Journal articles on the topic 'Regional branding laws'

BackgroundExposure to smoking in films causes smoking uptake among adolescents. Investigation of the extent to which tobacco imagery appears, or tobacco control laws are complied with in Indian films is limited, and especially so for films in regional languages. This study presents an analysis of tobacco content and compliance with tobacco control laws in popular films in several languages from the Karnataka state of India.MethodsWe used 5 min interval coding to measure actual tobacco use, implied tobacco use, tobacco paraphernalia and tobacco branding in the top 10 films identified from national box office ratings and regional distributor reports in Karnataka in 2015 and 2016. We also assessed compliance with tobacco-free film rules in India.FindingsA total of 47 films, in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Tulu languages were coded. Any tobacco imagery was observed in 72% of films, and actual tobacco use in 50%. Tobacco imagery was equally prevalent in films classified as suitable for universal viewing (U category) or at age 12 or more (U/A category) films; and significantly more common in films made in regional than national language (Hindi). None of the films were fully compliant with legal requirements on health spots, audiovisual disclaimers and health warnings.ConclusionsTobacco content was common in films classified as suitable for viewing by children, more among regional than national languages. Compliance with tobacco control laws was low. Stricter enforcement of tobacco-free film rules will protect children and adolescents from exposure to tobacco use on screen.

The article examines the issues of marketing in the business travel market. Suggested is the concept of domestic professional tourism. The author denotes the importance of inter-regional partnerships in developing successful sales channels for the tourist product. For the development of this partnership contacts with regions and twin cities can be intensified, which will give an opportunity to establish business, cultural and scientific relations. Noted that in the process of development of such cooperation it is important to determine the status of the region, which can enter into inter-regional contacts and as a consumer of the regional tourism product, and as a partner, having a kindred tourist specialization. The role of territorial marketing as a tool to implement the strategy of regional development is also highlighted. Analyzed are levels of the tourism product in the formation of prices of territorial tourism products. Disclosed is the basis of companies that create territorial tourism products. The author demonstrates problems with branding areas, as well as the role of economic methods and marketing tools in the formation of an integrated tourist product. It is concluded that a tourism and recreation area appears in several forms: firstly, it is a product that should be promoted on the wide and local markets of tourist services; secondly, it is an administrative unit (subject), operated according to federal, state and local laws; third, it is a geographical unit (space) and has a certain resource, economic and industrial potential; fourth, it is a place where not only tourists visit but the local population resides. The significance of Public Relations for the successful promotion of the territory is high especially in the form of public relations and propaganda by creating public opinion about a product, service, manufacturer, seller, or country.

Cultural heritage, considered as a tool for sustainable tourism development and place branding, makes a destination appealing to visitors; hence, cultural heritage tourism can be a driving force for economic growth in cities and regions. Polycentricity is a useful multi-scalar concept in spatial theory that describes how adjacent urban centers can interact with each other, creating synergies and generating broader spatial networks. Cultural heritage and tourism, perceived as important factors of integration in a polycentric spatial structure, can further promote regional branding strategies. In this paper, a polycentricity index is introduced as a methodological tool for networking cultural heritage destinations, with an application to the Silk Road heritage. Silk Road cultural assets traced on the historical Silk Road routes linking East and West, can serve as tourist attraction poles and as an essential component for branding destinations through networking at various spatial scales. The Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece, endowed with a plethora of Silk Road cultural assets, most of which are still untapped, is used to highlight the proposed methodology. The ultimate objective is the designation of polycentric destination networks based on Silk Road assets, in order to build regional branding opportunities over the Region.

The purpose of this study was to explore how a regional brand can be co-created among different cities by employing the concept of place branding and brand culture. The Andaman Tourism Cluster of Thailand (ATC) generates the most tourism revenue in Thailand. Developing a regional brand identity can strengthen the competitive advantage of the ATC. Data were collected using multi-method research through questionnaires, projective techniques, and focus group interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, while qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. This study also shows that multi-method research contributes to brand management by facilitating collaboration, participation, and brand congruence among stakeholders. Quantitative and qualitative data were synthesized in order to develop the brand identity of the ATC. Focus group interviews were also employed to co-create the regional brand identity as ‘Irresistible Andaman’, of which sustainable tourism management is a fundamental aspect. This study demonstrates how multiple sub-brands with different stakeholders can be integrated into a single regional brand. Moreover, stakeholders should focus on internal branding by communicating with all stakeholders to co-create brand congruence.

