Noel B. Salazar

Noel B. Salazar is a European socio-cultural anthropologist, known for his innovative transdisciplinary work on imaginaries of transnational mobilities (both in the context of tourism and migration).
Life
Noel B. Salazar was born in Dunkirk, France, on December 28, 1973, of a Spanish father and a Belgian mother. He grew up in the Flemish town of Bruges, a celebrated cultural tourism destination. Salazar studied psychology, philosophy, and development studies at the University of Leuven (Belgium), neuropsychology at the University of Essex (UK), and anthropology and African studies at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). He is currently Marie Curie Fellow (7th European Community Framework Program) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, where he founded CuMoRe (Cultural Mobilities Research). In addition, he is Visiting Research Associate at the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University (UK). His ethnographic fieldwork so far has focused on Indonesia, Tanzania, Chile, and Belgium. Salazar currently lives in Brussels, the “capital of Europe”, together with his spouse and two daughters.
Theory
Noel B. Salazar’s main research interests include anthropologies of (im)mobility and travel, the local-to-global nexus, discourses and imaginaries of Otherness, cultural brokering and cosmopolitanism. His anthropological work synthesizes ethnographic findings with conceptual frameworks developed within anthropology, sociology, geography, cultural studies, tourism studies, philosophy and psychology. Salazar has won numerous grants for his innovative research projects (including from NSF, EU FP7, and FWO).
While at the University of Pennsylvania, Salazar experienced first-hand the benefits of transdisciplinary research. His involvement within the Department of Anthropology’s “Public Interest Anthropology” taught him the necessity of bridging the divide between academia and the wider public. Together with archaeologist Benjamin W. Porter, now Professor at the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, he applied the public interest perspective to heritage tourism. Understanding the changing meaning and value of (intangible) cultural heritage is still high on his research agenda, forming part of Salazar’s broader work within the subfield of the anthropology of tourism. He used the findings from his extended ethnographic fieldwork to shift the predominant focus in tourism studies on tourist and impact studies to a study of tourism service providers, showing their crucial role as intermediaries. In his book, Envisioning Eden: Mobilizing Imaginaries in Tourism and Beyond (2010), he critically analyzes the circulation and dynamics of tourism imaginaries, illustrated with fine-grained ethnographic data from Yogyakarta (Indonesia) and Arusha (Tanzania).
One of Salazar’s key conceptual notions is the one of imaginaries, which he describes as “culturally shared and socially transmitted representational constructs that are used as meaning-making devices (mediating how people act, cognize, and value the world)”. He is currently using this concept to research the role of dominant discourses and images of (im)mobility in various cultures across the globe. Salazar conceives mobility as a globally circulating socio-cultural construct that positively values the ability to move, the freedom of movement, and the tendency to change easily or quickly. His latest research tries to bridge the academic gap between tourism and migration studies, by studying the analytical purchase of (im)mobility as an overarching concept. More concretely, his “cultural mobilities research” (CuMoRe) helps us understand the complex (dis)connections between tourism imaginaries and ideas of transnational migration.
Publications
Monographs
* 2010. Oxford: Berghahn.
Edited volumes
* 2005. [http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/656015951-2004446/title~content=g727419103 Resolving conflicts in heritage tourism: A public interest anthropology approach.] International Journal of Heritage Studies 11(5). (with Benjamin W. Porter)
* 2004. Heritage and tourism, PIA and global interests. Anthropology in Action 11(2/3). (with Benjamin W. Porter)
Selected journal articles
* 2009. [http://cat.inist.fr/?aModeleafficheN&cpsidt22044928 Imaged or imagined? Cultural representations and the “tourismification” of peoples and places.] Cahiers d’Études Africaines 193-194:49-71. (Theme issue)
* 2009. Tourism Review International 12(3-4):259-273. (Theme issue)
* 2008. [http://civilisations.revues.org/index1387.html “Enough stories!” Asian tourism redefining the roles of Asian tour guides.] Civilisations 57(1/2):207-222. (Theme issue)
* 2007. [http://www.trrworld.org/article.php?aid343&year2007&vol32&issue3 Towards a global culture of heritage interpretation? Evidence from Indonesia and Tanzania.] Tourism Recreation Research 32(3):23-30. (Theme issue)
* 2006. Annals of Tourism Research 33(3): 833-852.
* 2006. Tabula Rasa: Revista de Humanidades 5:99-128.
*2006. Universitas Humanística 62(2):319-333.
* 2005. Annals of Tourism Research 32(3):628-646.
Book chapters
* 2008. Representation in postcolonial analysis. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 2nd edition. William A. Darity, ed. Pp. 172-173, Vol. 7. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
* 2008. Vacations. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 2nd edition. William A. Darity, ed. Pp. 565-566, Vol. 8. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
* 2007. In Sustainability, Profitability and Successful Tourism. Aparna Raj, ed. Pp. 396-420. New Delhi: Kanishka.
* 2004. In Tourist Behaviour: A Psychological Perspective. Aparna Raj, ed. Pp. 85-107. New Delhi: Kanishka.
Service
Noel B. Salazar serves on the editorial boards of Annals of Tourism Research, International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, AIBR - Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana (Spanish), and Mondes du Tourisme (French). In addition, he is on UNESCO’s and UNWTO’s roster of consultants and an expert panel member of the National Geographic Society’s Center for Sustainable Destinations. He is an active member of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, the European Association of Social Anthropologists, and the American Anthropological Association. Salazar is also a founding member of the Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network and the Anthropology of Mobility Cooperative. He has applied his expertise on tour guiding by giving professional tour guide trainings, and this in countries as varied as Indonesia, Tanzania, Malawi, and Belgium. Salazar teaches anthropology at the University of Leuven and regularly travels around the world to present his work to academic as well as professional audiences (in English, Spanish, French, and Dutch).

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu