Anthropology seminar Inimkond presents: Maarja Kaaristo from Tartu University

The speaker of the next "Inimkond" seminar is ethnologist Maarja Kaaristo from Tartu University, who will be talking at 6 p.m. in room A303 about „The sound of idyll: Mediating auditory environments in the Estonian rural tourism“.

Abstract

When (re)constructing the meanings we give to travelling, i.e. moving from one spot to another, be it physically or virtually, we are most of the time relying on our personal and collective values when choosing the (next) destination. Rural tourism, often a domestic pursuit, is frequently connected with nostalgia: urbanites’ search to experience something out of ordinary compared to their everyday environments, different lodging, food, pace of life, sonic environment etc. The rural idyll thus created is, of course, not a retreat from the present but rather an ongoing process stimulated by present and (both our and the tourism industry’s ideas about) the past. Drawing from my fieldwork in Estonian tourism farms I will concentrate on the creation, mediation and contents of sound idyll: the auditory environment of rural tourism. I will take a look at how the tourism farmers (re)create and (re)negotiate the notion of rurality and rural environment, and at the construction and creation of value by the tourism farmers through intangible and atmospheric natural resources, such as auditory environment: the sense of “peace and quiet” found (or at least offered) in the tourism farms.

Facebook link for more information about the event HERE.