Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Adopting an actor-network perspective, this article conceptualises a temporal-material-discursive framing for the interrogation of the performances of tourism, time, and urbanity of a popular but now defunct aquarium, the Van Kleef Aquarium, in Singapore. A temporal-material-discursive framing, guided by Actor-Network Theory, captures how tourism attractions interact with time, urbanity, and tourism between material/physical/tangible and immaterial/discourse/intangible. Such a framing facilitates the examination of the discursive and material aspects of a tourism object, site, and place beyond the site’s period of operation and material existence. It also allows one to trace the entire web of performativities as they unfold across space and time and between seemingly unrelated heterogeneous elements in societies. This paper illustrates the utility of such a framing for multiple and heterogeneous understandings of tourism sites. In particular, such temporal-material-discursive framing highlights the ways in which materiality and the discursive interact and how the discursive facilitates the enduring presence of the site in its post-materiality.

Keywords

animal tourism materiality memories posthumanism Singapore urban tourism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Altamirano

M. E.

(2022) ‘Overcoming Urban Frontiers: Ordering Favela Tourism Actor-Networks’, Tourist Studies 22(2): 200–22.

Benali

Ren

(2019) ‘Lice Work: Non-Human Trajectories in Volunteer Tourism’, Tourist Studies 19(2): 238–57.

Brembeck

Sörum

(2017) ‘Assembling Nostalgia: Devices for Affective Captation on the Re: Heritage Market’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 23(6): 556–74.

Bright

C. F.

Foster

K. N.

Joyner

, et al. (2021) ‘Heritage Tourism, Historic Roadside Markers and ‘Just Representation’ in Tennessee, USA,’ Journal of Sustainable Tourism 29(2–3): 428–47.

Bunnell

Gillen

E. L.-E.

(2018) ‘The Prospect of Elsewhere: Engaging the Future through Aspirations in Asia’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108(1): 35–51.

Cater

(2010) ‘Any Closer and You’d be Lunch! Interspecies Interactions as Nature Tourism at Marine Aquaria’, Journal of Ecotourism 9(2): 133–48.

Chan

S. M.

(1989) ‘Donated Rare Fish on Display’. The Straits Times, 21 August.

Chia

(2000) ‘Put Heart Before Head, and Save the Library’. The Straits Times, 20 February.

Chong

Chua

A. L.

(2013) ‘The Multiple Spaces of Bukit Brown’, pp. 26–55 in Lim

W. S. W.

(ed) Public Space in Urban Asia. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company.

10.

Cohen

(2019) ‘Posthumanism and Tourism’, Tourism Review 74(3): 416–27.

11.

Cohen

Fennell

(2019) ‘Plants and Tourism: Not Seeing the Forest [n]or the Trees’, Tourist Studies 19(4): 585–606.

12.

Cudworth

Hobden

(2018) The Emancipatory Project of Posthumanism. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

13.

de Jong

Varley

Steadman

, et al. (2024) ‘More-Than-Food Tourism’, Tourist Studies 24(2): 107–32.

14.

Deleuze

Guattari

(1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

15.

Desmond

(1999) Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

16.

Dicks

(2008). ‘Performing the Hidden Injuries of Class in Coal-Mining Heritage’, Sociology 42(3): 436–52.

17.

Elder-Vass

(2015) ‘Disassembling Actor-network Theory’. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 45(1): 100–21.

18.

Felder

Duineveld

Van Assche

(2015) ‘Absence/Presence and the Ontological Politics of Heritage: The Case of Barrack 57’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 21(5): 460–75.

19.

Ferrando

(2013) ‘Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms’, Existenz 8(2): 26–32.

20.

Foucault

(1988) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (Vintage Books ed.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.

21.

Foucault

(1990) The History of Sexuality (Vintage Books ed., Vol. 1). New York, NY: Vintage Books.

22.

Foucault

(1994) The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (Vintage Books ed.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.

23.

Gieling

Ong

C. E.

(2016) ‘Warfare Tourism Experiences and National Identity: The Case of Airborne Museum ‘Hartenstein’ in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands,’ Tourism Management 57: 45–55.

24.

Grimwood

B. S.

Caton

(2017) ‘Pausing at the Intersections of Tourism Moralities and Mobilities: Some Neighborhood History and a Traffic Report’, Tourist Studies 17(1): 3–16.

25.

Hardy

Thomas

(2015) ‘Discourse in a Material World’, Journal of Management Studies 52(5): 680–96.

26.

Heng

C. C.

(2007) ‘Don’t Let Sentiment Cloud Sense of Reality’. The Straits Times, 10 May.

27.

(2013) ‘Van Kleef Aquarium’. Singapore Infopedia, National Library Board. Available at: https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2013-11-18_133428.html (accessed 26 September 2020).

28.

Holtorf

(2008) ‘Zoos as Heritage: An Archaeological Perspective’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 14(1): 3–9.

29.

