Gentrification via touristification: reflections on the current class struggle in urban society

• Date: October 4, 2017
• Hours: 7:00 p.m.
• Place: Auditorium

Marc Morell will introduce us to the activity of Turismegrafies from the talk Gentrification via tourism. The meeting aims to explain the gentrification involved, to emphasize the specificities that it presents in highly touristized contexts such as the Balearic Islands and Pitiüses and outline the different class confrontation scenarios that will be given in the following years. All in all, from the recently approved Law of Tourism Commercialization of Houses, we will talk about the relationship that exists between the processes of gentrification of the most classic court and the recent placement of residential homes in the tourist rental market.

Turismegrafies

We understand contemporary tourism as a process of neo-liberal reorganization of urban areas that crosses technical systems, built environments, natures and everyday practices, and also intense, massive and sophisticated ways of producing, exploiting and consuming the city. Increasing complexity, mutability and solubility, tourism not only involves the transport and displacement of human contingents from and to a wide variety of origins and destinations, but also images, speeches, activities and practices developed by all the actors involved.

Assuming the commitment to a radical and critical anthropology, the analytical proposal of Turismegrafies opens up around the following lines of research: productive forces of tourism; tourism and urban governance; patrimonialization, representation and rewriting of the city; and tourism and right to the city. The members of the group, distributed between the cities of Barcelona, Lisbon, Mallorca and Venice are: Andrés Antebi, Caterina Borelli, Daniel Malet, Marc Morell and Sergi Yanes.

Marc Morell is a social anthropologist and is hired as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Geography of the University of the Balearic Islands. Marc takes an interest in the character of the production of space in the market society and is currently investigating the relationship between gentrification and the tourist rental in residential homes. Among other affiliations, he is a member of the Turismegrafies group. For more information visit: uib-es.academia.edu/MarcMorell