Dreaming cultures : cultural representations of Shanghai in tourism

Abstract

This thesis looks at how a city is constructed through cultural representation, using Shanghai as the case study. 'Encoding' and 'decoding' processes within a tourism context are explored. Tourism is an important global industry, not only as an economic process but as a complex system of social phenomenon. With the expansion of tourism, a city not only is a place to live, but also a place to be visited and be gazed on. In the postmodern period, tourists are intentionally looking for exciting, exotic, and playful experiences during their trip. Ironically, such extraordinary tourist experience has been pre-designed and shaped artificially by related institutions of the city to be visited. We use two methods to conduct our research on Shanghai: (1) The 'image' of Shanghai, correlated through textual, visual and spatial representations will be analysed using the method of content analysis; and (2) Ethnographic research will be conducted in a number of tours in Shanghai in order to understand the reception of tourists in respect to the representations. The findings will illustrate the dynamic progress of the projection and reception of the representations of Shanghai. We will endeavour to deploy and explain the cultural and political ideologies underlying the polarizing representations.