Part III Innovation: Uses of Authenticity in North-Eastern Adriatic Corner

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1 Part III Innovation: Uses of Authenticity in North-Eastern Adriatic Corner Many anthropologists contend that the Mediterranean coastline today is somehow tired (ecological crisis e.g. Kousis 2004), overloaded with historical burdens (political conflicts e.g. Kousis et al. 2011) and overdetermined by two aspects of place the material and the ideological (Boissevain and Selwyn 2004). It is also a site of advancing capitalist relations that have profoundly influenced coastal development and caused any number of social and cultural transformations. Tourism development, as Tom Selwyn has argued, has played a significant role in the extension and deepening of capitalist relations of production in the coastal areas (2004: 35). Apart from introducing capitalist relations of production to the littoral, tourism has also introduced a parallel reality a kind of aesthetification of the landscape that is, following Selwyn, increasingly unrelated to the uses to which it is put (ibid: 57). Questions of aesthetification and of a parallel reality that tourism has introduced to the coastal regions can be further contextualized within a broader theoretical debate about authenticity. Urry has observed that tourist sites may be a subject of historical research but at the same time they are transformed into a kind of spectacle, one that would attract visitors (1990, 2001). Double uses can lead to a misleading oversimplification of the conflict as that existing between authentic historical research and an inauthentic tourist spectacle. Such oversimplifications have been discussed and criticized by a number of authors (e.g. Urry 1990, 2001; Selwyn 1996; Macdonald 1997; Nadel-Klein 2003 and others) among which Macdonald s views are of special importance for this chapter. Describing heritage representations of Aros, Macdonald highlights the local people s awareness of touristic images of themselves, their ability to play along with those images, and their enjoyment of subtly disposing of them (1997: 155). As Sharon Macdonald concludes, people are not only aware of external images of them but often they also attempt to actively counter these images and construct alternative visions of their history and culture (1997: 175). Starting from her conclusions we will posit authenticity as unstable, always in the process of re-shaping and in the service of its creators. Although we will follow several theoretical debates on authenticity (Selwyn 1996; Bendix 1997; Macdonald 1997; Theodossopoulos 2013), this chapter will

2 108 III Innovation: Uses of Authenticity in North-Eastern Adriatic Corner neither dwell on the theoretical discussion of authenticity in general, nor will it engage in any extended sense the dilemmas about the use of the concept of authenticity in anthropological analysis. Our more focused and modest intent is to present everyday uses of authenticity within the popular and tourist discourses along the present-day Slovene coastline and to highlight the active role of individuals in this process. In particular, we will be interested in the uses of authenticity connected to fishing tourism that was developed due to the economic and other problems within Slovene fishing sector. Our contention is that different understandings of authenticity attached to Slovene coastal area can best be understood as holding a key element of innovation. This preoccupation with authenticity comes to the fore in, for example, tourist discourse, especially in promotional material attached to fishing tourism. We will therefore focus on the case of fishing tourism in nowadays Slovene coastal town of Izola, where for many decades now fishing has been the first and foremost local activity (Kramar 1987, 2002). Recent touristic brochures represent Izola and its hinterland as a town where people appreciate healthy local food and refuse to buy into capitalist consumerism, aiming instead at Kilometre zero philosophy. As written in the promotional brochure: The diverse and rich Mediterranean Istrian cuisine in Izola has been further enhanced with the initiative Kilometre zero. The idea of Kilometre zero is to offer in selected local restaurants autochthon and authentic food. [...] Guests will have the opportunity to taste the typical dishes of our local seafood as part of the Sea on the table, where the catch of the morning is on the table at lunch (Kilometre Zero 2014). 1 The above quotation is entirely in consonance with Slovenia s national marketing strategy for the Littoral, and it foregrounds three key aspects relevant to our discussion: the Mediterranean, Istria, and authenticity. Although the case of Izola s fishermen remains in the background of this campaign, it is closely interwoven with all three aspects. First of all, Izola is seen to be represented primarily through its fishing and work culture, as an...old Mediterranean town [...] where the genuine traditions of fishing and winemaking, mysterious traces of the past, and the welcoming character of the locals merge together to form an unforgettable mosaic of experiences (Welcome to Izola 2016). Nowadays Izola still remains a fishing town and fishing is promoted as one of the main landscape attributes from the town s history. One can find old photos of fishermen and fishing boats blown up into large posters looking out on the pavement from the Mercator shop windows 2 alongside the information on working hours of this Slovenian commercial enterprise, or attached to the walls and doors in public toilets mysterious traces of the early twentieth century staring at visitors without 1 Corrections to the original text: The rich and diverse Mediterranean Istrian cuisine in Izola has been given an extra boost with the initiative Kilometre zero. The idea of Kilometre zero is to offer in selected local restaurants local, authentic food. [...] Guests will have the opportunity to taste typical seafood dishes of the area as part of the Sea on the table, where the catch of the morning is on the table at lunchtime. 2 Following ethnographic documentation in 2014.

