Circuits of Commodification: Imagination and Evaluation in National Destination Marketing

• In Event: 3534 - Theory and Research in Global and Transnational Sociology

Abstract

This paper applies theories of global and economic sociology to analyze the processes and relations of national destination marketing in tourism. Theorizing these relations as circuits of commodification, I contribute to the recent scholarship that establishes external perceptions as a crucial form of evaluating the nation as cultural product in global markets. This qualitative case study examines the marketing activities of 45 nation-states to attract tourists from India and the USA to the destination. The analysis focuses on these distinct professional fields to explore specifically how the interactions of the national destination marketing agencies and the various extra-national co-producers, such as tour operators or travel journalists, frame, mediate, and produce the external perceptions of consumers and therefore the value of the nation as tourist destination. I present three findings about this commodification process: 1.) National imagination is an extra-national economic activity of commodification and evaluation; 2.) Multipliers are simultaneously cultural intermediaries connecting the destination to the global consumer, and market devices making destinations comparable and marketing possible; 3.) Circuits of commodification are locally situated and this positioning produces different market orders of nations as tourist destinations. These findings establish a coherent link between the externalized global forces of consumption acting upon the nation-state and the processes of the cultural intermediation and commodification of national narratives in global markets. I further introduce circuits of commodification in global markets as an analytical tool for a larger theory of capitalism as an integrated economy of worth.

Author

• Tim Rosenkranz, New School for Social Research