Paper by PhD candidate Emily Mannheimer

In Belfast, the issue of representation and commemoration is problematic; The Northern Irish government is very reluctant to take any official stance about the Troubles. Yet, tourists come from all over the world to learn about the conflict and to see the iconic peace walls and political murals that dominated international media coverage. The process of remembering and the act of relaying stories of ‘what happened’ is largely left up to the tour guides themselves. Through the development of guided tours, these guides are determining and consolidating narratives of the past while simultaneously shaping acceptable behaviors for communicating that past to an external tourist audience. The interconnection of tourism and various narratives about the Troubles is not, in this case, produced at the official, governmental or institutional level. Rather, it exists at a highly localized and intimate level where the ‘truth’ is communicated to an international audience from multiple perspectives and where each tour contributes to the strengthening and solidifying a narrative of the Troubles.