LFU:online

Students have advanced knowledge of the practical field of tourism. Based on the acquired skills, they are able to transfer questions of the heuristic procedure as well as concrete empirical techniques to other practical fields of European Ethnology.

Currently, many people in Tyrol seem to agree that prosperity in the province would be completely impossible without tourism. At the end of the 19th century, however, questions about the raison d'être of 'tourism', which was just emerging at the time, triggered fierce debates between liberal and conservative forces and the clergy. At that time, problems were primarily raised with reference to the "disruption of morals"; threats were posed, for example, by the supposedly harmful influence of tourists of the Protestant faith coming into the country. Tourism is becoming an ideological and thus an emotionally charged issue. At least the latter - as recent developments during the Corona pandemic and the labour market crisis suggest - is likely to remain true.
The proseminar with exercise deals with cultural change using the example of tourism in Tyrol and starts from the consideration that the motif of 'past poverty' forms a central point of contrast and pivot in the representation of tourism success. Using concrete source materials and taking into account various analytical foils (identity/subjectivity, materiality, cultural practice, discursivity, real-political dimensions, etc.), the course participants will work together to find out on which levels the story of tourism success told as such can be effective in the sense of an "integrating narrative" (Bernhard Tschofen). The question will not only be about the identity standards corresponding to 'success', but also about what individual ideas of success (and thus of a 'successful' life?) are oriented towards, to what extent this topos itself is historically contingent, i.e. changeable - and what this means for the realities of life of individuals.

Introductory lectures, methodological reflections, empirical exercises

participation in empirical exercises and discussions, impulse presentations, short written (research) reflection.

two units will take place in a block in 'field research mode'. A date will be announced here.