Jönsson

(2015) ‘The Nature of an Upscale Nature: Bro Hof Slott Golf Club and the Political Ecology of High-End Golf’, Tourist Studies 16(3): 315–36.

30.

Jóhannesson

G. T.

(2005) ‘Tourism Translations: Actor–Network Theory and Tourism Research’, Tourist Studies 5(2): 133–50.

31.

Jóhannesson

G. T.

Ren

van der Duim

(2015) Tourism Encounters and Controversies: Ontological Politics of Tourism Development. Farnham: Ashgate.

32.

Koh

(2013) The Tommy Koh Reader: Favourite Essays and Lectures. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific Pub. Co.

33.

Kong

(2017) ‘Conserving Urban Heritage: Remembering the Past in a Developmental City-State’, pp. 237–56 in Heng

C. K.

(ed) 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company.

34.

Koshar

(2002) ‘Seeing, Traveling, and Consuming: An Introduction’, pp. 1–27 in Koshar

(ed) Leisure, Consumption and Culture. Oxford and New York: Berg.

35.

Latour

(1996) ‘On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications’, Soziale Welt 47(4): 369–81.

36.

Legg

(2004) ‘Memory and Nostalgia.’ Cultural Geographies 11(1): 99–107.

37.

Legg

(2007) ‘Reviewing Geographies of Memory/Forgetting’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 39(2): 456–66.

38.

Law

Xie

, et al. (2021) ‘Review of Tourism Forecasting Research With Internet Data’, Tourism Management 83: 104245.

39.

Liang

(2014) ‘Preserve Visual Cues that Bond Us to Nation’. The Straits Times, 16 April.

40.

Lim

B. C.

(2016) ‘Preserving Our Heritage, Culture and History – Conserving Dakota Crescent’. Available at: https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/sprs3topic?reportid=matter-adj-778 (accessed 26 September 2020).

41.

Lim

R. S. K.

(2017) ‘School Mergers Another Blow to Our Heritage’. TODAY, 27 April.

42.

Ling

K. H.

(1989a) ‘Public Aquarium Management: A Case Study of the Van Kleef Aquarium’, pp. 114–8 in Davies

J. A.

(ed) Aquarama Proceedings: First International Aquarium Fish and Accessories Conference, vol. 1. Singapore: Academic Associates Pte Ltd.

43.

Ling

K. H.

(1989b) ‘The Right Way to Fish for Compliments’. The Straits Times, 5 November.

44.

Logan

Reeves

(2009) Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage’. London: Routledge.

45.

Martin

M. E.

Delmelle

E. M.

(2021) ‘Modeling Spatial Attractiveness to Wine Tourism in North Carolina, U.S.A.,’ in Ferrante

Fritz

Öner

Ö.

(eds) Regional Science Perspectives on Tourism and Hospitality. Advances in Spatial Science (The Regional Science Series). Cham: Springer.

46.

Melis

Chambers

(2021) ‘The Construction of Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Foucauldian Critique’, Annals of Tourism Research 89: 103206.

47.

Mesenas

(1971) ‘A Do-It-Yourself Tank for Your Catch’. The Straits Times, 18 April.

48.

Miles

(2002) ‘Auschwitz: Museum Interpretation and Darker Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research 29(4): 1175–78.

49.

Miller

(2009) ‘Let Memories of Old Bring Smiles, Not Tears’. The New Paper, 2 March.

50.

Muzaini

(2015) ‘On the Matter of Forgetting and ‘Memory Returns’.’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 40(1): 102–12.

51.

Muzaini

Yeoh

B. S. A.

(2016) Contested Memoryscapes: The Politics of Second World War Commemoration in Singapore. Farnham: Ashgate.

52.

Newman

H. E.

(1991) ‘The Aquarium Revolution and Underwater World Singapore’, pp. 117–9 in Chia

L. S.

Chou

L. M.

(eds) Urban Coastal Area Management: The Experience of Singapore: Proceedings of the Singapore National Workshop on Urban Coastal Area Management, Republic of Singapore, 9–10 November 1989. Philippines: International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management.

53.

New Nation (1981a) ‘Sentosa Wants Van Kleef’, 26 March.

54.

New Nation (1981b) ‘Van Kleef Will Not Move Out’, 5 November.

55.

W. C.

(2012) ‘How About Heritage Index?’ The Straits Times, 7 January.

56.

National Heritage Board (NHB) (2018) ‘Dwarf Gourami Fishes in the Van Kleef Aquarium at River Valley Road’. Available at: https://www.roots.gov.sg/learn/collections/listing/1185327 (accessed 15 October 2020).

57.

National Heritage Board (NHB) (2020) ‘Historic Sites’. Available at: https://www.nhb.gov.sg/what-we-do/our-work/preserve-our-stories-treasures-and-places/national-monuments-and-marked-historic-sites/historic-sites (accessed 20 September 2020).

58.

