Tourism, Conflict and Contested Heritage in Former Yugoslavia

Josef Ploner, Patrick Naef

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351720939
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Described as 'cultural crossroads' or 'mosaic', 'powder keg', 'border', 'bridge' or Europe's 'Other', the region comprising former Yugoslavia has, over time, conjured up ambiguous imaginaries associated with political unrest, national contest and ethnic divide. Since the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the succeeding Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, both the geography and historiography of the region have been thoroughly reconfigured, which has impacted the ways in which heritage is interpreted and used at local, regional and national levels. In this ongoing process of heritage (re)interpretation, tourism is more than just a 'dark' spectacle. While it can be seen as a catalyst through which to filter or normalise dissonant memories, it can also be utilised as a powerful ideological tool which enables the narrative reinvention of contested traditions and divisive myths.

Drawing on case studies from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo, this volume generates new and fascinating insights into the contested terrain of heritage tourism in former Yugoslavia. It explores the manifold ways in which tourism stakeholders engage with, capitalise on, and make sense of sites and events marked by conflict and trauma. Unlike many previous studies, this book features contributions by emerging, early-career scholars emanating from within the region, and working across disciplines such as anthropology, art history, geography and political studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change.

INTRODUCTION

Tourism, conflict and contested heritage in former Yugoslavia

Patrick Naef^a and Josef Ploner^b

^aDepartment of Geography and Environment, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; ^bFaculty of Education, Department of Education Studies, University of Hull, Hull, UK

Although, historically, there have always been travellers crossing the Balkan Peninsula, Todorova (1994) notes that early travellers were usually heading for important centres such as Constantinople or Jerusalem, and considered South-East Europe as a peripheral place where people were just passing through. The region is only really discovered in the eighteenth century along with an increasing interest in the East. More organised forms of tourism appear at the beginning of the nineteenth century, emerging first around railway lines and thermal therapy resources, and then expanding towards the coastlines. A large part of these developments took place in Croatia and the ‘Dalmatian Riviera’, but other regions also experienced the arrival of visitors and the first organised trip in Bosnia was proposed by Thomas Cook & Sons in 1898.

It is only after the Second World War, during the rule of Marshall Tito, that tourism really flourished particularly in the period between the 1960s and the 1980s, when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) followed an alternative way of development as the rest of the Eastern Bloc. A relative openness to the West allowed the arrival of European tourists and led to forms of mass tourism in some parts of the region (Grandits & Taylor, 2010). While communist regimes such as Bulgaria and Romania mainly hosted eastern ‘apparatchiks’ on the Black Sea resorts, Yugoslavia and Greece focused on attracting seaside tourists from Western Europe (Cattaruzza & Sintès, 2012).

Tourism and war in the former Yugoslavia

The wars of the Yugoslav succession during the 1990s had, without any doubt, a disastrous impact on the region’s tourism sector. Moreover, some of the most popular tourist destinations were directly targeted; the shelling of Dubrovnik, a UNESCO world heritage site on the south coast of Croatia, in 1991 is certainly a paradigmatic example. Bosnia–Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo and many other parts of former Yugoslavia were heavily impacted by different armed conflicts and saw tourist numbers plummeting especially during 1992–1995. While Bosnia–Herzegovina was completely ravaged and saw its tourism brought to a complete halt, some regions of Croatia were spared and tourism did not vanish entirely. Since the end of the wars, the revival of tourism has unfolded in contrasting and asynchronous ways. Countries such as Croatia and Slovenia quickly regained the number of tourists they had before the conflicts, but Bosnia–Herzegovina attained its pre-war tourism market only a few years ago (a market far smaller than its Croatian neighbour).

Nowadays, Croatia, and above all its coastline, certainly represents the epicentre of tourism in the former Yugoslavia and some consider seaside tourism as ‘hegemonic’ in the region (Pinteau, 2011). Other former republics of Yugoslavia are also profiting from tourism. For example, Montenegro promotes its coastline to eastern European tourists – mainly Serbians and Russians – and to a lesser extent to the West. Natural attractions represent the main assets of the non-coastal countries, while the cultural heritage of this region, often described as a ‘crossroads between East and West’ (Bracewell & Drace-Francis, 2009), constitutes another important touristic resource. In this context, Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia–Herzegovina promote their religious heritage extensively; their numerous mosques and Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches, some of them designated as world heritage sites by UNESCO, constitute important landmarks on the tourism map.

