed with symbolism and power. Objects construct, represent and even define the tourist experience. Our journeys through the world of objects generate a plethora of emotions – pleasure, attachment, belonging, angst, envy, exclusion, loathing and fear – and feed on-going discourse and narratives. Moreover, through tourism, and our touristic encounters, the material world itself is challenged and changed.

CALL FOR PAPERS
In this, our fifth annual international research conference, we seek to explore the multi-faceted relationships between tourism and material culture – the built environment, infrastructures, consumer and household goods, art, souvenirs, ephemera and landscapes. As in previous events, the conference aims to provoke critical dialogue beyond disciplinary boundaries and epistemologies and thus we welcome papers from the following disciplines: aesthetics, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art and design history, cultural geography, cultural studies, ethnology and folklore, history, heritage studies, landscape studies, linguistics, museum studies, philosophy, political sciences, sociology, tourism studies and urban/spatial planning.