Von Grenzen und Abgründen: Berg- und Abgrenzungsdiskurse in ethnischen Konflikträumen

Abstrakt

ON BOUNDARIES AND GAPS: DISCOURSES ON MOUNTAINS ANS SEPARATION IN AREAS AFFECTED BY ETHNIC CONFLICT

The author examines the reasons behind the political instrumentalisation and ethnicisation of tourism as a private social practice, allegedly far removed from politics. Using the example of the Austrian Alpine Region specifically, the Duchy of Tyrol during the late Habsburg Monarchy, he demonstrates that this political sphere of action was a promising starting point for the nationalisation of the masses of the masses, especially wherever national circles of various communities had no access to the state apparatus and to classic socialisation organs and, therefore, had to resort to auxiliary measures to socialise nationality. In addition to issuing calls to visit areas close to linguistic and national borders and projecting ethnic partly racial models of segmentation and exclusion, tourism was used as ground for the building of national identity, for strategies of social integration and mobilisation, for establishing new mental maps and links of loyalty.