Ong

(2007) ‘Singapore Parliamentary Report’. March 12, Vol. 93. Available at: https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/sprs3topic?reportid=budget-471 (accessed 19 October 2020).

59.

Ong

C. E.

du Cros

(2012) ‘Projecting Postcolonial Conditions at Shanghai Expo, China: Floppy Ears, Lofty Dreams and Macao’s Immutable Mobiles, China’, Urban Studies 49(13): 2937–53.

60.

Ong

C. E.

Ryan

McIntosh

(2014) ‘Power-Knowledge and Tour-Guide Training: Capitalistic Domination, Utopian Visions and the Creation and Negotiation of UNESCO’s Homo Turismos in Macao’, Annals of Tourism Research 48: 221–34.

61.

Ong

C. E.

Mah

O. B. P.

(2021) ‘The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting: Vietnamese Refugees at Singapore’s Hawkins Road Transit Camp’, Geoforum 123: 36–46.

62.

Ong

C. E.

(2023) ‘Plasmatic Thinking and Tourism: Plasmatic Modernity’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint 65(2): 187–201.

63.

Ong

C. E.

Yang (Stephanie)

(2023) Encountering pandas and their valleys in precarious times: A tourism assemblage perspective, Tourist Studies 23(1): 25–43.

64.

Orlikowski

W. J.

Scott

S. V.

(2015) ‘Exploring Material-Discursive Practices’, Journal of Management Studies 52(5): 697–705.

65.

Paulos

(2018) ‘Performing Urbanity: An Inquiry into the Modes of Knowing the City’, pp. 229–57 in Kurath

Marskamp

Paulos

, et al. (eds) Relational Planning: Tracing Artefacts, Agency and Practices. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

66.

Primary Production Department (1967) Annual Report. Singapore: Government Printing Office.

67.

Primary Production Department (1968) Annual Report of the Primary Production Department. Singapore: Government Printing Office.

68.

Sikarwar

(2021) ‘Time-Varying Foreign Currency Risk of World Tourism Industry: Effects of COVID-19’, Current Issues in Tourism 24(7): 887–91.

69.

Sim

C. K. S.

(2014) ‘Preserve Our ‘Sacred’ Memories.’ The Straits Times, 14 May.

70.

Singapore Land Authority (2020) ‘One Historical Maps’. Available at: https://hm.onemap.sg/ (accessed 17 October 2020).

71.

Siow

(1991) ‘Van Kleef Aquarium to Close from Saturday’. The Straits Times, 28 May.

72.

Bramwell

Whalley

P. A.

(2018) ‘Cultural Political Economy and Urban Heritage Tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research 68: 30–40.

73.

Tan

C. W.

(2006) ‘Beware Effects of Rebuilding’. TODAY, 5 June.

74.

The Business Times (1991). ‘Van Kleef Aquarium to Close for Good on Friday’, 28 May.

75.

The Singapore Monitor (1985) ‘Air Bladder Problems in Goldfish’, 24 May.

76.

The Straits Times (1963) ‘Fish Talk’, 3 March.

77.

The Straits Times (1966) ‘Now – High Quality Sea Water for Fish’, 4 August.

78.

The Straits Times (1967) ‘Display of Aquaria’, 8 December.

79.

The Straits Times (1978) ‘More Visiting Van Kleef Aquarium’, 31 May.

80.

The Straits Times (1980) ‘Learning More About Hobbies’, 27 November.

81.

The Straits Times (1981) ‘Sentosa Home for Aquarium?’, 27 March.

82.

The Straits Times (1983) ‘Aquarium Succeeds in Breeding Clown Fish’, 27 June.

83.

The Straits Times (1987) ‘Van Kleef Aquarium Reopens Today After $750,000 Facelift’, 26 August.

84.

van der Duim

. (2007) ‘Tourismscapes an Actor-Network Perspective’, Annals of Tourism Research 34(4): 961–76.

85.

van der Duim

Ren

Thór Jóhannesson

(2013) ‘Ordering, Materiality, and Multiplicity: Enacting Actor–Network Theory in Tourism’, Tourist Studies 13(1): 3–20.

86.

van der Duim

Ampumuza

Ahebwa

W. M.

(2014) ‘Gorilla Tourism in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda: An Actor-Network Perspective’, Society & Natural Resources 27(6): 588–601.

87.

Xie

P. F.

Lee

M. Y.

Wong

J. W.

(2020) ‘Assessing Community Attitudes Toward Industrial Heritage Tourism Development’, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 18(3): 237–51.

88.

Ong

C. E.

(2024) ‘Assembling Tigers, Dragons and Hells: Relational Materialist Geographies of Curated Themed Spaces’, Tourism Geographies 26(7): 1134–50.

89.

Yeo

G. L.

(2005) ‘When Van Kleef Made Waves’. The Straits Times, 23 April.

The fishes strike back! A temporal-material-discursive analysis of a defunct aquarium

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References