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Abstract
This paper presents the results of a comparative study of the national capitals of Québec and Tunisia, Québec City and Tunis, respectively, both of them being recognised World Heritage Cities and internationally renowned tourist destinations. For the purposes of this paper, our analysis deals specifically with heritagisation and touristification policies in these two cities, especially with policies that lead to their museumification through the promotion of practices and aesthetic values that transform them into open-air museums. These practices and values include outdoor exhibits, walking tours and historical circuits, day- and night-time festivals, and celebrations, with an emphasis put on ‘the old town’ in the creation of national and historical frames of reference for those activities. We draw on this perspective to examine the identity- and nationalism-based discourse that underlies such practices, together with their resulting representations. This leads us to conclude that in a context of globalisation and interactions alternating between local and global realities, national capitals make significant use of their tourist clienteles to assert their particular identity and so demonstrate to their own community, and to others outside, the role they play as ‘symbolic capital’ assets.
Acknowledgement
The author thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support in the completion of this study.
Notes
The word capital derives from the Latin word caput, which designates the head and attests to the hierarchical status of the capital and its organisational attachment to the body of the ruler (Raffestin, 1993).
Tunis is the name of both the city and country in Arabic and is pronounced ‘Toonis.’
Deposed on 14 January 2011, in a popular revolution.
The use of the term national capital in Québec is based on one of the French meanings of the word nation, namely that of a people rather than that of a country.
It was only in 2006 that the Canadian federal government proposed a motion to the House of Commons recognising Quebecers as a nation, under the condition that they remain in a united Canada.
Section 14, An Act respecting the National capital commission, Government of Québec, 1995.
The number of spectators is estimated to be 3000 per night.
The show was given for free during the day in the summers of 2008, 2009, and 2010.
According to the statistics of the Québec Ministry of Tourism, approximately 80% of tourists who visited the capital in 2008 lived in the Province of Québec (see Ministère du Tourisme du Québec, 2010, p. 34).
The City of Québec is divided into two large sections known as the Upper Towns and Lower Towns, with important symbolic sites and monuments of Québec history found in both.
We are thinking particularly of costumed and ghostly visits conducted, respectively, by the companies Les Six-Associés (the six associates) and Les Visites fantômes (Ghost Tours of Québec).
This is also the name of the Great Mosque, which was built in the Medina by the Arabs at the time of the city's foundation. The theological university that arose out of this mosque also goes by the same name. Zitouna is Arabic for olive tree, which is a sacred tree in the Quran.
This expression is employed in political discourse and media coverage to designate poor sectors, in particular, those outside of tourism zones.
The former Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba had tried to subject the Medina of Tunis to the same kind of substantial modernisation project that he had conducted in his own native city, Monastir. It was intended to be a large boulevard that would cross the old city from north to south. This project provoked a torrent of criticism and strong opposition from the city's leaders and intellectuals, including the members of the ssociation for the Protection of the Medina (ASM).
This Arabic expression literally means city dweller. In this case, it refers to the families of the Tunis bourgeoisie that lived in the Medina before leaving it for the city's richer suburbs.
These conference visits are primarily organised by a historian and a journalist. Each one organises one visit per week lasting about four hours and bringing together some 20 visitors.