Paradoxically, the wars of the 1990s also contributed to the cultural heritage production in the former Yugoslavia, leading to the touristification of the war memory – a phenomenon sometimes also referred to as ‘war tourism’ – through the construction of war memorials and museums, along with the organisation of ‘war tours’ (Naef, 2014). This trend, which draws on both domestic and international tourism markets, is especially present in heavily war-torn places like Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia–Herzegovina, and Slavonia, a region in Eastern Croatia.

In Sarajevo, war is now part of the tourism offer, and besides several museums on the topic, some local tour operators offer tailored tours focusing on the remains of the last war. Elsewhere, the Memorial of Srebrenica-Potočari receives more than 100,000 annual visitors, mourners as well as tourists each year, making it one of the most visited sites of Bosnia–Herzegovina today (Naef, 2014). In both contexts, tourism participates in memory conflicts, in a country ruled by three different communities (Bosnians, Croats and Serbs) previously opposed (and sometimes allied) in warfare.

The Croatian region of Slavonia, and especially the town of Vukovar, often heralded as a symbol of both national martyrdom and independence, also experience a form of memorial tourism, in which Croats from all over the country come to pay their respects to this martyred town and region (Naef, 2016). From a tourism and destination planning perspective, the interpretation of the conflict is unilateral. Memorial politics, predominantly in the hands of Croatian war veterans, serve as a base for the diffusion of a hegemonic discourse on the past war. Furthermore, the symbol of independence associated with Vukovar is often used in nationalistic narratives, in politics and the media, as well as in museums and tourism. Although Vukovar is the focus of tourism associated with war heritage, Croatian tourism authorities have been very active in distancing the rest of the country from its war-torn image. Rivera (2008) speaks about an ‘omission’ of war, a process that she qualifies as ‘covering’. Croatian tourism politics seeks to dissociate the country from its war heritage, but also tries to promote Croatia as ‘European’, emphasising Roman or Austro-Hungarian historical elements, instead of Byzantine, socialist or Slavic culture (Rivera, 2008).

In their touristscapes and memorialscapes (Carr, 2012), where competing memories are at stake, these new countries, and places within them, make different uses of the past. Exploring the management of tourism is thus essential to the comprehension of memorial issues in the former Yugoslavia. Besides, considering the importance of history (and of its instrumentalisation) in the region, an analysis of the impact of memory on tourism seems even more necessary. Since the 1980s, tourism has been identified as a potential instrument of peace by international bodies such as UNESCO, UNWTO or the European Commission. However, as it can be observed in parts of ex-Yugoslavia, tourism can also contribute to increasing memorial tensions.

Contested memories and dissonant heritage in tourism

The mutual and arguably complex relationships between tourism, memory and heritages of war and conflict have been widely explored in tourism studies and generated a wealth of international case studies. These include tourisms associated with the American Civil War (Chronis, 2012), the First and Second World Wars (Cooper, 2006; Scates, 2006; Winter, 2012), Vietnam (Henderson, 2000), Cambodia (Sion, 2011), Rwanda (Friedrich & Johnston, 2013), Sri Lanka (Hyndman & Amarasingam, 2014), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Causevic & Lynch, 2011; Naef, 2014), the Middle East (Milstein, 2013), as well as tours to more recent sites of terrorism (Sather-Wagstaff, 2011). Likewise, authors have developed a wide range of concepts and heuristic ‘labels’ to make sense of tourism practices and representations within potentially contested moral and memorial terrain, such as ‘dark’ or ‘thanatourism’ (Foley & Lennon, 1996; Seaton, 1999; Stone, 2006), ‘battlefield tourism’ (Dunkley, Morgan, & Westwood, 2011; Ryan, 2007), ‘(post-)war’ or ‘post-conflict tourism’, ‘atrocity heritage’ (Ashworth, 2004; Fyall, Prideaux, & Timothy, 2006), or alternatively, ‘Phoenix tourism’ (Causevic & Lynch, 2011), ‘reconciliation tourism’ (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2003) as well as ‘peace tourism’ (Moufakkir & Kelly, 2010). The variety of concepts currently in use seems to point towards a certain (moral?) dilemma within tourism studies, which suggests a threefold pattern in the interpretation of sites of war and terror. Firstly, these sites are conceptualised as marketable destinations capitalising on tourists’ peculiar and sometimes voyeuristic fascination with the ‘dark’ and uncanny dimensions of the human condition. Secondly, they are seen as material and emotional sites of personal and collective remembrance (e.g. ancestral/battlefield tourism). And finally, they are approached as arenas in which lasting hostilities and traumas can be overcome and ‘normalised’ with the help of tourism (e.g. tourism for peace, regenerative tourism, etc.).

