The 2009 seminar

This second Global Communication exploration seminar is designed to help students understand some of the human consequences of globalization by studying the important role communication plays in tourism as a global cultural industry. As the world’s single largest trade, tourism is a powerful factor in shaping everyday interpersonal, intercultural and inter-national communication. Nowhere is this more apparent than Switzerland – the birth place of modern tourism and a country which embodies the challenges and successes of multilingualism, multi-culturalism and multinationalism. Since the 1850s, Switzerland and especially Interlaken (our base for the seminar) have organized and promoted themselves as the quintessential tourist destinations. It was actually between June 26 and July 15 in 1863 that Thomas Cook organized the first ever organized tour of Switzerland. And, in the face of global warming, European/EU politics, and international economics, this “production of place” is also being constantly revised.

























The seminar is intended to be an enjoyable learning-by-doing experience and students are involved in a series of practical projects involving different theoretical issues and key research skills (e.g. visual ethnography, text analysis). In doing so, they examine the linguistic, visual, material and spatial strategies used to represent and promote Swizterland as a global tourist destination. They also study how visitors and local people interact in tourist sites. It’s in this way that the seminar addresses the darker side of tourism as well, by considering how the making of place and the production of culture always overlook many areas of life. So, for example, one assignment entails students undertaking “counter tourism” in Geneva, following non-touristic routes through this global diplomatic city and developing an alternative tour-guide script. Through a series of scholarly readings, fieldtrips and hands-on projects students are asked to evaluate critically the implications of tourism for human communication on both a local scale and a global one.