DialogiEurozineDialogi2013-01-10Summary of Dialogi 9/2012During a time when Slovenia is erupting in a series of popular uprisings against the political elites, Boris Vezjak in the Editorial introduction to this issue wonders where this sense of emergency, as a result of which many are suddenly feeling called on to participate, comes from. Since we are still not fully aware of the historical implications of these uprisings, we want to be there, says Vezjak, and reflects on the crossroads at which the protest movements now find themselves. "Currently the question is not only who can offer an alternative, and how, but rather how to ensure that it will enjoy a consensus and be widely supported. One that will not only be an alternative to this government and political elite, but also to the social and economic system as currently structured. When a people wants to change its politics, it is certainly not just because of politics itself."Social conditions are also given attention by social sciences editor Ciril Oberstar in an interview with trade unionist Goran Lukic. Lukic's area of work at the Association of Free Trade Unions of Slovenia covers the labor market, social issues, and migrations. He concludes, among other things, that the rigid classical industrial trade unionism is no longer the prevailing form of trade union movements, since new, heterogeneous groups of mainly precarious workers are taking shape: migrants, the self-employed, free-lance workers , etc. Today trade unions are already linking up with civil society in order to become stronger together. When asked whether trade unionists through their current campaigns are exposing themselves to the charge of being political, Lukic responds that the Slovenian ruling politicians immediately accuse them of acting like a political party the moment they start fighting for expanded social rights for workers and for a welfare state. But the differences are large: political parties represent interest group politics, while the trade union movement is part of public politics. Slovenian political parties have in fact shaken off all responsibility towards the welfare state and become merely a self-interested association for defending the next four-year mandate. The thematic set of articles prepared by guest editors Mitja Velikonja, culturologist, and Dejan Krizaj, sociologist, is devoted to tourism and its role in contemporary society. Where are all the opportunities for the upgrading of tourism, for the redefinition of fundamental tourism paradigms, for new sustainable approaches, for innovations in tourism, for new emancipatory potential? And where is tourism just another means of capitalist hegemony, where-if at all-is it a means for human individual and broader social liberation? Is tourism really just another variation of the theme of commercial and ideological incorporation, or can it offer ways and means for eliminating alienation among people, provide alternatives to the status quo, and open up spaces of freedom and self-realization? Can tourism offer a radical otherness, not just a painless, conformist differentness? The five participating authors approach the problem from different points of view. Anthropologists were among the last to join the community of researchers on tourism, and Tatiana Bajuk Sencar, using the case of the tourist destination of Bohinj, which lies within Triglav National Park and in which local residents blocked the construction of a hotel in the protected area through a referendum, shows that tourism practice unfolds at the global as well as local level, and is influenced by a plethora of events and actors that are not connected with tourism. Co-authors Aleksandra Brezovec, Petra Zabukovec Baruca and Zlatko Jancic ask who is responsible for so-called responsible tourism: consumers or providers. In tourism the two groups form mutually interconnected and dependent subsystems, and thus the authors offer a model of four levers of growth in responsible tourism: the sustainable development of products and services, energetic optimization of processes, responsible treatment of employees, and partner relations with consumers. Creative tourism is a new phenomenon that has emerged from cultural tourism. Dejan Krizaj presents some examples of new practice, and based on these concludes that tourism could change from an experience that is relaxing, escapist, and even dumbed down, into something that promotes personal as well as social and cultural growth. Nena Mocnik describes the image of Slovenia as a tourist destination which took shape based on the construct of a predominantly rural domesticity stemming from the 19th century. Through a selective display of cultures, romanticizing and myth-making, tourism contributes significantly towards the construction and renewal of cultural identities and the creation of stereotypes. In so doing it employs intercultural dialogue, which should be distinguished from multiculturalism as the long-term coexistence of different cultures.So-called historical tourism deliberately creates images of the authenticity of cultures which are supposedly uncontaminated by tourism. Mitja Velikonja asks why the traces and heritage of the former Yugoslav federation are of interest to tourists and what kinds of cultural dimensions and ideological backdrops this recently popular "Yugo-tourism" has. The Yugoslavia constructed in this kind of tourism and its exoticness with respect to the present are ideologically interpreted in two ways: in a negative sense as a model of something which is authoritarian, undemocratic, and Balkan, and in a positive sense as a previously realized utopia, a place reminiscent of a multicultural and socially secure past, the beginning of reconciliation of warring nations and as an encouragement to reflect on alternatives to the status quo. All this undoubtedly contains within it powerful emancipatory potential. In Cultural diagnosis Tanja Tolar reports on an exhibition of works by Damien Hirst which was opened this fall in the Tate Modern gallery in London. Marko Golja reviews a collection of haikus by the Bosnian-Slovenian poet Josip Osti entitled I Hug and Kiss You in All the Colors of Marc Chagall, in his view one of the most beautiful that Slovenian poetry has given us in recent years.