Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China
Travel booking engines can produce, resist, and destabilise popular and state-directed geopolitical representations of a world neatly divided into national and international space. Although they present as strictly functional technical platforms, booking engines obscure and omit what is contingent a...
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/170406 |
| _version_ | 1826119449753681920 |
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| author | Rowen, Ian |
| author2 | School of Social Sciences |
| author_facet | School of Social Sciences Rowen, Ian |
| author_sort | Rowen, Ian |
| collection | NTU |
| description | Travel booking engines can produce, resist, and destabilise popular and state-directed geopolitical representations of a world neatly divided into national and international space. Although they present as strictly functional technical platforms, booking engines obscure and omit what is contingent and contested in the production of a destination as a bordered national territory. Due to their embedding in the webs of political representation, these systems and their backers can become targets for economic boycotts, political threats, hacks, or other interventions when territorial designations are contested. Such interventions manifest as political performances aimed at multiple audiences, including tourists and travellers, as well as the businesses and political entities that facilitate or inhibit their circulation, with spillover effects into other domains of geopolitical representation. To empirically illustrate this argument, the paper analyzes the People’s Republic of China’s mostly successful efforts to coerce the international travel industry to relist destinations within Taiwan as belonging to China. By extending the notion of border performativity into the ‘code/spaces’ that span the online and offline worlds, it concludes that booking engines, like other forms of infrastructure that serve travellers and tourists, can produce popular geopolitical effects that exceed their own technical systems. Peering through these ruptures reveals the uneasy and unstable assemblages of travel infrastructure and territorial representation that regulate global mobility. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T05:00:33Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/170406 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T05:00:33Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1704062023-09-11T07:00:00Z Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China Rowen, Ian School of Social Sciences Social sciences::Geography Tourist Destination Travel Behavior Travel booking engines can produce, resist, and destabilise popular and state-directed geopolitical representations of a world neatly divided into national and international space. Although they present as strictly functional technical platforms, booking engines obscure and omit what is contingent and contested in the production of a destination as a bordered national territory. Due to their embedding in the webs of political representation, these systems and their backers can become targets for economic boycotts, political threats, hacks, or other interventions when territorial designations are contested. Such interventions manifest as political performances aimed at multiple audiences, including tourists and travellers, as well as the businesses and political entities that facilitate or inhibit their circulation, with spillover effects into other domains of geopolitical representation. To empirically illustrate this argument, the paper analyzes the People’s Republic of China’s mostly successful efforts to coerce the international travel industry to relist destinations within Taiwan as belonging to China. By extending the notion of border performativity into the ‘code/spaces’ that span the online and offline worlds, it concludes that booking engines, like other forms of infrastructure that serve travellers and tourists, can produce popular geopolitical effects that exceed their own technical systems. Peering through these ruptures reveals the uneasy and unstable assemblages of travel infrastructure and territorial representation that regulate global mobility. 2023-09-11T07:00:00Z 2023-09-11T07:00:00Z 2023 Journal Article Rowen, I. (2023). Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China. Geopolitics, 28(4), 1489-1505. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2027914 1465-0045 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/170406 10.1080/14650045.2022.2027914 2-s2.0-85124089655 4 28 1489 1505 en Geopolitics © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved. |
| spellingShingle | Social sciences::Geography Tourist Destination Travel Behavior Rowen, Ian Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China |
| title | Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China |
| title_full | Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China |
| title_fullStr | Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China |
| title_full_unstemmed | Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China |
| title_short | Booking engines as battlefields: contesting technology, travel, and territory in Taiwan and China |
| title_sort | booking engines as battlefields contesting technology travel and territory in taiwan and china |
| topic | Social sciences::Geography Tourist Destination Travel Behavior |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/170406 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT rowenian bookingenginesasbattlefieldscontestingtechnologytravelandterritoryintaiwanandchina |