There is a clear controversy between the concepts of place branding and territorial brand in the context of regional development, with different meanings being attributed depending on the regions of the world. On the one hand, there are the typological designations attributed to place branding coupled with marketing, and on the other hand, the typologies attributed to local governance and often mixed with the territorial brand but not considering the regional development. This discrepancy creates a gap in the scientific literature for a uniform classification model for the territorial brand. To fill this gap, this study adopts qualitative content analysis, and its main objective is to present a uniform territorial brand classification model. Through a review of the scientific literature on the subject, 18 variables were found to build the theoretical model, which was then applied to the analysis of 60 territorial brands. The results of this study led to the Territorial Brand (TRbrand) Classification Model, with 16 dimensions of analysis and generated 13 concepts. The conclusions reveal a new typological classification model for the territorial brand in regional development, the TRbrand Classification Model, which includes the brand, the territory, the cultural diplomacy, the local governance, the social actors, and the regional development.

Many countries have adopted culture policies such as the European Capital of Culture program to revitalize cities. Culture brings economic benefit to a city through creative industries as well as vitalizes cities by allowing excellent workforce to stay in the city. In order to achieve urban growth through culture, appropriate urban policies or services should be implemented. In addition, citizens should recognize the positive brand value of cities as a result of such policies. In this study, we considered the cultural city as one of city branding and studied how the cultural cities’ characteristics, urban services, and the city’s brand value had the effect on regional activation. Online survey was conducted from 18 September to 18 October 2019 with residents residing in Xi’an, China. In total, 345 valid questionnaires were received and analyzed. As a result of this study, the characteristics of the cultural city had positive effects on urban brand value and regional activation. Urban services had positive effects on cultural city characteristics, city brand value, and regional activation. City brand value had a positive effect on regional activation. This study contributes to the study of the cultural city and the field of public service, city brand, culture, and arts. City planners and leaders will be able to use the results of this study to establish city branding and urban revitalization policies through culture.

Creative Industries: The Regional Dimension is one of a series of reports published in recent years by the UK government which outlines the importance of creative industries to economic growth. It is in these terms that central government has promoted the creative industries as a newly recognised and fast-growing sector of the economy, thus seeking to quantify the Cool Britania branding so famously propagated by the then newly elected Labour government. The author unpacks the enthusiasm for the creative industries at the national level, and further investigates how the creative-industries developmental agenda has been unfolding within UK regions. The trajectory of the United Kingdom's creative-industries agenda is contrasted with policy and developmental strategies undertaken elsewhere in the world. It is argued that implementation of a creative-industries agenda at the regional level in the United Kingdom is at best patchy, and there is currently a lack of strategic planning, best-practice models, and empirical research to guide policymakers. The West Midlands is then addressed in more detail, and it is argued that at the regional administrative level, a creative industries development agenda per se is all but lost. The implications of this policy trajectory are discussed.

The paper examines differentiation business strategies in food production in Braničevo-Podunavlje region (Serbia). The research methodology includes survey research focused on the producers engaged in the production of value-added agricultural products, which have a greater potential for differentiation and branding. A range of survey indicators enable farmers and entrepreneurs of differentiated products to emphasize key success factors, detect barriers, and generate business ideas and innovations. Survey research was conducted in the period December 2018–January 2019, among 67 farmers, legal entities, and unincorporated enterprises−producers of high-quality niche food products in Braničevo–Podunavlje region. Results of the research indicated vegetable and fruit processing, beekeeping, and milk processing as sectors of the most promising value-added food products, including those that form the region’s basket of products. The study’s findings should contribute to the development of differentiated business models in the food sector and strengthening their role in smart regional development.

