Seattle's Pike Place Market (De)constructed: An Analysis of Tourist Narratives about a Public Space

Abstract

This paper is a critical analysis of the narrative construction of Seattle’s well-known and heavily touristed Pike Place Market. The analysed data come from both institutional and amateur sources, including travel guides and photographs taken by tourists at the market. Tourist literature provides narrative themes in the form of literary descriptions and photographic images, that emphasise and reveal only certain textual dimensions of a place. Tourists’ experiences and accounts are inevitably informed by such themes. In addition, studying tourist photography is an excellent way to understand how people actively use and resist modes of representation that are derived from institutional sources. Tourists are usually remarkably prolific photographers, while also being exposed to a great number and variety of institutional narratives of the sites they visit. Public space is not merely a geographical configuration, but also a verbal and visual narrative construction by means of technologies such as writing and photography. The construction of a narrative via the means of technology can be political both in the way that it is produced and in the way it is consumed. The authors examine the dynamic power relationship that exists between institutional and amateur texts about popular public spaces, such as a city’s public market.