Conceptual Framework

Since Flannery is not any more in the group, I had to narrow down the topic to how tourists interact with Amsterdam and the natives. To make the research question more approachable, I tried to break it down into more specific questions and filled with details. Here are the questions I have come up with so far:
l Where do the tourists go? What do they tend to do there (taking pictures, walking around, buying stuff?)
l What is their clothing like? How is it different from the natives and among themselves?
l What are their impressions of the city? What do they enjoy doing there and what are some dislikes?
l What might one group of tourists differ from another? (You can always tell Americans apart from other tourists. If that’s the case?)
Several conceptual frameworks can serve as the guide of conducting the research. One of them comes from Bal’s writing on “tradition and culture.” Tourists coming from all regions and countries experience “culture shock” as well as “culture clash” with Amsterdam and its people. Sometimes, tourists might find their values contradicting with the ones held in Amsterdam. For example, how would a Muslim woman perceive the prostitutes in the Red Light District? The clashes between what Amsterdam has to offer and what the tourists are willing to get out from it might not always be as correlative as they hope to be.
By employing Bal’s theatrical analysis on “tradition” and “culture”, I hope to gain a better understanding in terms of how people’s perception might be influenced by their cultural background and their values might be altered by the new cultural environment.