Slovakia, as part of the European Union, participates in all forms of regional development and sustainability. A transparent form of regional development and sustainability is regional labeling, which has a 10-year tradition. Our regions represent excellent potential for the development of domestic products. Acceptance of essential requirements for regional products (domestic raw materials, manual work share, respect for the environment) opens up opportunities for the labor market, promotes tourism, and increases citizens’ purchase ability, none of which are clearly demonstrable in Slovak regions. Residents of individual regions have specific approaches in relation to regional brands depending on the region studied. For the purpose of the survey, four regions of southern Slovakia (with common environmental morphology and different industrial development) were selected. Indicators of age, gender, education, monthly income, and location relative to regional product preferences were studied. The results obtained were processed by cluster analysis (as a way of segmenting consumers). An average conscious purchaser of regional products is a local productive middle-aged person with a secondary or tertiary education, either male or female, and from a more economically advanced region. The results show regional branding as a mobilizing function for connecting inhabitants and the subsequent joint presentation of regional activities.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of attracting a mega-sport facility on the development of a small town. As a case study, we took a close look at the changes occurring since Muju County attracted Taekwondowon in 2014 and its significance to urban development and city branding. Data were collected by individual interviews with five research participants engaged in the business and the regional development of Taekwondowon and the Muju County Office (MCO). As a result, the study produced the following outcomes: First, MCO has established an administrative and legal system to actively utilize Taekwondowon and spur urban development. Second, the regional ripple effects include the local economic consumption by the Taekwondo Promotion Foundation (TPF), purchasing local agricultural products by the TPF, and increasing income for local lodging and catering businesses generated by taekwondo events held at Taekwondowon. Third, and most importantly, Muju has been pursuing a transformation into a sustainable international tourism city by becoming the mecca for taekwondo. To achieve this goal, Taekwondowon has been taking some existing functions of Kukkiwon, and the MCO constructed the Taekwon Village, Taekwon Park, and Taekwon V Land throughout Muju. In addition, the social overhead capital necessary for a tourist destination, such as road expansion and a new express bus system between the international airport and Muju, has been reinforced. Furthermore, various tourism products using Taekwondowon have been provided to continue its city branding. In summary, it was found that Taekwondowon has played a pivotal role in Muju’s journey toward achieving sustainable development as the mecca for taekwondo.

The fundamental goal of this article is to show the implications that place branding has for regional public management through a case study of the brand “Vic, a city with a human dimension” [Vic, ciutat a la mesura humana, in Catalan language], a project commissioned by the city council of Vic and carried out by the city’s university (University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia). Vic is the capital of the Osona region, in the centre of Catalonia, with a population of 45,040 inhabitants. Methodologically, this research utilised 14 focus group discussions, two in-depth interviews and a survey addressed to citizens and answered by 855 people. In regards to results, the research shows that the practice of place branding transcends the traditional action areas of place marketing and place promotion, in order to be fully integrated in the region’s overall management policies, that is to say, its urban governance. The article also concludes that the processes of conceptualisation and implementation of new place brands must be framed within a bottom-up approach, integrating all the stakeholders (public–private cooperation) in the decision-making process.

While policy study of smart city developments is gaining traction, it falls short of understanding and explaining knowledge transfers across national borders and cities. This article investigates how transboundary learning occurs through the initiation and development of a regional smart cities network: the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN). The article conducts an in-depth case study from data collected through key informant interviews and document analysis. Spearheaded by Singapore in 2017, ASCN is seen as a soft power extension for Singapore, a branding tool for ASEAN, and a symbiotic platform between the private sector and governments in the region. Most transboundary knowledge transfers within the ASCN are voluntary transfers of policy ideas. Effective branding, demand for knowledge, availability of alternative funding options, enthusiasm from the private actors, and heightened interest from other major economies are highlighted as facilitators of knowledge transfer. However, the complexity of governance structures, lack of political will and resources, limited policy capacity, and lack of explicit operational and regulatory mechanisms hinder transboundary learning. The article concludes that transboundary learning should go beyond exchanges of ideas and recommends promoting facilitators of knowledge transfer, building local policy capacity, encouraging collaborative policy transfer, and transiting from an information-sharing platform to tool/instrument-based transfer.

