Orientalism, Balkanism and Europe's Ottoman heritage

Bryce, Derek and Čaušević, Senija (2019) Orientalism, Balkanism and Europe's Ottoman heritage. Annals of Tourism Research, 77. pp. 92-105. ISSN 0160-7383 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2019.06.002)

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Abstract

‘Orientalism’ has been used as a lens to understand consumption of heritage sites in non-Western contexts. Through the supplementary lens of ‘Balkanism’, we examine a European region with a significant heritage reflecting the c.500year rule of the Ottoman Empire. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of North Macedonia and Albania are selected for study given their con- centration of Ottoman heritage sites. We note first that these countries' heritage tourism sectors anticipate and modify interpretation to accommodate ‘Western’ tourists' affectation of ‘surprise’ and ‘delight’ at a ‘remarkable’ crossroads between ‘West/East’ or ‘Christendom/Islam’. To un- derstand why Ottoman heritage is often understood to be in but not of Europe, our analysis draws on scholarship interrogating ‘Europe's’ longstanding discursive erasure of its Ottoman-Islamic- Oriental ‘self’ and Tourism's role in this.

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