•  
  •  
 

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This paper calls for a (re)emphasis in site-specific, open-ended investigation of individual experience as a viable and valuable strategy across disciplines of the social sciences and the humanities, especially in the face of ongoing trends toward globality, hybridization, convergence, and destabilization of symbolic and material culture. The paper is particularly interested in reporting on the application of such methodologies toward investigating the media-tourism complex, a constellation of government, industrial, and personal activity which relies on globally mediated conceptions of place and practice and which represents a dynamic and ever-present field of symbolic and actual capital within which consumers operate and from which "places" emerge. Emerging from field work undertaken in New Zealand during the first quarter of 2007 concerning the lived experience of visitors to and inhabitants of the town of Matamata (the location of the "Hobbiton" movie set and tourist destination left from the filming of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy), and following Minca & Oakes (2006), who reveal the greatly ambiguous nature of tourist, place, and practice in geographic areas worthy of visitation in the mediated global economy, this paper puts forward the possibility that the in-depth engagement with consumers and purveyors of place may yield important data not only about personal practice, but also about the nature of places and the force of media power. Thus, "the situatedness of the local is not a site, place or space merely to pin down and capture, but rather a point of reference through which to engage the emergent dimensions of globalization" (Murphy & Kraidy, 2003: 14). In this way, a constructivist approach (Clark, 2004) - which allows the text of the response to intermingle with the context of the respondent, and affords numerous opportunities to reevaluate both the applicability of the research questions as constructed and, more holistically, the place and behavior of the researcher - affords an opportunity to bridge a widely perceived epistemological gap between audience and institutional studies. Qualitative work with individuals whose practices create and maintain myriad processes and meanings becomes essential in the consideration of the media "field" created by the worldwide traffic in images and movement.

Download

Share

COinS