Michael A. Di Giovine, President
Welcome to the Council on Heritage and the Anthropology of Tourism, the newest section of the American Anthropological Association!
We are honored to be the first section created in two decades—demonstrating the importance of a permanent structure at the AAA to represent the many members whose academic and professional work involves researching, teaching, advocacy and practice related to heritage, tourism, and the varied intersections of these fields. Our members are a reflection of the AAA as a whole; CHAT is home to academic and applied anthropologists, archaeologists, cultural resource managers, museum professionals, linguists and physical anthropologists.
Heritage and tourism are distinctive, yet interrelated, topics of anthropological inquiry and work. Each is comprised of a wide array of issues and problems that cut across established topical fields and themes in anthropology. Each is not only theoretically rich, but an important global sector unto itself, in which applied anthropologists are engaged.
Critical heritage studies and critical tourism studies are interdisciplinary in nature, yet anthropologists draw upon our holistic approach to human life to provide unique and valuable insights into each. CHAT, therefore, is also a publicly facing expert body that can help members disseminate their work to a wider audience and connect members with both AAA leadership and outside communities looking for experts to consult on matters related to heritage and/or tourism concerns.
Although distinctive, heritage and tourism are mutually constitutive: heritage is given life through tourism, and tourism is often enhanced through rhetorics, imaginaries, objects, and performances of heritage.
It may seem cliché, but we are living in a time of unprecedented change, spurred on by enhanced global mobility of human (and non-human) actors. Within the past 50 years, tourism and its related forms of mobility (such as pilgrimage, work and leisure travel, sport, and study abroad) have generated one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economic sectors, mobilizing more people around the world than armed forces—even in these fraught times—and generating revenue nearly on par with the oil and extractive industries. As such, tourism promises (and sometimes delivers) great educational and economic benefits, but also may problematically exacerbate economic and cultural differences. In recent years, tourism was both one of the driving agents of the spread of COVID, and also one of the hardest-hit sectors during pandemic lockdowns. Likewise, domestic and global travel often has a large carbon footprint, exacerbating the sustainability of the planet, yet it is also heavily impacted by climate change, which threatens tourist sites and the livelihoods of communities. Yet traveling and engaging with cultural diversity can create strong self-reflection and spur “global citizenship;” it may also valorize host communities and integrate them into global markets. Tourism also has manifested itself in quite organic ways, as a means of demonstrating solidarity with places affected by natural and man-made disasters. And it has been lauded as a potential driver of multicultural understanding and peacemaking, as much as it has been used in less savory political ways.
Connected to this, we are also living in a “heritage boom,” as archaeologist Rodney Harrison has written; the past 50 years have seen the development of national and international preservation movements, including UNESCO’s World Heritage (1972) and Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) Conventions—flagship programs of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Heritage connects people through time and space as much as it divides them; it is used to valorize local and Indigenous cultures as well as to marginalize or silence them; it is praised as key cultural resources even as it is threatened through resource extraction, political erasure and genocide, and environmental catastrophe.
Our members deal with these problems and more in their research, their teaching, and their applied work in these sectors. They are poised to weigh in on these issues to their constituents, to the AAA leadership, to the media, and to the communities affected by these issues. And importantly, CHAT complements the excellent work done in many of the AAA’s sections, and we are proud of the overlap in membership and collaboration with them.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
CHAT is therefore more than a catchy acronym—its name has been carefully considered to represent the important and cross-cutting work that we do:
- Council addresses the fundamental expertise of our organization; we are here to provide expert commentary to journalists, interaction among critical scholars of both disciplines, and intervention on domestic and international levels.
- Heritage stands undifferentiated to denote its holistic and cross-cutting relevance to our membership, and our discipline at large. Our members work on so-called tangible and intangible heritage; natural heritage and conservation; cultural heritage and artifacts. Scholars in all four fields work on heritage, integrating genetics, archaeology, linguistics, and ethnography.
- And recognizes the complex mutualities, as well as the distinctive natures, of the two fields. CHAT brings the two into dialogue with each other, in structure, practice, and scholarship.
- Anthropology of Tourism remains, as it did at our original founding as the Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group back in 2013—honoring those anthropological ancestors who have done so much since the first AAA meeting in 1974 to create this subfield; furthering our continued dedication to elevating the critical social scientific study of tourism within anthropology; and promoting the unique theoretical and ethnographic contributions of our members to the holistic study and practice of tourism, in all its forms.
JOINING CHAT
Joining CHAT is easy.
Existing members can simply log into their member portal (https://my.americananthro.org) and click “Join a Section or IG” from the list to the left. Your membership dues will be prorated, depending on when you renewed your AAA membership.
If you are not yet a AAA member, visit https://americananthro.org/membership/ and click on “Become a Member”. This will take you through the registration process, and at the end will ask you to join sections. They are listed in alphabetical order.
Select one of three membership categories:
- Professional member: $18
- Student member: $5
- Sustaining member: $40
We encourage those who can afford to do so, to please consider becoming a sustaining member. As a sustaining member, your contribution will help fund student travel and research prizes. In addition to our Kathleen Adams Student Paper Prize, we aim to create a student travel fund to help support our next generation of anthropologists attend the AAA.
LOOKING FOR AN EXPERT?
For media inquiries, or for further information on collaboration, please contact CHAT.AAA.Communications@gmail.com .
LOOKING TO GET INVOLVED?
There are many ways to get involved!
- If you have not done so already, join CHAT’s social media, including our new CHAT LinkedIn page. Post any questions, CFPs, job openings, and other announcements there, and on our Communities page at the AAA.
- Please also explore our blog, and consider contributing to it!
- We also publish a regular column in Anthropology News, and solicit your input.
- Submit your work to one of our book prizes or student paper prizes. The call is now open!
- Volunteer to serve on our session review committee. Contact CHAT.AAA.Communications@gmail.com for this.
ELECTIONS!
Finally, as a new organization, we have several new board positions to fill. Please consider running for one. The deadline is soon: send your nomination packet to CHAT.AAA.Communications@gmail.com by February 21st, 2025. We will then work with you to submit to the AAA itself by the end-of-February deadline. More information on this is here.
Thank you again for your interest and support in CHAT! We look forward to working with you soon!