Post-war tourism and the imaginative geographies of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia

Abstract

In the early 1990s Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia were spaces of conflict. The media presented much of what occurred during the war years, constructing our imaginative geographies. This study determines the role of discourse for understanding contemporary image (re)constructions concerning post-war countries. Acknowledging the significance of tourism, this economic sector acts as a catalyst to promote and highlight image transitions. To contribute to the growing literature on post-war tourism, a three-fold typology is presented to position these countries as landscape remembrance, fading memory or replacing memory. This work draws from newspaper articles and official tourism websites as modes of discourse positioned to convey information and details that establish imaginative expressions of places to support the proposed typologies. A discourse analysis of both textual and visual content is interpreted to determine how these sources construct the three-fold typology and (re)create meanings and images of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.