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Showing posts from July, 2014

When Public Archaeology is conflated with Cultural Tourism

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) hosted on 26-27 June 2014 an International Conference on Philanthropy in collaboration with the European Foundation Centre , with vivid discussions as to how the crippling unemployment rates among young people can be remedied by creating new opportunities (please see programme here ). I watched the session on Cultural Tourism because I was interested to see what suggestions the speakers would offer, since this was under the general theme of “Recharging the Youth: Youth Unemployment and Initiatives to Create New Opportunities for the Young”. Given the fact that the Ministry of Tourism as well as the general press have been presenting Cultural Tourism as a panacea for the current economic crisis because of its enormous undeveloped potential, any views offered on this are of great interest. But what one can hear and see in the short presentations is actually the concerned voices of a panel of archaeologists as experts on - why not? - cul