Redai dili (Jun 2022)
The Construction of Place in Red Tourism Destinations Based on Collective Memory: A Case Study of the Xinzhuang Red Army Village, Binchuan, Yunnan
Abstract
Place is an aggregate of meanings based on the emotional connection between people and a physical locality, fraught with social and cultural significances. It provides a spatial anchor for memory construction, value perception, and emotional experience for individuals and groups. Among the variegated factors that contribute to the construction of place, collective memory assumes a prominent role. On the one hand, local material conditions and landscapes provide clues and references to the past, essential for the construction of collective memory. Conversely, collective memory is embedded in the ongoing negotiation and production of locality and spaces, which contributes to specific ways of narrating a fluid and dynamic place identity. Taking Xinzhuang Village in Binchuan County, Yunnan Province as a case study, this article analyzes the process of place reconstruction based on local collective memory in the context of red tourism development, focusing on its specific spatial manifestations of memory and analyzing how collective memory participates in the production of local cultural identities. The fieldwork results show that different local actors in the village participate in the remaking of collective memory differently and with different priorities. The reconstruction of collective memory is accompanied by the continuous negotiation of identity, social relations, and communal organization. Collective memories give rise to shared patterns of everyday life and symbolization: reconciling the relationships between different groups. Specific attributes of place provide the basic building blocks of collective memory, which in turn reshapes material spaces and local cultural performances. Place identity, and vice versa, continuously strengthen collective memory in the construction of a red tourism destination. Collective memories facilitate the creation of a renewed local context. In this context, collective memories are performed and regenerated in embodied practices such as rituals and tourism behaviors, which constantly inject new cultural connotations into place reconstruction. At the same time, collective memory continuously guides spatial practices and the production of social and material spaces. This paper concludes that place elements not only trigger the recall, storage, and recreation of memory in the context of red tourism but also express the local characteristics, cultures, and identities reconstructed by collective memory. In this process, the landscape construction of Xinzhuang village endows collective memory with stability and persistence, and we argue that place concretizes and contextualizes collective memories. Thus, the interaction between memory and place both enhances the place identity and memory, especially for those who inhabit the place. The cultural landscapes, and local discourses constructed by collective memory have become the most significant local attributes in the process of expressing placeness. In response to the view that the place is understood as continuous change and dynamic construction, this paper understands collective memories as fluid, dynamic and socially negotiated, and clarifies the dialectical, mutually constitutive relationships between place and memory. It addresses the relative dearth of research on the construction and reconstruction of collective memory from the perspective of place and place identity.
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