Mediating heritage

Abstract

This article draws on media theory in order to theorize the role of tour guides as a form of cultural mediation. It does so by analysing the work of tour guides at a site of 'difficult heritage', the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, Germany. The work of tour guides is here conceptualized primarily as a process in which guides, and the organization for which they work, are engaged in trying to encode preferred readings. The empirical study shows how this 'encoding attempt' is a complex, negotiated and sometimes conflictual process in which guides try to deal with the materiality of the site and the social dynamics of the tour group. This has implications for understanding the nature of mediation and of different forms of tourism.

Enhancing the visitor experience: Reconceptualising the tour guide's communicative role

“…Guides also broker encounters with heritage (Macdonald, 2006) and nature (Markwell, 2001). As with physical access, a guide can also limit visitors' interactions by drawing a group's attention inwards toward the guide rather than outwardly directing it (Cohen, 1985;Holloway, 1981).…”

“…Secondly, both Macdonald (2006) and Weiler and Yu (2007) stress that the guide is a broker of encounters or interactions within and between the group and host communities and environments, for example by providing language interpretation and facilitating communication between hosts and visitors. Guides also broker encounters with heritage (Macdonald, 2006) and nature (Markwell, 2001).…”

“…Firstly, Macdonald (2006) and Weiler and Yu (2007) acknowledge the role of guides in brokering physical access to places and spaces. They do this not only by physically channelling and manoeuvering visitors to be in the right place at the right time, but also by what Arnould and Price (1993) refer to as communicative staging; that is, by controlling what and how they present and interpret to visitors.…”

Brokers and Brokerage, Anthropology of

“…In the new anthropology of tourism there is, for instance, the recognition that brokers do not mediate between already existing cultures, but are rather active in producing and encapsulating cultural authenticity, and of commodifying and selling these experiences and images. Macdonald's (2006) work on tour guides in a 'difficult heritage' site, the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremburg, highlights one productive site in ethnographic terms, in which guides attempt to control interpretation in different ways. But tourism itself is not easily circumscribed, and the rise of volunteer and retiree tourism points to relationships between leisure and labor, and the rise of new zones of contact and brokerage that are capturing the interest of anthropologists.…”

Tour Guides and the mediation of difficult memories: the case of Dublin Castle, Ireland

“…The problem with difficult heritage is that it fails to assert a positive sense of identity and 'is an inheritance that many might wish to disown even while they acknowledge it to be part of their defining history' (MacDonald, 2006, p. 127). Furthermore, she notes, where 'difficult heritage is addressed it is quite likely to be implicated in a range of quite complex and even conflicting emotions and responses ' (MacDonald, 2006). The articulations of these difficult memories are contained within the narratives of guides who depict the past through interpretation and selectivity, in effect, acting as gatekeepers of memory.…”