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Overtourism as a Worrying Tide: A Rhythmanalytic Experiment on Venetian Everyday Life

Rhythmanalysis

ISBN: 978-1-83909-973-1, eISBN: 978-1-83909-972-4

Publication date: 26 November 2021

Abstract

This chapter is an account of a rhythmanalysis of a representation of daily life in Venice in calle Rugagiuffa in a YouTube series. This series – named Rugagiuffa in reference to the calle in which was filmed – was self-produced by a group of young friends struggling with an everyday reality very different from the one presented by tour operators: a lack of rental property, unemployment or work that is demeaning and strictly off the books. In the first part of the chapter, I refer to the basic concepts of the rhythmanalytic methodology developed by Henri Lefebvre and Catherine Régulier and use it to describe Venetian rhythms starting from the relations between the body and urban space. Then, I adapt Lefebvre's thought in order to show how the status of ‘city of art’ coincides, for Venice, on the one hand, with its commodification for exclusively tourist purposes and, on the other hand, with the trivialisation of Venetian daily life, reduced to a tourist spectacle. In the final part, I use Rugagiuffa as a bittersweet mise-en-scène of the ability of the tourist monoculture to take possession at various levels of daily life and its relationship with the residents. I argue that the daily life of the Venetian citizens is subsumed within the city's tourist-commercial spectacle to the point of imposing, in spite of themselves, a high degree of consensus, adherence, commitment and integration.

Keywords

Citation

Borelli, G. (2021), "Overtourism as a Worrying Tide: A Rhythmanalytic Experiment on Venetian Everyday Life", Lyon, D. (Ed.) Rhythmanalysis (Research in Urban Sociology, Vol. 17), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 171-187. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1047-004220210000017014

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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