Visitor Encounters with the Great Barrier Reef: Aesthetics, Heritage and the Senses

Description

Visitor Encounters with the Great Barrier Reef explores how visitor encounters have shaped the history and heritage of the Reef. Moving beyond the visual aesthetic significance, the book highlights the importance of multi-sensuous experiences in understanding the region as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, the book describes how visitors have experienced the Great Barrier Reef through personal embodied encounters and the mechanisms they have used to understand, access and share these experiences with others. Illustrating how such experiences contribute to a knowledge of place, Pocock also explores the vital role of reproduction and photography in sharing experiences with those who have never been there. The second part of the book analyses visitor experiences and demonstrates how they underpin three key frames through which the Reef is understood and valued: the islands as paradise, the underwater coral gardens, and the singular Great Barrier Reef. Acknowledging that these constructs are increasingly removed from human experience, Pocock demonstrates that they are nevertheless integral to recognition of the region as a World Heritage Site. Demonstrating how experiences of the Reef have changed over time, Visitor Encounters with the Great Barrier Reef should be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of heritage studies, history and tourism. It should also be of interest to heritage practitioners working around the globe. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements 1 Introduction World Heritage values New directions in heritage The cultural bias and potential of aesthetic value Aesthetics as senses and place Visitor experience Part I: Visitor experiences of the Great Barrier Reef 2 Orientation, wayfinding and cartographic knowledge of the Reef Disorientation and danger Controlling danger: orientation and mapping Science, tourism and navigation Visitor traditions of orientation In the footsteps of the navigators Disorientation Orientation: continuity and change 3 Visitors’ sensuous experiences at the Reef Seeing the Reef Feeling the Reef Reef sounds Smelling the Reef Tasting the Reef Merging senses and movement 4 Sharing experience of the Reef with the world Contact and copy The means of capture Transmission of experience Representing a multi-­sensuous Reef Part II: Cultural constructions of the Great Barrier Reef 5 Reef islands as signifiers of paradise Australian landscapes of the Great Barrier Reef Australian bush as the everyday In pursuit of paradise The coconut palm as signifier of paradise found A tourist gaze for Australian visitors 6 Controlling the underwater Reef through cultivation of coral gardens Cartographic mimesis: control over the other Out of control: a return to otherness Seeking similitude: coral gardens Aquariums as controlled gardens Immersion and loss of control Coral gardens as imagery 7 The Great Barrier Reef as hyper-­reality and World Heritage The simulacra of a single natural reef Hyper-reality at ReefWorld Loss of place Conservation of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage listing Postscript Index