Sustainability is a growing priority for higher education institutions around the world. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) through UTM Campus Sustainability Office ready to transform the campus as platform to inculcate the sustainability mind set of young people through education and empowering them to continue living the values in the future as stated in Transformasi Nasional 2050 (TN50) development plan. In 2010, among the first institution supporting UI GreenMetric auditing, UTM was positioned at rank 85, and then gradually improving the performance to position ourself to rank 66 in 2017. To boost this effort, sustainability elements have been implemented in Universiti Global Plan III (2018-2020) and UTM Master Plan 2017-2037. One of the main strength of UTM in UI GreenMetric evaluation components is Setting and Infrastructure that incorporates environmental and social considerations in addition to the traditional cost, time and quality. Improvement through transnational researches which is under Water and Energy Nexus projects such as biomass utilization and groundwater projects are escalating the efforts. For developing more robust approach, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) has been incorporated in to six Living Labs (LL) initiatives. Positioning in global branding, integration across campus and regional level networking was aimed to leverage currents assets into further opportunities for research, teaching and institutional development.

In this study, we clarify the motivation for applying for regional collective trademarks (RCTs) and the effects perceived by the right holders of wood and forest products. We further examine the historical contexts and social circumstances of production regions with RCT registrations. A survey of eight right holders, including forestry associations that applied for RCTs, was conducted in this study. We obtained a sufficient quantity of perception data for comparisons across different production sites. The primary motivations of forest associations applying for RCTs were preventing counterfeit goods and improving awareness and familiarity. It was identified that the relative lengths of the brand histories have impacted the current branding strategies, including the motives for RCT applications. In terms of the perceived effects of RCTs, four RCT right holders perceived the former positive effect of preventing counterfeit goods, and seven perceived the latter positive effect of improving awareness and familiarity. All of the forest associations intend to renew their RCTs. The primary motivation of the RCT holders is not price enhancement. It remains to be seen whether the RCT brands can differentiate themselves to consumers and constructors in terms of quality or brand stories.

Today, customers see businesses as more than just profit seekers, they see them as organizations that are concerned about the well-being of their societies. Therefore, businesses have made sustainability a primary focus by implementing green marketing tactics to encourage consumers to buy green goods. The intention to buy green products was examined in relation to factors such as eco-labelling, green packaging and branding, and green products, premium, and pricing. This study analyses a model that incorporates green marketing techniques based on the responses of 450 people to a survey. In addition, the paper investigates the moderating effect of green brand image and customer views on the environment on the link between green marketing and green purchase intentions. This study’s framework is confirmed by using structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings of this study show that green marketing methods significantly and positively affect customers’ intentions to make environmentally friendly purchases. When looking at the path coefficient between green marketing techniques and green purchase intents, we discovered that green brand image and customer environmental attitudes considerably moderated this relationship. This study provides regional and international enterprises and governments with information on how to enhance consumers’ intentions to make green purchases. Significant findings from this study support favourable social behaviour toward green marketing. Towards the examination of the consumers’ green purchasing intents, this research underlined the importance and function of green brand image and customer attitudes regarding the environment. The packing of the items should be eco-friendly and prevent excessive paper and plastic packaging. Companies should leverage the environmental features of their products for branding purposes.

Cities play a pivotal role in climate change mitigation; however, the methodology to quantify actual emission reduction potential of climate interventions implemented by cities and regions has been lacking. The aim of this study is to create a framework to assess positive climate impacts of cities and regions by modifying the life-cycle assessment (LCA)-based carbon handprint framework. Additionally, a step-by-step guidance to perform calculations is presented. A case study of the Finnish city of Espoo is used to further develop and test the regional handprint approach both qualitatively and quantitatively. According to our research, a city′s carbon handprint can be determined through the three main mechanism categories of ownership, operating environment and projects. In the case of Espoo, the carbon handprint of building public electric vehicle charging stations on city-owned land from the mechanism category of ownership showed to be up to 110 tCO2eq/a for 18 charging stations. However, the overall handprint of a city consists of several actions, to be calculated separately. The regional carbon handprint approach provides a useful instrument to reliable quantify and communicate the innovative climate actions implemented by a city and it can be used in cities′ climate work as well as in marketing and branding purposes. Handprint turns the focus on possibilities for increasing a city vitality. As a provider of climate solutions, a city can attract new taxpayers and by focusing efforts to a certain sector, a city can help companies to reach synergies in fields essential from the climate point of view.

