Can-Seng Ooi

Awkward encounters and ethnography

Purpose – Researchers rarely present accounts of their awkward encounters in ethnographies. Awkwardness, however, does matter and affects the ethnographic accounts we write and our understanding of social situations. The purpose is to bring these hidden sides of organizational ethnography to the fore, to discuss the consequences of ignoring awkward encounters, and to improve our understanding of organizational realities.Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents awkward ethnographic encounters in the field: encounters with evangelizing ethnic Chinese business people in Indonesia (Koning), and visiting an artist village in China (Ooi). Based on analysing their awkwardness, and in the context of a critical assessment of the reflexive turn in ethnography, the authors propose a more inclusive reflexivity. The paper ends with formulating several points supportive of reaching inclusive reflexivity.Findings – By investigating awkward encounters, the authors show that these experiences have been left out f...

Paradoxes of City Branding and Societal Changes

The 2009 United Nations Climate Summit (COP15) attracted more than 45,000 people to Copenhagen. The world watched the unfolding of the two-week conference. With international attention and the hope of finding an agreement on managing global warming, the event was a city branding scoop for the Danish capital. The summit started with optimism; the Copenhagen local authorities dubbed the city as Hopenhagen. At the end of the summit, the resulting so-called Copenhagen Accord was not legally binding and thus toothless. World leaders, including United States President Barack Obama and China Premier Wen Jiabao, failed to engineer a firm global commitment on tackling climate change. The summit was subsequently dubbed ‘Brokenhagen’, ‘Nopenhagen’ and ‘No Hopenhagen’ in international media reports.

Political pragmatism and the creative economy: Singapore as a City for the Arts

Can the arts and culture prosper under a less than democratic political regime? This paper looks at the soft authoritarian Singaporean government and the making of Singapore into a ‘City for the Arts’. Many scholars advocate that a culturally vibrant and creative city must also celebrate diversity, tolerance and experimentation. This implies that a democratic space is needed for creative energies to flow. Singapore is not known for its democracy. But Singapore has become relatively successful in being the cultural hub in the region. A more liberal approach to diversity and criticism of the authorities can now be observed but there are still many strong‐handed social and political controls in the city‐state. This paper tries to answer these two questions: has Singapore become democratic because the authorities want the arts and culture to flourish? Is democracy necessary for the creation of a lively cultural city?

Global aspirations and local talent: the development of creative higher education in Singapore

This paper explores higher education development and policy shifts in Singapore over the last decade, within a landscape of an increasingly globalised creative economy and international cultural policy transfer. Using qualitative interviews with key players in policy and higher education institutions, the paper aims to explain the push and pull factors behind investment in creative higher education. It considers the emerging dynamics and diverse patterns, embedded in a society where higher education interactions with economic development have a long history and pragmatic rationale. While still in the early days of these investments, the paper argues that there are some global policy lessons to be learnt from the case of Singapore and the role that higher education can play in developing a creative economy, while striving to overcome issues of over-supply and innate vulnerability of creative careers.

Digital social construction of a tourist site: Ground Zero

Abstract Reviews of Ground Zero, New York on TripAdvisor show a diversity of interpretations. Amidst the cacophony of voices, there is communication and a semblance of community. This sense of community—despite the lack of strong coherent and consistent views, a plethora of diverse topics, and heterogeneous perspectives—is brought together and built on chronotopic (time–space) structures. Drawing inspiration from Bakhtin’s chronotopes, this chapter shows how spatial and temporal structures are negotiated. The negotiation processes demonstrate that tourists now have a global platform to communicate and are able to stake claims of legitimacy to interpreting foreign heritage. Thus tourists are layering new meanings on historical sites and are contributing to the rewriting of local histories, all as part of glocalization.

Chinese Travelling Overseas and Their Anxieties

The changing economic, social and political circumstances of China in the last decades, together with the uneven rolling out of social engineering programmes in the country, such as the promotion of selected Chinese traditions, urbanization, standardized education and exposure to plethora of popular cultures, have created a diverse group of Chinese who behave in similar and yet different ways, even when they travel. To make sense of the centripetal and centrifugal forces that shape Chinese tourists, this chapter will look at culture as a social institution that serves important functions and also an arena of conflict and negotiation. Essentially, this study analyses Chinese tourist behaviour in the context of the social forces they face at home and when they travel and found that tourism anxiety has been much neglected in literature. Fieldwork was conducted in Tasmania, Australia, and data was collected through interviews and participant observations. It revealed that the lack of planning and local knowledge, inadequate pretravel research, limited travel time, expectations for value of money, cultural clashes, quest for authenticity, language barriers and choices of dining are triggers of anxiety during travel. Consequently, anxiety influences Chinese tourists’ behaviour. Not only do these factors constrain positive outbound travel experiences, they also shape tourist travel behaviour and experiences. Mediators play a significant role in affecting some of the anxieties.

