ABSTRACT
Tourism has been one of the pillars of Tunisia's economy under both Bourguiba's and, from 1987, Ben Ali's regimes. The contemporary transition towards a ‘new Tunisia’ offers an opportunity to describe how tourism strategies have been central to Tunisian development and the links between heritage sites and mass tourism development. This chapter will investigate how Tunisia embraced tourism as a mechanism for supporting economic growth, the State's control over society and integration with the global economy. National heritage strategies, heritage site selection, conservation practices and Tunisian identity discourses have been shaped coherently with this developmental approach.
