Marketing Mardi Gras: Commodification, Spectacle and the Political Economy of Tourism in New Orleans

Abstract

Recent urban scholarship on the rise of the tourism industry, place marketing and the transformation of cities into entertainment destinations has been dominated by four major themes: the primacy of `consumption' over 'production'; the eclipse of exchange-value by sign-value; the idea of autoreferential culture; and, the ascendancy of textual deconstruction and discursive analyses over political economy critiques of capitalism. This paper critically assesses the merits of these four themes using a case study of the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. The analytical tools and categories of political economy are used to examine the rise and dominance of tourism in New Orleans, explore the consequences of this economic shift and identify the key actors and organised interests involved in marketing Mardi Gras. 'Marketing' is the use of sophisticated advertising techniques aimed at promoting fantasy, manipulating consumer needs, producing desirable tourist experiences and simulating images of place to attract capital and consumers. The paper points to the limitations of the 'cultural turn' and the 'linguistic turn' in urban studies and uses the concepts of commodification and spectacle as a theoretical basis for understanding the marketing of cities, the globalisation of local celebrations and the political economy of tourism.

The Challenge and Response to Global Tourism in the Post-modern Era: The Commodification, Reconfiguration and Mutual Transformation of Habana Vieja, Cuba

“…(Gotham, 2002(Gotham, , p. 1753 Commodification and spectacle to enhance the tourist gaze (Urry, 2002) are generally associated with the capitalist economies of the USA and Europe but as Fainstein and Gladstone note 'Commodification refers to the particular form that tourism takes under capitalism, but the cultural outcomes of standardisation and stereotyping associated with it would remain even if capitalism were transcended. In evaluating the effects of tourism we must recognise that some compromise of values is inescapable and that it is necessary to assess each instance situationally' (Fainstein and Gladstone, 1999, p. 34).…”

“…(Gotham, 2002(Gotham, , p. 1737 A second theme relates to the replacement of exchange value by sign value 'where images have become commodities themselves and operate according to their own autonomous logic within a chain of free-floating signifiers' (Gotham, 2002(Gotham, , p.1737.…”

“…Some focus on the 'Disneyfication' of places and theme parks (Foglesong, 1999) while others see culture as a means to overcome ethnocentrism and to promote international understanding. In one review of the theoretical literature, Gotham (2002) groups the key sources under four main headings. First, there is an on-going debate about the shift from consumption to production in cities whereby '[there is] a broad shift from production-centred capitalism, rooted in work and coercion, to consumer capitalism, based on leisure, market 'seduction' and spectacle' (Gotham, 2002(Gotham, , p.1737:…”

“…Third, and closely related to the second, is auto-referential culture which 'holds that culture operates according to its own autonomous logic free from the material referents or the constraints of social structure' (Gotham, 2002(Gotham, , p. 1737. The fourth area of research considers 'texts', 'images' and 'stories' as units of analysis and moves into linguistics and discourse analysis as explanations of urban change (see for example Hastings, 1999 andJacobs, 2004).…”

The weakest link: Creative industries, flagship cultural projects and regeneration

“…However the occurrence of such activities, given the examples and research conducted thus far in the literature, seem to be few and far between. Another important question posed by the literature on artistic communities and their link to regeneration refers to the dynamics of gentrification and displacement (Zukin, 1985) often cause by tourism (Gotham, 2002) and culture-led rebranding of specific areas of the city (Richard, 2002) .…”