Production and consumption of stories, images and fantasies: heritage, screen and literary tourism

Heritage, screen and literary tourism , by Sheela Agarwal and Gareth Shaw, Bristol, Channel View Publications, 2018, 317 pp., USD49.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-1845416232

Tourism, Place Branding and the Local-Turn in Food: The New Nordic Cuisine/Tourismus, Place Branding und die Hinwendung zu lokalen Produkten: Die New Nordic Cuisine

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Markenbildung Kopenhagens als kulinarische Destination in Zusammenhang mit dem Aufkommen der New Nordic Cuisine. Die New Nordic Cuisine (NNC) bietet zwei Herausforderungen fur die Markenbildung einer Destination. Die erste Herausforderung besteht darin, dass eine Destinationsmarke die Authentizitat und Einzigartigkeit des Orts betonen soll. Dies erlaubt relevanten Stakeholdern – z. B. Manager von Ausflugszielen/Sehenswurdigkeiten, Tourismusmarketingorganisationen, Restaurants und Reiseveranstaltern – ihre touristischen Dienstleistungen und Produkte so zu gestalten, dass ihre Angebote im Wettbewerb der Destinationen herausstechen. Die Bildung einer Destinationsmarke als Teil eines grosen regionalen Zusammenschlusses, in diesem Fall New Nordic Cuisine ist unvernunftig, vor allem wenn die Teilnehmer dieses regionalen Zusammenschlusses miteinander im Wettbewerb um Touristen stehen. Zudem ist New Nordic Cuisine eine junge Erfindung. Die zweite Herausforderung ist die Hinwendung zum Lokalen (local turn). Die Verwendung lokaler und saisonaler Produkte steht im Mittelpunkt der NNC. Dieses Konzept ist weder neu, noch originell und kann relativ leicht an andere Orte angepasst werden. Wie kann dies fur die Marketingbildung einer Destination eingesetzt werden? Dieser Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit diesen beiden Herausforderungen. Zuallererst zeigt sich im Fall der NNC, dass ein vager und schwammiger Begriff wie „Nordic“ im Fokus der lokalen und internationalen Zielgruppen steht. Der Begriff bleibt vage und schwammig und hat fur viele auch eine unterschiedliche Bedeutung. Dieser unklare Terminus wird mit neuen Bedeutungsinhalten besetzt. So werden beispielsweise die lokalorientierten Werte der NNC gebundelt, vermarktet und als Teil der nordischen Identitat gefeiert. Die Tourismusbehorden haben keinerlei Versuch unternommen diesen Begriff weiterzuentwickeln bzw. zu konkretisieren. Im Gegenteil, sie fuhren das weit gefasste Verstandnis der NNC fort. Es geht nicht darum authentische Botschaften zu kommunizieren, sondern Botschaften, die bei unterschiedlichen Zielgruppen Nachhall finden. Zweitens transportieren die Markenbotschaften nicht das, was das authentische und besondere Danische darstellt, sondern das, was sich andere unter einem authentischen und einzigartigen Danemark vorstellen. Auch wenn die NNC eine neu eingefuhrte Tradition darstellt, konnen die Besucher ihre Vorstellungen zur Authentizitat und Einzigartigkeit der Destination nochmals bestatigen. Sie werden sich fuhlen, als ob Sie das echte Kopenhagen erleben.

The Business of Politics Commerce, and Culture in East Asia

and France to a survey of the conceptual history of the aesthetic in the thought of Baumgarten, Kant, Ranciere and Bourdieu. Part IV offers a stimulating contextualisation of the term habitus in the development of the concept of habit as a crucial principle in Edward Burnett Tylor’s doctrine of survivals, which enabled the British colonial government to explain the annihilation of the Aboriginal population. The book is wrapped up with a chapter that defends Bourdieu against Ranciere’s critique of his sociology as an attempt to cognitively dominate the aesthetic (p. 131), as Bennett demonstrates that both Bourdieu’s theory of cultural habitus and his suggestions for cultural policy are based on the Kantian, liberal notion of the aesthetic. Bennett writes like a scientist, his style being compact, context is kept to minimum: his ideal reader is definitely one with considerable prior knowledge of the subject area. While the reader might need to equip herself with some patience and concentration, the effort will be fully rewarded. This book is not an introductory text, but an attempt to push forward the frontier of cultural sociology and as such it should be of interest to scholars from different disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.