Culture on Display: The Production of Contemporary Visitability

“a welcome addition to a growing body of scholarly writing… a comprehensive critical survey of the literature on cultural heritage and tourism and associated issues in the fields of cultural and media studies over the previous decade. These concepts and issues are clearly presented and exemplified in the case studies of numerous sites of cultural display…” Southern Review

• Why is culture so widely on display?
• What are the major characteristics of contemporary cultural display?
• What is the relationship between cultural display and key features of contemporary society: the rise of consumerism; tourism; ‘identity-speak’; globalization?
• What can cultural display tell us about current relations of self and other, here and there, now and then?

Culture on Display invites the reader to visit culture. Reflecting on the contemporary proliferation of sites displaying culture in visitable form, it offers fresh ways of thinking about tourism, leisure and heritage.

Bella Dicks locates diverse exhibitionary locations within wider social, economic and cultural transformations, including contemporary practices of tourism and travel, strategies of economic development, the staging of identities, globalization, interactivity and relations of consumerism. In particular, she critically examines how culture becomes transformed when it is put on display within these contexts. In each chapter, key theoretical issues of debate, such as authenticity, commodification and representation, are discussed in a lively and accessible manner.

This is an important book for undergraduate and postgraduate students of cultural policy, cultural and media studies and sociology, as well as academic researchers in this field. It will also be of considerable value to students of sociology of culture, cultural politics, arts administration and cultural management.

Bella Dicks has published and researched in the areas of qualitative methodology, heritage and museums, regeneration and post-industrial identities, cultural display and digital methodologies. She has written a number of books, including: Heritage, Place and Community (University of Wales Press, 2000); Out of the Ashes (with David Waddington, Chas Critcher and David Parry: Routledge, 2001); Culture on Display (Open University Press, 2004); Children, Place and Identity (with Jonathan Scourfield, Mark Drakeford and Andrew Davies: Routledge, 2006) Qualitative Research and Ethnography (with Bruce Mason, Amanda Coffey and Paul Atkinson: Sage 2005) and edited the four-volume set Digital Qualitative Research Methods (Sage 2012).