Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Insecure positions, heteronomous autonomy and tourism-cultural capital: A Bourdieusian reading of tour guides on BBC Worldwide’s Doctor Who Experience Walking Tour

2016; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 17; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1468797616680851

1741-3206

Ross Garner,

Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

This article contributes towards debates concerning media tourism and tour guiding by using Pierre Bourdieu’s arguments regarding field and capital to analyse performed tour guide identities on BBC Worldwide’s Doctor Who Experience Walking Tour in Cardiff Bay. The article pursues three core arguments: first, a Bourdieusian framework provides an enhanced understanding of the insecure positions that tour guides occupy in what is referred to throughout as the tourism field; second, the divergent pulls between heteronomous and autonomous poles which position tour guides are magnified in officially-located media tours because of the presence of branding and theming discourses; third, drawing upon empirical data from the Doctor Who tour, the symbolic capital of official guides involves demonstrations of what is named tourism-cultural capital, but such displays do not result in an increase in individualised status as any accrued capital transfers to the institutional level.