Guiding Practices: Storytelling Tricks for Reproducing the Urban Landscape

Abstract

Through walking and talking, tour guides weave together an array of stories and facts in order to re-produce varied urban cultures and local histories. The practices of these 'cultural intermediaries' must at once be entertaining as well as educational, and are set within a rich urban context that is itself increasing in commercialization and homogenization. As a segment of a larger ethnographic study, this essay focuses on the storytelling tools these social actors use to reproduce New York City's history, culture, and meaning-eight tricks of the trade. As illustration of this social world and the practices within it, description of a Grand Central Terminal tour is woven throughout the analysis in a series of vignettes.

How to Become a “Real Chicagoan” in No Time: The Promise and Pedagogy of Walking Tourism

“…23 To maintain the classic binary of the tourist at play and the host at work 5,25 may not provide a complete picture of walking tourism. Instead, while the tourists are studying hard, their guides 26 and the random locals on the street who 'contribute' to tours 27 are sometimes less than serious and may poke fun at the contrived nature of the touristic situation.…”

“…18 Walking tourism is especially well-suited to create a pedagogy of the city. 27 Many guides believe they are providing a public service by spreading niche knowledge as public historians. 30 They frame the encounter between tourist and toured and often teach a celebration of difference and localism.…”

“…It is not unusual for walking tours to serve as school-sanctioned pedagogical field experiences and overlap with institutional education at all levels. 27,29 The discussion of 'real Chicagoans' requires a brief foray into one of the most enduring themes in tourism literature: authenticity. In a much citied work, Dean MacCannell suggests that it is every tourist's quest to find life as it is authentically lived in the tourist destination.…”

“…While guides may 'schmaltz' the stories or add small embellishments, the Chicago of the walking tours is usually authentic. 18,27 Walking tourism with a political message may even take up the same questions about cultural constructivism as Bruner and act as a space of dissent against hegemonic narratives of place. 35 Even walking tour guides who partner with institutions of cultural production are often independent contractors who play at the boundaries of cool authentication and socially sanctioned cultural narratives.…”

Touring the Hidden City: Walking Tour Guides in DeindustrializingGenoa

“…Not to mention that some of them, like Marisa, even publish their own history books. As “thinkers, intelligent historians, and passionate storytellers of the urban landscape” who straddle the line between scholarship and entertainment (Wynn : 400–402), guides can earn the attention of even the most authoritative publics. Sabrina, for example, regularly leads a group of local professors on walking tours of the city: “We have been doing these tours for years.…”