Mahing Culture Into Magic: How Can it Bring Tourists and Residents?

Abstract

I. Globalization encourages a New Political Culture (NPC), stressing individualism, egalitarianism, and new modes of governance and public adminstration.II. Consumption and amenities rise in salience to individual citizens and political leaders--with more income, education, and the NPC. Culture and tourism are key parts of this transformation.III. What makes culture magical? Scenes. Culture comes packaged with more: buildings, restaurants, and an audience; a performance can resonate only if it connects to values and concerns of the audience. We sketch 12 types of scenes like Disney Heaven and Bohemia, then 15 dimensions for interpreting like traditionalism, egalitarianism, etc.IV. How to make culture magical? By constructing integrated components of culture and tourism. How? Collect data on many dimensions of consumption (restaurants, types of nearby shops, crime rates, and more). Codify these into types like Disney Heaven or Bohemia. Then calibrate attractive powers of each type of scene and dimension for different types of tourists or residents. To implement this program, we have developed a large data base of 40,000 US zip codes and are working with others internationally along parallel lines (in France, Italy, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Korea). This policy-linked analysis tool is more powerful than most past tourism and culture studies.