Världsarvens konsumtion och attraktion : En undersökning av förmedling och mottagande av tre världsarvsstäder

Sammanfattning: In this thesis I examine three cities that have been nominated as world heritage sites by UNESCO, and how these cities are understood and mediated by visitors. One of the research questions was also to see how these places has been affected by the nomination. I have visited Visby, Dubrovnik and Toruń to do this research. I wanted to find out why so many people choose to visit these places and how much the world heritage nomination was part of the decision to visit. This is done by examining how these cities are mediated by travel literature, tourist information in the form of brochures and other information, as well as interviews. These interviews were conducted both with tourists at these sites, but also with people that work with tourism or cultural heritage in some form. The method used besides interviews has been thick description as it is formulated by Clifford Geertz to describe and make sense of these places and to see how you would experience these places as a tourist. The researchers that has figured as a theoretical background include John Urry and Andrew Walsh. Urry describes how the tourist uses different gazes to see the world in different ways, and Walsh describes how a place that seems to be irreplaceable might in fact not be so irreplaceable, which applies on the examined places in this thesis. Josefina Syssner and Karim van Knippenberg together with Linde Egberts lays a groundwork for the understanding of different sorts of tourists, and what tools can be used is place marketing of these cities. In agreement with previous research I conclude that the primary attraction of these sites for the tourists is not their status as world heritage sites, and the reason that these sites are troubled with mass tourism lies elsewhere. The place itself is replaceable for the majority of the tourists, but not for the material heritage. A better dialogue is needed between the tourism and heritage sector, as well as local residents and politicians, to be able to counteract the negative effects of mass tourism, that is shown to wear on the material culture. The mediation needs to include a more widespread picture of the complex issues that concerns these heritage sites. In todays globalized and mobile world, the idea of world heritage sites becomes problematic, as this work has shown. This thesis is a two years master’s thesis in Museum and cultural heritage.