The nation state as an identifying image

Abstract

This article focuses on how tourism policy composes and recomposes a history and a territory, how representations are produced and how are they perceived and drawn upon by different categories of the population. The article explores in what ways tourism policies are used in the context of everyday heritage tourism in Loches, a small town in Touraine, France. It is argued that the invention of a local identity for tourism is directly connected to an established national past and myth that, like the new created territories, act as the frame for local identity. In this article, I also explore the role of the tourist and the place of local citizens suggesting that tourism policy is constructed with disregard for a significant section of the town's population and even appears to be able to manage without tourists. Finally I suggest that the symbolic efficacy of cultural tourism is not to be found in the reality of tourist practices, but in the role of identification and legitimation which tourism plays for the local authorities.