Culture, and the various sectors of the cultural industry, is a major economic and social force in the European Union. Culture covers heritage, literature, the press, music, the performing arts, visual and audiovisual media and socio-cultural activities. These highly dynamic creative and service activities have many aspects that are central to European competitiveness. Some of them are fast-growing industries, such as the audiovisual media (where the 100 leading companies have a turnover of ECU 7 billion, rising by 15% in 1994 and 1995) and the music recording industry (where the ECU 8.8 billion turnover in 1995 was up by 9% on 1994 and three European groups control 40% of the world market).
The many different forms of cultural expression and the increasingly frequent interlocking of the various cultural disciplines make it difficult to quantify employment in the cultural sector by statistical analysis alone. Nevertheless, recent studies suggest that in 1995 the number of jobs in the cultural sector in the fifteen countries of the EU was about 2.5 million. If arts and crafts are included there are over three million jobs in the cultural and craft sectors, or a little over 2% of jobs in the Union.
SIX: NINE SENTENCES
At one level the tourism system is therefore strongly manipulative of consumption levels and behaviour patterns.
In addition, the tourism system also strongly underpins much of the behaviour of consumers.
In its extreme form it leads, as we saw in chapter 9, to mass tourism.
The processes involved in much of tourism marketing have increasingly attempted to persuade consumers that they are purchasing not only a release from the constraints of their working lives, but also some form of 'lifestyle signifier'.
This forms the focus of the remainder of this chapter, and serves to illustrate a different area of tourism development.
The tourism and leisure system, as described by Rojek (1985), Zukin (1990), Urry (1990) and Britton (1991), plays a pivotal role in understanding the spatial and built form of much of our contemporary landscape.
However, tourism and consumption levels are not purely the outcome of manipulation by the image-makers.
Such reactions are best seen by taking one significant example, the growth of so-called 'green' or sustainable tourism.
The system is also capable of being restructured by changes in consumer demand and, more importantly, consumer ideas about the ethics of consumption.
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© 2002 Martin Paterson