This article explores the launching of the supersized cruise ferries Silja Serenade (1990) and Silja Symphony (1991) as an early example of an experiential approach to luxury in the Nordic context. It analyzes how the marketing of the two sister ships entailed a renegotiation of luxury in the cruise ferry context of the Baltic Sea in the early 1990s. The concept of popular luxury is introduced to explain how the cruise experience was promoted as luxurious without losing its original mass appeal. The luxury ferry cruise experience was constructed by blending modernity and comfort with the traditional aura of cruising. Through the concept of “a true luxury cruise” and the exoticization of similarities with cruising in the tropics, the marketing conveyed a promise of romance, escapism, and Caribbean feelings. In the article, we argue that popular luxury in the Baltic Sea ferry industry signified a luxurization of an already popular phenomenon and involved an increasing focus on individualism, self-realization and pursuit of experiential luxury. Popular luxury thus becomes a valuable lens for understanding a more fundamental shift in the tourism culture of the Nordic countries during the late twentieth century.

This article contributes to the understanding of the racial politics underpinning nation branding through a two-step mixed-method analysis of the Image Bank of Sweden, an online promotional material provided through the branding platform Sharing Sweden. First, an exploratory quantitative analysis reveals a paradox: while White individuals overwhelmingly dominate the images of Sweden, Black and Asian individuals appear at rates disproportionate to their actual demographic presence - particularly in contexts related to education and student life. Second, a multi-modal discourse analysis of images and texts shows how the representations of higher education and student life mobilize racialized bodies to project an image of Sweden as diverse, modern, and globally competitive. At the same time, White students' portrayal is accompanied by messages of Swedish traditions, reinforcing existing views of Sweden as a White nation. Ultimately, we argue that such portrayals reproduce the logics of tokenistic multiculturalism and commodification of racial difference and whiteness within the aesthetic economy of nation branding.

Artikeln utforskar förkroppsligade dimensioner av interkulturellt lärande, genom gruppintervjuer med sju svenska gymnasieelever som deltagit i ett dansutbyte med en kenyansk kulturskola. Med begreppet ”förkroppsligat lärande” betonas att interkulturellt lärande i dansutbytet sker i mötet mellan kroppsliga erfarenheter och diskursiva inramningar. I studien analyseras hur eleverna tillsammans navigerar, förhandlar och skapar mening kring olika samexisterande lager av skillnader och likheter i berättelserna om dansmötet. I berättelserna framträder betydelsen av det gemensamma intresset för dans för att konstruera en gemensam tillhörighet som ”dansare”. Samtidigt lyfter eleverna fram skillnader i dansstilar och i inställningen till koreografi som påtagliga. Genom att dansa tillsammans har de även fått en konkret, kroppslig upplevelse av dansens olika rumsliga och materiella förutsättningar. Slutligen visar analysen hur erfarenheten att dansa tillsammans skapar förutsättningar för upplevelser av samhörighet och visar hur unga människors förkroppsligade dansmöten rör sig längs med, över och bortom ”vi” och ”dom”-gränser.

The article explores embodied dimensions of intercultural learning, through group interviews with seven Swedish upper secondary school students who participated in a dance exchange with a Kenyan cultural school. The concept of ‘embodied learning’ emphasizes that intercultural learning in the dance exchange takes place in the encounter between embodied experiences and discursive framings. The study analyses how the participants together navigate, negotiate and create meaning around coexisting layers of differences and similarities in the narratives of the dance encounter. In their narratives, the importance of a common interest in dance for constructing a common belonging as ‘dancers’ is evident. At the same time, the participants also underline differences in dance styles and attitudes towards choreography as significant. Through the dance encounters, they have also gained a concrete, embodied experience of the different spatial and material conditions of dance. Finally, the analysis shows how the experience of dancing together creates conditions for experiences of affinities, and how young people’s embodied dance encounters move along, across and beyond boundaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Learning from “The Other”? Transformative learning in Swedish high school students’ narratives from an educational trip to Kenya. The study explores transformative learning in a group of Swedish high school students’ shared narratives about an educational trip to Kenya. The understanding of transformative learning is inspired by a discourse analytical approach, which emphasizes the use of discursive frameworks and repertoires for making sense of experiences. The analysis shows that the participants express a desire to learn from ‘the Other’, which is associated with a critical examination of their own ways of thinking. Moreover, the image of ‘the other’ is complex. On the one hand, it is constructed as a generalized image of the exotic other and reproduces notions of ‘the noble savage’. On the other hand, the image of ‘the other’ is also framed by a liberal discourse of individualism and tolerance. Finally, the narratives also entail constructions of similarity, which indicates a more radical renegotiation of previous discursive frames and blurs the borders between us and them.

This chapter describes the close relationship between international tourism and whiteness. Mattsson shows how whiteness plays a significant role as a silent norm that operates through a rhetorical silence in many tourist contexts in the transnational sphere. Through new critical whiteness studies perspectives, Mattsson sketches out the contours of an emerging research field that explicitly explores and theorises the importance of whiteness and race in contemporary tourism. The chapter shows how different ways of travelling and going on holiday entail different logics of whiteness and race formations, and how race and whiteness interacts with other social orders such as class, gender and sexuality in the tourist sphere. The chapter demonstrates how whiteness works as a structuring principle in contemporary tourism, but also that different logics of whiteness are prominent in different tourist segments. Theoretically, Mattsson frames the significance of whiteness in tourism as an underlying and integrated dimension of contemporary tourism, in order to explore different dimensions of the colonial continuity of tourism, particularly how colonial spaces, discourses and subjectivities are reproduced, modified and adapted to prevailing conditions in different tourist segments.

The article examines notions of family holidays in the marketing of family adventure travel, a small but growing segment of the alternative tourism sector in Sweden. In family adventure travel, the family vacation is oriented toward exotic destinations in the Global South. The analysis is conducted through a multimodal discourse analysis of web-based marketing material from seven Swedish travel agencies. It shows that the travel style of family adventure travel is constructed through a novel discourse, filled with overlapping meanings of family life, authenticity, and adventure. The article offers a unique approach to family tourism research by theorizing family adventure travel from a post-colonial perspective. It demonstrates how family adventure travel entails a colonial continuity, where notions of exploring and discovering the world become reproduced and re-negotiated in the context of family tourism. In the marketing of family adventure travel, the family vacation is reimagined as a journey of discovery.