Review of The Semiotics of Heritage Tourism

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rators Emma Waterton and Steve Watson (2010, 2012, 2013) successfully navigates and contributes towards a diverse terrain of heritage scholarship in its 152 pages. Across seven concise chapters readers are offered: an historical overview of semiotics and its relevance to heritage; an incisive critique of the commodification and marketing of the past; a revised appreciation of the crucial role photography has come to play in heritage tourism; a turn to affect and to embodied experience as the core focus of critical heritage studies. This final point is perhaps the most significant, providing an overarching structure for the study as a whole. As the authors state, the ‘semiotic landscape’ is here re-theorised to encompass ‘the ways in which people encounter it sensually, through corporeal proximity’ (p. 8). The recognition that heritage and tourism must be dealt with as more than just socially constructed phenomena (a theme both Waterton and Watson have previously tackled (Waterton 2009, 2010a, 2010b; Watson 2010)) thus underpins the conceptual and methodological approaches put forward here. It is no doubt telling that where this approach stumbles may be as instructive as where it succeeds. It should be noted from the outset that this work represents first and foremost a theoretical provocation to heritage. Complex debates around semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism and affect are for the most part deftly handled by Waterton and Watson. Perceptive engagements with de Saussure and Sanders Peirce are worth highlighting, along with a critical rethinking of marketing narratives and a sustained reconceptualisation of the ‘semiotic landscape,’ a phrase borrowed from Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). While never wilfully obscure, the language deployed by Waterton and Watson reflects these challenging themes. Take for example this passage on the touristic perception of heritage sites: