Search results

This chapter explores the role of iconic architecture in the development and promotion of urban megaprojects (UMPs) in globalizing cities. Iconic architecture is defined in terms of fame and aesthetic/symbolic significance. The argument is framed within the concept of the culture-ideology of consumerism. While the focus is on two case studies – the grands projets in Paris and UMPs in major Chinese cities since the 1980s – the chapter seeks to demonstrate the increasing importance of iconic architecture for UMPs around the world. The chapter utilizes official sources, scholarly research, and reports in the mass media to support the arguments, all within the context of a theoretical framework developed over the last two decades and widely published by the author, to explain how capitalist globalization works. Within the context of the culture-ideology of consumerism, the widely accepted rationale for capitalist globalization, the production and marketing of what has been increasingly identified as iconic architecture is the main route to achieving the profits – financial, political, and cultural – deemed necessary for the success of UMPs all over the world. The chapter presents the first available analysis of the key role of the transnational capitalist class in the production and marketing of iconic architecture in urban megaprojects, thereby offering a systemic explanation of the growth and characteristics of urban megaprojects in the era of capitalist globalization.

This purpose of this paper is to explore how Western design, fashion and aesthetic styles influenced advertising practice in Turkey in the post-Second World War era. Specifically, the authors focus on the key targets of the consumerist ideology of the period, women and discuss the representations of females in Turkish advertisements.

Data were analysed using a combination of social semiotic and compositional analysis methods. Compositional analysis focused on the formal qualities and design elements of the ads; social semiotic analysis sought to uncover their meaning potentials in relation to social, cultural, political and economic dynamics of the period. The advertisements of a prominent Turkish pasta brand, Piyale, published in the local adaptation of the American Life magazine, between 1956 and 1966, constitute the data set.

The analysis reveals that Piyale followed the stylistic and thematic trends prevailing in American and European advertisements at the time and crafted ads that constructed and communicated a Westernized image of Turkish women and families. In line with the cultural currents of the 1950s and 1960s, the ads emphasize patriarchal gender roles and traditional family values and address the woman as a consumer whose priority is to please her husband and take good care of her children.

This study contributes to the advertising history in non-Western contexts and provides an understanding of the influence Western advertising conventions and fashion trends had on developing country markets. The findings indicate that Western-inspired representations and gender roles dominated advertisements of local brands during the post-war period.

There have been times in recent years when it has seemed that the US economy, in particular, has defied economic gravity. This was certainly the case in the late nineties of the twentieth century. Many heaved a sigh of relief when the Nasdaq and the Dow responded to the pull of economic gravity and fell to earth in the early part of the twenty first century. The Earth at the time, in 2002, appeared to be indices of around 8,000 for the Dow and 1,250 for the Nasdaq. These measures still indicated huge wealth in terms of saleable bits of paper as well, indicating the underlying huge capacity of the real economy for creating surpluses. Both indices climbed back, though the Nasdaq was a long way from its astronomic former heights before the next (2007) crisis hit. True to the cyclical record of modern capitalism, however, by 2006 the US and the world stock markets were booming again. The nominal value of shares traded worldwide in 2006 by some estimates was nearly $70 trillion (Bogle, 2005). In 2007, another crisis appeared, ushered in supposedly by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the United States; subsequent events took their toll in economic and financial terms not only in the United States but worldwide in most of the major economies. The terms “credit crunch” and “sub-prime” had become so pervasive within a few weeks of the onset of the latest economic crisis that by July 2008, the Concise Oxford Dictionary provided definitions for them. While these terms are now embedded in the language of economics and everyday speech, inevitably the affected economies will recover from the crises and continue to grow. While there is no shortage of reasons posited for the latest crisis and those preceding it, far fewer explanations have been forwarded to tell us why economies survive economic shocks and, despite dire predictions and expressions of gloom, recent crises have not been as disastrous as was once the case, notably as in the Depression years of the 1930s. During the Depression of the Thirties, production fell by a third between 1929 and 1933, unemployment reached 13 million and even by 1938 one person in five were unemployed. No economist has predicted these dire consequences even for the crisis of 2007–2009. In 1999, Paul Krugman published his short book: The Return of Depression Economics in which he not only reminded us of the 1930s Depression but suggested that the then economic crises bore an “eerie resemblance to the Great Depression.”¹ He retreats within a few pages and describes the events as the Great Recession because the global damage has been “well short of Depression levels” (Krugman, 1999). A decade later, Krugman, by then a Nobel laureate for economics in 2008, began his 2009 revised edition of Return of Depression Economics thus: “The world economy is not in depression: it probably won't fall into depression (though I wish I could be completely sure about that)” (Krugman, 2009). By early January 2009, he surprised other economic commentators by using the term “depression” in his New York Times column.

