People-place relationships
This dissertation argues for an actor-based perspective to place-making processes, recognising that multiple human and non-human actors participate in the activity of meaning-making places. These diverse actors—residents, domestic spiritual tourists, and heritage managers—participate in the co-construction of meaning in overlapping and often ambivalent ways.
Heritage sites are not passive backdrops but active participants that influence how visitors engage through their spatial, material, and atmospheric affordances. Residents navigate shifting attachments to place, often characterised by ambivalence rather than a desire for stability. Meanwhile, domestic spiritual tourists participate in meaning-making processes in fluid, overlapping roles between worshipper and tourist, between being familiar with a place’s history and practices and only knowing them as tourist destinations. Heritage managers contribute to these processes through narrative construction and site management.