CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
 
Journeys of Expressions VI:  Diaspora Community Festivals and Tourism
 
4-6 October 2007, York, United Kingdom

The enforced, encouraged or voluntary movement, migration and dispersion of people is reflected in the family backgrounds, life histories and cultural practices of communities in many countries, regions and cities worldwide. Mobilities associated with the processes of globalisation are demonstrably, if unevenly, contributing to an acceleration of migration for more or less permanent, official and legal settlement of people beyond their 'homelands'. Tourism has also grown substantially and unevenly in recent years, with tourists increasingly encouraged to attend and participate in 'exotic' and 'characteristically authentic' displays of community life in destinations visited. Such tourism typically features the packaging, promotion and consumption of diaspora community neighbourhoods, food and shopping and importantly festivals and cultural events. The relationships between diaspora communities, festivity, cultural events and tourism are therefore of considerable interest to academic researchers, as well as for arts, social, cultural and tourism policy makers and practitioners.
 
Issues addressed include:  
- Defining and conceptualising diasporas in connection with festivals and cultural events; 
- Histories of diaspora communities' mobilities and the transformation and adaptation of festivity and cultural events to new community circumstances and settings; 
- Relationships between diaspora communities and the 'homeland' and expressions of collective memory through festivals and cultural events;
- The distribution and circulation of globalised diaspora festival forms – e.g. carnival, mela, Irish, Chinese, Jewish – religious and secular, established, emerging and contested; 
- The role of diaspora festivals and cultural events in policies and programmes to promote community cohesion, crime reduction and anti-racism; 
- Festivals, cultural events and the identities of diaspora community members -  inter-generational issues; 
- Festivals, cultural events and the multi- (inter-) cultural city; 
- Settings and spaces for diaspora festivals and cultural events; 
- Issues surrounding new and recently introduced diaspora community festivals and cultural events; 
- Performing diaspora community arts through festivals;  Diaspora tourism markets.
 
In the tradition of the Journeys of Expressions conference series, we wish to encourage an interdisciplinary debate on the suggested themes and welcome paper proposals from academics from various disciplinary backgrounds including: tourism studies, festival studies, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, cultural geography, politics, etc. 
 
More information regarding this conference please visit  www.tourism-culture.com or email Dr Philip Long ( p.e.long@... ).
 
Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change
Faculty of Arts & Society
Leeds Metropolitan University
The Old School Board, Calverley Street
Leeds LS1 3ED/ UK

email p.e.long@... 
phone +44 (0)113- 283 8545
fax +44 (0)113- 283 8544
www.tourism-culture.com