3 III Innovation: Uses of Authenticity in North-Eastern Adriatic Corner 109 any explanation but merely, it seems, for aesthetic pleasure. The last two decades have also seen extensive promotion of programs encompassing the experience of spending free time with Izola s fishermen ( With fishing boat Zlatoperka you will get to know hard fishing life ; Experience a different day, experience a fishing day! ) coupled with the demonstration of mending and sewing fishing nets called Fishing holidays. Fishing is promoted also through notions of healthy climate and food (Rogelja 2006) in relation to Istria or the Mediterranean more generally. We will show the impact of a host of different factors economic (the possibility for EU funds aimed at sustainable development and preservation of traditional fishing) environmental (pollution, overfishing...), political (maritime borders) and historical (migration after the WWII) on our subject. Local innovations of authenticity are indeed deeply connected also with the historical context. The troubled history of the exodus of the Italian-speaking inhabitants (among whom there were also fishermen) who after the WWII left en masse the coastal towns of the present-day Slovenia constitutes, for example, a chapter in history that is still considered to be too problematic, to be openly talked about and refashioned for the purposes of tourism. Furthermore, the marketing of industrial fishing heritage is also not without its silences, since most of the factories were closed in the last 20 years and the fishing industry restructured, sometimes even collapsed due to unsuccessful attempts at privatization from 1991 onwards. After the dispute over the new maritime border between Slovenia and Croatia, Slovene fishermen on the one hand experienced a narrowing of fishing territories but on the other, by joining the EU in 2004, they also experienced new possibilities derived from EU funds for regional development. Regional development funds have provided new opportunities and marketing niches, whereby authenticity becomes on one hand popular and up-to-date and on the other it is still semantically loose enough to provide a space than can accommodate the hidden and suppressed historical episodes (wrapping them up in phrases such as mysterious traces of the past ) and simultaneously allow for the development of new innovative contents. Ideas on authenticity are ubiquitous and all-pervasive, cropping up in everyday conversations with local people, among researchers of University of Primorska in Koper discussing conservation of culture, heritage and traditional Istrian šagra [feast] (Heritage LIVE! 3 ) among tourist and restaurant workers as well as among farmers and food producers for whom authenticity became a popular trade mark and economic good. In this, authenticity is indisputably connected with consumerism 3 The results of the applicative project HERITAGE LIFE: dediščina v živo / HERITAGE LIFE: heritage life were published in the edited volume Istrski prazniki: preteklost, sedanjost, avtentičnost: šagre in ljudski prazniki v severni Istri [Istrian feasts: past, present, authenticity: šagra and folk feasts in Northern Istria] (edited by Aleksander Panjek 2012). Heritage LIVE! was a training project dealing with identifying, preserving and presenting the cultural heritage in Slovenian-Croatian cross-border zone. The booklet brings articles on tradition, heritage and authenticity, some ethnological discussions on these issues, recommendations, tools and criteria for sustainable local development.

