Cultural heritage, development, employment: territorial vocation as a rationalized myth

‘Territorial vocation’ is a key concept in the literature of tourism management, as well as the link with many other fields of research, such as territorial governance, territorial marketing and local economic development. This work aims to contribute to the debate on territorial vocation and territorial governance processes by giving an alternative vision, called situationist, compared to the prevailing one, defined as unified or systemic approach. Particularly, this paper shows an alternative point of view – called situationist – for the understanding of the processes of territorial governance. In a situationist framework territory is not qualified as a “pre-determined system with respect to the actors” but as a “concrete system built by the actors”. This different paradigm, a synthesis between political and neo-institutional perspective, qualifies territory as a space of games, a place of different interests and different strategies, a place of interaction, negotiation and conflict among actors and their coalitions. Territorial vocation becomes a “rationalized myth”, an intersubjective construct not assisted by an aura of objectivity and functionality to the interests of territory itself. It is the result, influenced by unintended effects, of the strategic action of a pro-tempore dominant coalition. Moreover, territorial vocation is interpreted as an “institutional pressure”, as a material and symbolic constraint that induces beliefs, practices and patterns of behaviour in the actors of that territory. Putting these different lenses on, a deep pattern of political actions comes in evidence, aiming at protecting the interests of specific coalitions but systematically communicated as functional to the harmonious development of territory in order to pursuit ‘common good’. Then territorial governance becomes a result of a power game based on continuous individual and coalitional strategies. Communication and negotiation processes structure a pro-tempore local order that functions, at the same time, both as product and constraint of human interaction.