Memoryscapes of the Great War (1914-1918): A paradigm shift in tourism research on war heritage

Abstract

Research on the process of tourismification of former war sites and landscapes is by definition interdisciplinary. The challenge is to introduce new concepts to link past and present, heritage sites and memorial events, in time and place, to critically reflect on the content and trendy use of vaguely defined “scape” concepts in relation to heritage. The need to anchor heritagescapes in time and space, explains the association with geographical terminology and spatial references at different scales. The question arises on how to identify the vectors of change induced by tourism to historical war sites. The added value of an international online survey completed by the World Heritage Tourism Research Network1 (WHTRN) in 2012 results from both the conceptual and interdisciplinary approach, questioning the interdependency of cultural, social, economic and political processes within the context of war memoryscapes, and the empirical data resulting from this multilingual survey.New tourism landscapes emerge in which the interests of national and regional governments, local and global stakeholders play an important role. Geographically balanced and comparative research is required to better understand the complex relationship of the 21st-century nations and people with the tangible and intangible war heritage of the previous century. Since tourism has become an important partner and stakeholder in the process of revalorizing the past, the focus is on the current practices of selecting and (re) creating memoryscapes of the Great War (1914-1918). Strongly based on remembrance, narratives and multiple images of the war, evoked by the centennial ‘hype’ in events and media attention, numerous places with tangible and/or reconstructed war heritage are now marked on the tourist map. The inclusion in the survey of a number of open questions regarding values, experiences, memories from over 2,400 respondents (61 countries) resulted in a huge database, which allows the identification of some relevant variables in the ongoing tourismification process of former war landscapes. This paper focuses on selected issues and results stemming from the survey.