NS34 Session 2

 

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Title: Reworking Inclusion in Place Branding: Power, Ethics, and Transformation

Organisers: Jörgen Eksell, Maria Månsson, Emma Björner, and Eva Maria Jernsand

Affiliation: Lund University, Gothenburg University

 

Description

Tourism and place branding have long been criticised for their exclusionary tendencies, privileging dominant actors, simplified narratives, and human-centred imaginaries. These dynamics are produced not only through governance and planning practices, but also through communication, including branding narratives, visual representations, storytelling, media discourses, and digital platforms. In response, research on inclusive place branding has emerged as an ethically grounded field concerned with representation, participation, co-creation, and the distribution of benefits. Recent work conceptualises inclusion not as a fixed outcome but as a relational, communicative, and political process, shaped by power, positionality, and responsibility, with implications for more equitable futures.

This session invites transformative contributions that move inclusive place branding beyond managerial or instrumental framings and critically interrogate how inclusion and exclusion are communicated, negotiated, contested, and materialised through branding practices. We particularly welcome work that understands inclusion as an ethical principle and examines who (and what) is included, how inclusion is enacted through communicative practices, and which voices, bodies, knowledges, and relations are marginalised, silenced, or rendered invisible.

Aligning with broader critical, communicative, and posthuman turns in tourism and place studies, the session explicitly encourages critical, decolonial, feminist, posthuman, and multispecies approaches. We seek papers that explore how places are branded, narrated, lived in, and governed through entanglements of discourse, materiality, and more-than-human relations, including non-human animals, ecosystems, technologies, and infrastructures. Such perspectives open new questions about justice, care, vulnerability, agency, and responsibility in place branding and place communication.

Overall, the session aims to create a space for theoretical, methodological, and empirical work that treats inclusive place branding as a communicative site for transforming places, identities, imaginaries, governance arrangements, and more-than-human relations, rather than as a purely normative or aspirational goal.

We welcome conceptual, empirical, methodological, and experimental contributions, including critical reflections, speculative or provocative pieces, and work-in-progress. Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches are particularly encouraged.

 

Abstracts

Title: Inclusive Place Branding as Contested Practice: Insights from Hammarkullen
Authors: Emma Björner, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, and Eva Maria Jernsand

Inclusive place branding is often framed as a response to exclusionary representations of place. However, much of this work remains focused on strategic intentions rather than on how inclusion is actually negotiated in practice. This paper examines inclusive place branding as a contested and uneven process shaped by local power relations, everyday practices, and competing place narratives.

The paper draws on an exploratory case study of Hammarkullen, a neighbourhood in Gothenburg, Sweden, characterised by strong community engagement and a rich cultural life. Focusing on the Hammarkullen Carnival and related local initiatives, the study builds on interviews with key actors and observations during events. It explores how residents, organisers, and local associations contribute to shaping how the area is presented, experienced, and made visible.

The analysis shows that place branding in this context is not governed by a single narrative, but emerges through multiple, sometimes conflicting, practices such as guiding, food cultures, music, and storytelling. While these practices enable alternative representations of place, they also involve processes of selection, translation, and simplification, where some voices, histories, and expressions are amplified while others remain marginalised or difficult to communicate within dominant frameworks.

The paper argues that inclusive place branding should be understood not as a goal or outcome, but as an ongoing, contested process. By linking empirical insights to critical perspectives on place, representation, and regeneration (Bellato & Pollock, 2023; Duxbury et al., 2025), the study highlights the tensions and limits of inclusion in practice.

References

Bellato, L. & Pollock, A. (2023). Regenerative tourism: A state‑of‑the‑art review. Tourism Geographies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2294366

Duxbury, N., Vinagre de Castro, T. & Silva, S. (2025). Culture–tourism entanglements: Moving from grassroots practices to regenerative cultural policies in smaller communities. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 31(4), pp. 497–516.

