Mediating heritage: Tour guides at the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds, Nuremberg

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 conceptualize...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Tourist studies 2006-08, Vol.6 (2), p.119-138
Main Author: Macdonald, Sharon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Germany
Nazism
Sociocultural Factors
Sociology
Sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture
Sociology of leisure and mass culture
Tourism
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1468-7976
1741-3206
DOI:10.1177/1468797606071473