This chapter offers an experience-based report about the development of the first Scandinavian PhD program in tourism studies at Mid-Sweden University. This process is documented through a framework which, rather than having the coherence of a single clearly bounded discipline, focuses on tourism as a study area encompassing multiple disciplines. Tourism knowledge is derived through a synthesis of fact-oriented positivist methodologies and critical theory. The theoretical framework employed to develop the graduate program in tourism studies is presented by critically discussing its multidisciplinary base and briefly outlining future veins of further development.

This chapter presents an innovative learning opportunity for tourism students, International Tourism and Hospitality Academy at Sea, that has been in operation for the last 10 years. The program could render itself as a case study of Kolb’s experiential learning theory according to which knowledge is created by transforming experience. Its uniqueness and complexity lie in its diversity. This program has involved between 80 and 130 tourism students yearly from four to six institutions from different countries participating in new scholarly inputs by non-resident professors and instructors.

Inquiry learning points is based on questions and requires students to work independently to solve problems. Instructors are facilitators of learning, not people who give right answers and instructions to learners. Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences Porvoo campus in Finland is a new concept for learning. The lecturers have changed from traditional ones to coaches aiming at new competences with new tools to enhance learning. Their own implementation of inquiry learning has been assessed by themselves with an ongoing self-assessment process as a part of the normal tasks of instructional teams. Self-assessment is a part of action research that aims to develop an organization and the work in it.

The chapters by Joo, Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría, and Bunnell have shown that UMPs go beyond the local scale regarding development, implementation, and consequences. In fact, as they argue the projects in South Korea, Bilbao, and Kuala Lumpur obey a logic of reterritorialization à la Brenner, whereby the regional or national state actively participates in urban development by designing urban policies and projects which, in turn, exhibit political, economic, and visual dimensions going beyond the frontiers of the urban realm. This tendency has implications for the role of local politics in UMPs. Local political conditions (e.g., a housing shortage or a desire for global visibility) play a prominent role in the implementation of UMPs, as shown by the Bundang and Ilsan new towns in South Korea as well as Bunnell´s recounting of the reimagining of Kuala Lumpur. In Korea, strong central government control over the real estate market led to addressing the housing shortage and preventing real estate speculation; the chronic housing shortage, with the increased economic power of individuals, resulted in distinctive advance-sale and dual-pricing systems for new apartment units. The huge unmet housing demand in Korea during relative economic prosperity quickly filled Bundang and Ilsan’s housing units with new residents, contributing to the new towns’ successful outcomes.

This concluding contribution draws together key issues discussed in the various chapters of the book and connects them with future trends for tourism education. It places task in the changing world of higher education in general, and discusses changes in knowledge acquisition, ways of learning, knowledge content, and the role of educators in the future. This coverage leads to new learning technologies and their impact on the learning spaces of the future. Finally, the chapter discusses how projected tourism education programs can be designed to address society’s needs at this critical juncture in the history of the mankind. Creating responsible leaders for this global industry is perhaps the most important goal of future tourism education.