In an influential study, Tunbridge and Ashworth (1996) highlighted the significance of site management and interpretation in relation to what they termed ‘dissonant heritage’. Such heritage is appropriated by different and conflicting groups of stakeholders, including victims or descendants of victims, perpetrators and their descendants, bystanders as well as other groups including tourists, refugees and displaced persons, international NGOs or heritage organisations. Clearly, tourism plays an important part in the interpretation and management of such dissonant heritage and scholars have repeatedly emphasised the ideological influence of tourism in the brokerage of memory and its power to utilise narratives that direct audiences towards certain attitudes and moral judgements (Bendix, 2002; Ploner, 2012). For the region comprising former Yugoslavia, this may relate to well-rehearsed grand narratives mapping out a distinct orientalist Balkan identity (i.e. Balkanism, see Todorova, 1997; or Balkan atavism, see Herzfeld, 2005), as well as more punctuated recent (hi)stories about war, death and survival (see Naef and Aussems, this issue). For example, Dragićević Šešić and Rogač Mijatović (2014) describe how tourism and contemporary forms of heritage interpretation reinforce long-established narratives and symbolic geographies of the Balkan region within Europe through politically charged metaphors such as ‘multicultural mosaic’, ‘bridge’, ‘border’, ‘crossroads’, ‘powder keg’ or Europe’s ‘Other’. At a different and more local level, Causevic and Lynch (2011) have demonstrated how individuals such as tour guides in Sarajevo and Mostar negotiate dissonant memories by escaping everyday politicking and by engaging in an empathic personal narrative ‘catharsis’. Such catharsis emerges from the interaction between tour guide, site and tourist and seeks to present a message of peace going beyond the dominant political discourse and the ‘banalism’ often associated with heritage interpretation in tourism.

Between these local and the greater regional ‘Balkan’ narratives, the renegotiation and reinvention of collective memory and heritage through tourism remains particularly problematic at national levels. Following the wars of the Yugoslav succession and the emergence of six independent states on former Yugoslav territory in the 1990s, tourism has not only been identified as a tool for post-war economic recovery, but has also been instrumental in the politically motivated reinvention of tradition, the annulment of recent history, and attempts to reorganise national collective memory and structures of feeling. In this context, tourism has been harnessed as a strategic tool within wider national politics of collective amnesia rather than an agent of memory and reconciliation. Considering research evidence to date, this has been particularly the case in Croatia, which has arguably profited most from international tourism since the late 1990s, but continues to conceal and remove any material and narrative traces reminiscent of the recent war (Fanny, 2016; Rivera, 2008).

The narrative power of tourism in inventing, adapting and obliterating dissonant national historiographies is well recorded in the literature (Pitchford, 2008; Ploner, 2012) and seems particularly momentous in post-war scenarios where myths and nostalgic references to more remote, and hence less problematic pasts are frequently reinvigorated (Boym, 2001). However, as Pavlicic (2016) shows, medieval sites such as Serbian churches and monasteries in Kosovo are not spared from ongoing ideological battles over heritage interpretation and ownership claims which are inextricably linked to more recent and lived memories of conflict. While Lennon and Foley’s (2000) claim that more recent events are generally ‘darker’ than those with a longer history may be valid, one has also to acknowledge the symbolic potential of historically remote sites and events in refuelling ongoing political, religious or ethnic tensions.

Deconstructing such ideological and conflicting symbolisms imbued in monuments and heritage sites is a common theme within critical heritage and tourism studies and, to some extent, features in this special issue. However, as Boym (2011) argues with reference to Walter Benjamin, memory cannot be reduced to the symbolic realm alone, but is more akin to ‘allegorical’ ways of interpreting, thinking and feeling. Writing about ruins – more often seen as allegories of romantic nostalgia rather than post-war memorialscapes – Boym makes strong claims for a memory in appreciation of ruins (‘ruinophilia’) which is less retrospective and restorative of imaginary pasts, but offers prospective views towards ‘(…) possible futures that never came to be’ (Boym, 2011, no pagination). Following this reading, the papers presented in this special issue do not only look backward but also point in the direction of utopian and ‘nostalgic futures’ by ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Tourism, conflict and contested heritage in former Yugoslavia
• 2. Dissonant heritage and promotion of tourism in the case of Serbian medieval monuments in Kosovo
• 3. Second World War monuments in Yugoslavia as witnesses of the past and the future
• 4. Tourism and the ‘martyred city’: memorializing war in the former Yugoslavia
• 5. Cross-community tourism in Bosnia and Herzegovina: a path to reconciliation?
• 6. Dark heritage tourism and the Sarajevo siege
• 7. Memorial policies and restoration of Croatian tourism two decades after the war in former Yugoslavia
• Index