Memory tourism in a contested landscape: exploring identity discourses in Lviv, Ukraine

The study explores divergent representations and cultural identity in a historically contested landscape. The first form of representations includes politically amended place marketing. It is analysed how public discourse on a city’s development and regeneration articulates inscriptions of local authorities to pursue political-economic agendas. The second form of representations is diaspora’s imaginary of a pedigree place that derives from genealogical research and travel. In this way, genealogy enables counter-memories to uncritical marketing and ‘alternative’ voices in recast of local history. A contested landscape is conceptualized through politics of past to reflect stakeholders’ present-day concerns. The empiric study is conducted in Lviv, a city with complicated past and national identity due to shifting powers. The fieldwork comprises the ongoing marketing campaign in Lviv launched in connection to the Euro-2012, and the Polish, Jewish and West-Ukrainian diasporic representations. The findings show how the nationalistic and the Eurocentric meta-narratives embed the identity discourses of Lviv official élite, and how diasporic texts suggest a genre of resistance to the marketing scripts.