Beautified things, people and tourism processes: an ethnographic revisit of Flor da Rosa (southern Portugal)

Abstract

This text explores visible dimensions of the touristic in contemporary southern Portugal. Specifically, we use the ethnographic revisit as a tool for understanding processes of continuity and change in the residential space of a rural parish of Alentejo, Flor da Rosa, which has been appropriated by tourism processes in the last few decades. Based on ethnography carried out in this locality over a temporal interval of two decades (1998-1999 and 2017-2018), we demonstrate how the categories of people have appropriated, processually, the public spaces of the parish, as well as how they have (re)designed alternative dimensions of tourism challenges into their contemporary subjectivities. Methodologically, the research is anchored in: (1) participant observation, exploratory interviews and documentary research; and (2) as an additional interpretative tool, drawing.