Tourism destinations are generally delimited and branded based on administrative boundaries, which act as artificial barriers that may reduce the competitiveness of the tourism sector. Increasingly, literature is taking a demand perspective (i.e., tourist spatial behaviour) when identifying and promoting destinations. This perspective can help to promote destinations more efficiently, particularly in rural areas, where most tourism flows depend on private vehicle and which do not take into account administrative boundaries. These flows are therefore highly conditioned by the geography of the area, hosting capacity and the cumulative effect of attractions. This research centres on brand creation from a tourist perspective, particularly how tourists consume a destination. Els Ports (Spain), a rural mountain area divided into multiple administrative divisions, each marketing its own brand, is taken as a case study. Recently, destination managers have seen the opportunity for regional cooperation and taken steps to cross traditional boundaries to market the area better. This study uses GIS techniques to compare tourist travel patterns with brand boundaries and new cooperative initiatives. The findings provide material for discussion on the branding strategy of Els Ports and the need to rebrand rural tourism destinations into functional tourism areas.

The health service of EU member states facing numerous challenges. Hospitals have a catastrophic shortage of medical personnel; meanwhile, the demand for medical services caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is increasing. Hospitals’ pursuit of recruiting staff with a high level of professional education is more likely to be successful with potential candidates in a competitive talent market in institutions where a cultural organization, innovative treatment as a patient-centered approach is included in top priorities. The survey was conducted in the pre-COVID time with the use of the proprietary questionnaire in a traditional way. 204 employees of the Prof. dr Stanisław Popowski Regional Specialized Children’s Hospital in Olsztyn were the respondents. The paper uses the r-Pearson correlation analysis. IBM®SPSS®Statistics, version 25.0.0.1, was used to develop the correlation results. After verification of the research hypotheses, it was shown that there is a statistically significant relationship between inappropriate activities of employer branding and reduced employee retention. It has been demonstrated that there is a discrepancy in the offered and actual working conditions. The discrepancies concerned the atmosphere at work (31.4%) and the inability to develop a career path (8.3%). 19.1% are willing to change jobs due to inadequate remuneration. For the respondents, factors important in choosing a workplace included remuneration, organizational culture, and the availability of the benefits package. One hypothesis was confirmed, another was partially confirmed.The proposals presented in the paper could significantly contribute to shaping a good image of hospital employers and increasing employee satisfaction. AcknowledgmentThe study was conducted at the Prof. dr Stanisław Popowski Regional Specialized Children’s Hospital in Olsztyn.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address the knowledge gap in the field of dark tourism by understanding the phenomena of phoenix tourism, which focuses on the transformation and rebirth of places following death and disasters. Design/methodology/approach The paper builds on existing theoretical understanding of dark tourism and disaster recovery to explore destination image recovery within the tourism industry. It uses phoenix tourism as a lens to understand the social, cultural and economic context of post-disaster tourism destination recovery and rebranding in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Findings A presentation of post-disaster strategies and recommendations are given with attention to the re-branding of images once associated with death and darkness to enhance a destination’s resilience. Practical Implications For local policymakers, tourism leaders, researchers and community developers, this research describes strategies that facilitate rebranding dark tourism sites, such as areas of rebirth or “phoenix tourism”, to enhance destination recovery image and to promote a more disaster- and risk-resilient tourism industry. Originality/value This paper bridges the knowledge gap by defining and contributing to the theoretical understanding of phoenix tourism as it identifies the what, how and why elements of the phenomena of phoenix tourism. Furthermore, the authors propose how to overcome negative destination images to preserve, present or redefine an image of a tourist destination “overcoming”, and eventual “rebirth” serves to re-calibrate resilience of the tourism industry and regional redevelopment.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) concept to the sustainable performance evaluation of emerging family farms in Jilin, China. A sustainable performance evaluation system was constructed based on the BSC. A questionnaire survey was used with a sample of 156 emerging family farms involved in the production of planting (grain, horticultural crops) and breeding (animal products) enterprises in Jilin, China. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation method (FCE) was used for the sustainable performance evaluation by different BSC dimensions, farm types, and regions. This empirical study revealed that the BSC is applicable for the farm sustainable performance evaluation in the Chinese context. The key is selecting suitable indicators for the evaluation index system while considering the particularity of market, resources, management, and personnel. The sustainable performance of the investigated family farms is in the slightly above moderate level as a whole. Financial performance and market performance are above moderate, while internal business process performance is moderate, and learning and growth performance is below moderate. They are facing difficult challenges to upgrade in terms of marketing and financing channels, branding, and organic production. Industrial differences existed in the farms’ sustainable performance. Farms combining planting and breeding have better sustainability, which could be a signal for transformation of the traditional single planting or breeding modes in China. The internal business process performance of grain farms is significantly less, due possibly to long-term policy support and protection with less of an emphasis on ecological outcomes. Subtle regional differences in the overall sustainable performance of surveyed family farms suggest that farm performance depends more on management than on external environment.