4 110 III Innovation: Uses of Authenticity in North-Eastern Adriatic Corner and modernity despite its manifest penchant for the anti- or pre-modern. As Regina Bendix stated: The quest for authenticity is a peculiar longing, at once modern and antimodern. It is oriented toward the recovery of an essence whose loss has been realized only through modernity, and whose recovery is feasible only through methods and sentiments created in modernity (1997: 8). The third part Innovation: uses of authenticity in the NE Adriatic corner is divided into three chapters. The chapter entitled The Yugoslav and post-yugoslav coastal tourism provides the historical framework for understanding the specifics of fishing tourism in one of Slovenia s foremost coastal towns, Izola. Although the dominant characteristics of contemporary Mediterranean coastal tourism (the discrepancy between material and symbolic aspects, consumerism, capitalist relations of production on the coast, etc. ) are more or less applicable to any number of different coastal regions around the world, the East and North-Eastern Adriatic shores have historical peculiarities that merged with this general contemporary development and need to be considered if we are to understand more fully the present-day coastal dynamics in this area. Yugoslav tourism has an important place in this story as it reflects on the meaning of consumption and on the relationship between individual experience and ideology, be it Western, Yugoslav or post- Yugoslav one. The peculiarity of the cohabitation of domestic and international tourism in SFR Yugoslavia reveals both the specificity of socialist past as well as the introduction of capitalist relations of production for the coastal region. Tourism development within the NE Adriatic grew out of different political experiments and personal experiences that should be taken into account when trying to understand the present situation. With the exception of a few books and articles (Grandits and Taylor 2010; Ballinger 2006) not much has in fact been written about Yugoslav tourism and its wider contexts. Following some of these written sources as well as personal communication and interviews with the local actors, various historical peculiarities with the accent on domestic tourism will be illuminated. The aim is to describe the context of Yugoslav and post-yugoslav tourism along the Eastern Adriatic coastal region with the emphasis on the Slovenian coast. As seen in this particular setting it would be wrong to understand transition (from socialist to postsocialist condition) as a passage from one condition to the other, as a mere replacement of the previous routines and institutions by a new set of mentalities, routines and institutions. Following Stark and Bruszt (1998) and equipped with the ethnographic examples from the present-day Slovene coast we believe that...the structural innovations that will bring about dynamic transformations are more likely to entail complex reconfigurations of institutional elements rather than their immediate replacement (ital. orig. 1998: 83). In the case of post-yugoslav tourism, the introduction of new elements took place in combination with a re-arrangement of the previous, already existing forms such as domestic tourism, family economies or the development of holiday camps and holiday homes for workers and members of labour unions. In the post-yugoslav period Slovene tourism industry needed to rethink its strategies and concurrent destination branding. In this process the image

5 III Innovation: Uses of Authenticity in North-Eastern Adriatic Corner 111 of Slovenia as a Yugoslav ski-centre for middle class workers gave way to a more diversified destination identity. Furthermore, coastal Slovenia began flirting with the Mediterranean imaginary and its new consumer-oriented logic. In the local context, tourism actors merged together existing practices with new free market initiatives underlining the need to survive in the local environment but also stay competitive within the global market. The chapter Fishing for Tourists will outline an ethnography of tourism on fishing boats, providing also an additional link to an ethnographic film Fishing Tourists by Nataša Rogelja. With this ethnography we underpin the analysis of domestic tourism along the Slovenian coast, understanding it as a specific part of a broader tourist culture that has been on the one hand under-researched in the anthropology of tourism while on the other it forms a significant part of tourist culture within the NE Adriatic region. In that respect we will try to explain how in a given place a tourist culture comes to emerge and what is, or was, the role of domestic tourism. Furthermore, we argue that the type of fishing boat excursions as presented in the second part of this chapter are on one hand a modified form of syndicalist holidays developed within Yugoslav tourism and on the other they constitute fishermen s innovative tactics and resilience developed in the period of the demise of Slovene fishing. It was precisely the promotion of authenticity, cohabitation with nature and genuineness that allowed, supported and rendered possible such innovations. 