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Abstract

The first 2009 issue of Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Turismo – RBTur is about experience. The first article “Understandig community and solidarity tourism: a dialog with experiences in Marraquech and Latin America” by Coriolano and Sampaio presents tourism as a potential rescuer of ethnic features as well as the spectacularization of culture, a debate always present in academic circles.  The article focuses “experiences with community and solidarity tourism (TCS), as well as the relations between communitarian based socio productive and political arrangements for a just, solidarian and sustainable trade” from data issued from an exploratory research held in Marrachech/Morocco.

The article “Experience Economy: consuming emotions at “Grapes and Wine Region”, by Tonini, carries to wine tourism fields, where visitors are inebriated by the atmosphere providing a unique experience for those who visit Grapes and Wine Region at Rio Grande do Sul State: smell of grapes and wine flavor. The article is on experience economy and brings reflections on the essence of it:”it is only the translation of signs consumerism, where the different, the exotic, the only one, turns into emotions which translate social symbols and distinctions [...]”.  

Carvalho´s article “Tourism and heritage conservation as seen by dwellers of Praia Grande Neighborhood in São Luiz, Maranhão State” brings the locals gaze and sets into question the re creation of culture for tourism market.

A field research was conducted with São Luis (MA) historic center dwellers, where community representations on the tourismification of Praia Grande neighborhood, -registered as Word Heritage by UNESCO- were analyzed. Little inter cultural contact among dwellers and visitors was detected: “The absence of interaction and spacial descentralization between dwellers and visitors is one of the main problems that have direct influence in the positive value associated with the activity”. Lack of interaction between dwellers and heritage is also stressed by the author, who found that people “associate heritage with tourism fruition”. This is a problematic distance that stems from the federal conservation policy, with no efficient devices to make people live heritage as a place of memory and belonging.

Interaction is Loch and Walkiwski goal, in Alfredo Wagner Municipality (SC). The article “Participatory Process in Tourism Planning at Alfredo Wagner (SC) rural area” reports the experience made with participatory methods in a project. “with the scope of get farmers and local agents involved, identify potential attractions, enhance tourism as a way to have extra earnings and contribute for sustainable development” The authors claim against isolated proposals with no continuity which de motivate local agents.

The theoretic article “Structuring a Matrix of tourism impacts caused by the development of agritourism in the Municipality of Santa Rosa de Lima (SC), Pires, Anjos, Oliveria e Silva present a matrix of tourism impacts which was applied in Santa Rosa de Lima (SC).

The issue finishes with a review of Camargo´s book “Prehistory of Brazilian Tourism: aristocratic recreation and bourgeois leisure (1808-1850), by Marcelo.