Extracting Versions of the World

The notion of world-making constitutes a highly transferable metaphoric schema exposing where/when/how tourism does not just mirror a fixed 'world' out there (i.e. the destination or a history, myth and storyline), but plays an organic role creating or changing the ways in which things are understood symbolically and materially (Hollinshead, 2015). World-making thus does not only represent the pasts and presents of destinations, populations, popular culture fans, fandoms and fan cultures, but it actively reconfigures them by inculcating particular worldviews and concretising the versioning of place (Hollinshead et al., 2009), inscribing how 'the real' is imagined and 'the imaginary' is realised (Hollinshead, 2015). Our broader approach to world-making accommodates its multi-stakeholder and protean constitution pushing us to explore how popular culture is variously used to manufacture held designations of places, expressions of fan cultures and visions of the world – and, in doing so, to better understand how all of them build different world versions (Goodman, 1978). The contributions to this edited collection provide a range of popular culture destinations and fan pilgrimages that result, directly or indirectly, in different varieties of touristic world-making. We extrapolate below their main findings to unearth the world versions each case shapes or leads to.

The chapter by Warwick and Jennifer Frost explores how laneways, developed for fans of rock legends, function and are marketed to visitors and fans. In their chapter, particular attention is paid to how fans perform and interact at these sites that are both spaces for visits typical of a tourist attraction, and manifest in fan activity such as commemorating lost performers. The world-making view of popular culture tourism presented in this chapter highlights how the imaginative practices of fans mix with projective promotional activities thereby displaying plural versions of use and development of the same physical space.