4 Finally, the last chapter within this part How Authentic is Fishing Tourism in Slovenia? rounds up the discussion by reflecting on theories and uses of authenticity within selected local environment, with the emphasis on fishing. Here we will comment upon images of the sea, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, (Slovenian) Istria, fishermen, sea-food, and wine as deployed in selected tourist materials as well as in everyday conversations in given local settings. The chapter as a whole contributes to the debate on authenticity by pointing out local uses of authenticity within a specific regional context of the NE Adriatic, describing how locals themselves perceive, use and transform tourist representations and other external images which impinge upon them in the context of contemporary coastal development in Slovenia. References Ballinger P (2006) Lines in the water, peoples on the Map: maritime Museums and the representation of cultural boundaries in the Upper Adriatic. Narodna umjetnost 43(1):15 39 Bendix R (1997) In search of authenticity: the formation of folklore studies. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 4 The sustainable development discourse that is also of great importance for the case presented will be discussed in the Part IV.

6 112 III Innovation: Uses of Authenticity in North-Eastern Adriatic Corner Boissevain J, Selwyn T (2004) Contesting the foreshore: tourism, society and politics on the coast. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam Grandits H, Taylor K (2010) Yugoslavia s sunny side: a history of tourism in socialism (1950s 1980s). Central European University Press, Budapest/New York Kilometre Zero (2014) Accessed 10 Feb 2016 Kousis M (2004) Marine and coastal issues in local environmental conflict: Greece, Spain, and Portugal. In: Boissevain J, Selwyn T (eds) Contesting the foreshore: tourism, society and politics on the coast. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, pp Kousis M, Selwyn T, Clark D (eds) (2011) Contested Mediterranean spaces: ethnographic essays in honour of Charles Tilly, vol 4. Berghahn Books, New York Kramar J (1987) Izola mesto ribičev in delavcev. Lipa, Koper Kramar J (2002) Izola mesto ribičev in delavcev. Zgodovinsko društvo za južno Primorsko, Koper Macdonald S (1997) A people s story; heritage, identity and authenticity. In: Rojek C, Urry J (eds) Touring culures. Routledge, London, pp Nadel-Klein J (2003) Fishing for heritage. Modernity and loss along the Scottish coast. Berg, Oxford Panjek A (ed) (2012) Istrski praznik: preteklost, sedanjost, avtentičnost: šagre in ljudski prazniki v severni Istri [Istrian feasts: past, present, authenticity: šagra and folk feasts in Northern Istria]; Univerza na Primorskem, Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče, Univerzitetna založba Annales Rogelja N (2006). Ribiči pripovedujejo. Etnografija ribištva med miljskim in savudrijskim polotokom. Koper: Univerza na Primorskem, Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče, Založba Annales Selwyn T (1996) The tourist image: myths and myth making in tourism. Wiley, New York Selwyn T (2004) Privatising the Mediterranean coastline. In: Boissevain J, Selwyn T (eds) Contesting the foreshore: tourism, society and politics on the coast. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, pp Stark D, Bruszt L (1998) Postsocialist pathways. Transforming politics and property in East Central Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Theodossopoulos D (2013) Laying claim to authenticity: five anthropological dilemmas. Anthropological Quarterly 86(2): Urry J (1990) The Tourist Gaze: leisure and travel in contemporary societies, theory, culture & society. Sage Publication, London Urry J (2001) Globalising the Tourist Gaze. Department of Sociology, Lan caster University, Accessed 10 Jan 2017 Welcome to Izola (2016) Accessed 10 Feb 2016