Tourism and the construction of the otherness: symbolic transformation of the World Cup 2014 host cities into tourist destination

• Grant number: 12/08321-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: September 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Siqueira Ridenti
• Grantee: Michel Nicolau Netto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Social sciences have always been attentive to the thematic of the construction of the otherness. Likewise, they have been dedicated to the thematic of the voyage, noticed on the movement of the foreigner, the immigrant, the pilgrim or the tourist. These themes are intertwined in our project, where we are dedicated to the construction of the otherness through tourism. Tourism was born in the 19th Century, and became dominant in the 20th Century, enhancing its globality in the 21st Century. If before tourism has been concentrated in the European and North-American elite with these regions being the principal ones to receive tourists, today people from all over the globe travel to the most diverse places. Tourist has, therefore, become a global industry and the localities struggle to affirm their differences and, thus, to become tourist destinations. As a consequence, the localities are symbolically redefined. Within the Football World Cup, to take place in Brazil in 2014, EMBRATUR and the local governments related to the host cities develop promotional campaigns aiming to define both Brazil and the cities involved as tourist destinations. However, these are not the unique agents in articulation on this symbolic definition, as there are also the tourists, who bring their expectation and discourses, as much as tour agencies and professionals connected to the practice. We have, therefore, a context of symbolic dispute, in which agents try to place their visions on the localities. We intend to study this thematic focusing on the promotional campaigns connected to the World Cup host cities. As a conclusion of this research, we hope to be able to understand not solely the private and public tourist politics related the event, but above all the processes of symbolic definition - and its conflicts -, involved on the global processes, for the construction of the otherness.