 

Title: More-Than-Human Inclusion: Rethinking Place Branding Governance
Authors: Jörgen Eksell, Lund University, Maria Månsson, and Marlene Wiggill

This paper advances a posthuman perspective on place branding by reconceptualising branding as a distributed governance practice that extends beyond human stakeholders. While the governance turn in place branding has foregrounded coordination among institutional and social actors, it remains largely anthropocentric, treating nonhuman entities as passive resources rather than participants in territorial processes.

Drawing on posthuman theory, particularly Rosi Braidotti’s relational ontology, the study explores how place branding reorganises relations among humans, nonhumans, and material environments. Through an exploratory case study of Visit Romagna’s dog-friendly positioning, the analysis examines how symbolic recognition of dogs translates into spatial planning, infrastructural adaptation, service standards, and regulatory practices.

The findings show that branding operates as more-than-representational governance: it not only communicates identity but also actively shapes access, behaviour, and coexistence across species. Branding alleviates multispecies relations by redistributing responsibilities through proxy governance, in which human actors act on behalf of nonhuman interests within planning and management systems.

The paper contributes to place branding research by expanding its ontological scope and reframing governance as relational responsibility embedded in more-than-human assemblages. Practically, it highlights the need for policymakers and destination managers to align branding narratives with spatial design and regulatory frameworks, fostering inclusive and ethically attuned territorial development that integrates multispecies considerations.ns.

 

Title: Locals Inclusion for Destination Development – New Paradigm New Model
Author: Peter Björk, Hanken School of Economics

Traditional destination development has long prioritized growth and visitor volume, often at the expense of local quality of life although the concept of co-creation has been brought into the discussion. This research explores a paradigm shift where the inclusion of local residents is viewed not as a byproduct, but as the very foundation of sustainable tourism. By integrating community voices, local entrepreneurship, and cultural integrity into the planning process, destinations can become more welcoming and the resources of the locals for tourism development released. The aim of this research is to develop a model for how to elevate locals’ interest and engagement in tourism destination development, as there is scant of research on how community-based tourism is to be practiced. The voices of the locals living in villages in the Kvarken World-Heritage area, Finland were collected by the means of a survey and interviews. The findings give reason to believe that the communities can host more tourists on condition the development is powered by the locals to the extent that a shift in paradigm is called for. Community development in support of tourism development. Furthermore, mechanisms for how to transform locals’ interests in support of destination development are still lacking, calling for an operational model. The Engaging and empowering model developed in this research has four integrated dimensions, Listen and learn, Collaborate and plan, Support and train, Implement and promote, and two fundaments, Build trust and inclusion, and Create pride and ownership.

Keywords: Sustainable tourism development, Local residents, Part-time marketers, Engagement, World Heritage site

 

Title: Rewriting the Arctic Through Neurodiverse Perception: Toward Inclusive Sensory Place Branding
Author: Hazel Gant, University of Portsmouth

Place branding in the Arctic has traditionally centred on the traditional visual iconography of ice, wilderness, and the Northern Lights yet this narrow framing overlooks the diverse ways people perceive, process, and connect with place. This paper proposes a reimagining of Arctic place branding through the lens of neurodiversity, arguing that sensory‑inclusive “sensescapes” can create more meaningful and accessible brand identities for northern regions. Building upon emerging research in sensory geography and experiential branding, the study explores how Arctic destinations already offer rich multisensory cues, such as acoustic stillness, textural snow variation, thermal contrast, olfactory markers of sea ice and tundra, that could be intentionally integrated into new place narratives.

By conceptualising the Arctic as a sensory brand rather than a visual spectacle, the paper highlights opportunities to design branding strategies that resonate with neurodiverse communities, especially those with autism and ADHD. These strategies include co‑creating sensory maps with neurodivergent residents and travellers, and reframing Arctic identity around embodied experience rather than aesthetic consumption. The paper also addresses ethical considerations, emphasising the need to avoid sensory overload, tokenism, and extractive branding practices.

In summary, this work positions neurodiversity‑informed sensescapes as a pathway to more inclusive, authentic, and sustainable Arctic place branding whilst inviting practitioners and researchers to rethink how sensory experience shapes belonging and to imagine Arctic futures that embrace a wider spectrum of perceptual worlds.