Bottom-up memorial landscapes between social protest and top-down tourist destination: the case of Chicano Park in San Diego (California) – an analysis based on Ralf Dahrendorf’s conflict theory

Abstract

In an empirical study based on a landscape biographical approach, the processes of constructing memorial landscapes are traced and analysed for tourism-related communications of top-down marketing as well as framed in terms of conflict theory with regard to their productivity and their generating of life chances.

Keywords:

• Memorial landscapes
• Dahrendorf
• landscape theory
• Chicano Park
• San Diego

Notes

Disclosure statement

The authors did not pursue any financial interests or experience any benefits resulting from the direct application of their research. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The method underlying the empirical part of this work is a mixture of structured interview with biographical focus, participant observations and ero-epic conversations, all conducted in 2013 in San Diego, Tijuana and surrounding areas. The interviewees (eleven) were selected according to different criteria. For example, individuals were selected who were explicitly concerned with the border issue, but in contrast, those whose biographies could be assumed to have little relevance to the border situation. The third search focused specifically on individuals with foreign roots in San Diego. In the first step of the analysis, the biographies of the interviewees were presented, followed by a qualitative content analysis according to Mayring (2002). Subsequently, the two steps were merged and biographical references were analyzed. The aim was to enable the interpretation of the reciprocal relationship between biography and identification, landscape perception and hybridity. To enable triangulation (Mayring, 2002), the analyses of participant observations and ero-epic conversations were included in the analysis.

2 With regard to the comment analyses, all retrievable Tripadvisor reviews for the entry “Chicano Park” as well as the first 100 Google reviews were saved in February 2021 and evaluated on the basis of inductively generated categories. The focus was not on a broad total survey (in July 2021, the number of comments amounted to more than 3,000 reviews), but rather on an explorative approach. Accordingly, an initial quantitative analysis was intended to identify frequencies on specific categories that would provide preliminary indications of negotiated thematic complexities related to Chicano Park. The subsequent qualitative analysis of the comments aimed to contextualize the thematic areas.

Additional information

Funding

Travel expenses supported by ‘Vereinigung der Freunde der Universität des Saarlandes’ (Association of Friends of Saarland University)

Notes on contributors

Olaf Kühne

Olaf Kühne is Professor of Urban and Regional Development at the University of Tübingen. His research interests include neopragmatic landscape studies, landscape and discourse theory, social acceptance of landscape change, sustainable development, legacy industries, transformation processes in East Central and Eastern Europe, urban-land hybrids in Southern California and the southern states of the U.S., regional development, and urban and landscape ecology

Antje Schönwald

Antje Schönwald is Director of Studies at the Protestant Academy in Saarland. Her research focuses on social constructivist landscape studies and spatial-related identity processes.

Corinna Jenal

Corinna Jenal is a research assistant in the research area of urban and regional development at the University of Tübingen. Her research focuses on social constructivist landscape studies, energy transition, urban-land hybrids, legacy industry, and social construction and negotiation processes of nature and forest as its associated part.