ABSTRACT
Abstract: Cultural production has been integral to the study of tourism. Employing the Gettysburg storyscape, the present study illustrates the way in which a text is coconstructed by both marketers and consumers through negotiation and embodied performance. Within a cocon-struction model of culture, rather than merely appropriating existing meanings of the past, a text is informed by and depends upon the contingencies of the present. It is also shown how a landscape is being symbolically transformed and used by service providers and tourists alike to negotiate, define, and strengthen social values of patriotism and national unity, in times when these values are most needed. Keywords: coconstruction of culture, performance, storyscapes, Gettysburg, imagined communities.
