ABSTRACT
The narrative approach in tourism studies encompasses a variety of issues and topics, including the construction of images of collective identities, of destinations, sites, and places. The critical Narrative Study of Tourism emphasises how stories, above and beyond their functions of describing and organising the social world, are also power structures; vehicles for the implementation and performance of social hierarchies, exclusions and Otherness. This chapter presents findings of a research project that addresses innovative and subversive narratives in tourism. From the perspective of research into the politics of tourism in Israel and Palestine, Ein Karem raises interesting questions regarding the roles that tourism agents and narratives play in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Sala-Manca group attempted to destabilise common hegemonic versions of Ein Karem by choosing the specific narrators that they did; by giving the microphone, metaphorically, but also quite literately, to past and present inhabitants.