City branding is becoming more and more popular, not only as a field of research, but also as a practice of local governments. Municipalities attempt to introduce this concept into their sustainable transformation process, positioning a city among its stakeholders as, for instance, an eco-oriented, innovative, or smart city. An idea that fosters building a strong and consistent city brand is brand personality. The aim of the paper is to diagnose a city’s brand personality dimensions/traits communicated via posts published on official Facebook accounts of cities and to identify differences occurring within this scope between cities of two selected Central and Eastern European countries—Poland and Ukraine. To achieve this aim, the research involved a content analysis of 1700 posts published by 34 municipalities representing regional capital cities of Poland and Ukraine. On the basis of these study results, the authors have supplemented the Aaker (1997) five-dimensional scale of brand personality with the sixth dimension: Prosocial Attitude, which includes cooperative and bureaucratic traits, to better comply with the approach of cities to problems of their inhabitants and their surrounding environment, which is consistent with the idea of sustainability. Furthermore, the fifth trait has been added to characteristics which make up Aaker’s Excitement dimension. Dubbed as patriotic, it refers to the city’s activities related to the local celebration of historical events, indicating national pride and identification with its place of residence. Bureaucratic and patriotic traits were quite frequently observed in posts published on the official Facebook accounts of Ukrainian cities. Moreover, the research proves that in case of Polish cities the dominating brand personality dimensions are Sincerity and Excitement. Ukrainian cities tend to exercise communication based on the Sincerity and Competence dimension.

Purpose This study adopts the multi-step model developed by Avraham and Ketter (2008), for altering place images, based on past academic literature on destination marketing. The purpose of this study is to determine the state of Fukushima’s sake breweries before and after 2011, and its strategies for overcoming negative images and strengthening regional branding. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven sake breweries in Fukushima. Design/methodology/approach Fukushima Prefecture, located in northern Japan, is renowned for its hot springs, lakes, historical architecture, gastronomy, and particularly its sake (or Japanese rice wine). However, pre-existing problems such as the prefecture’s changing demographics and economic development, the effects of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) and fears of radioactive contamination have made consumers reluctant to consume products from the region or to visit the prefecture. This study illustrates how various sake brewery stakeholders have sought to reverse and alter negative images associated with the prefecture. To examine these initiatives, this study uses the multi-step destination marketing and counter-branding model to identify the strategies and techniques used by the stakeholders, with the aim of altering the way the prefecture is perceived and reversing the negative image people may have of the prefecture. To acquire data for this model, this study uses semi-structured interviews conducted in 2018 and 2020 with local sake breweries, tourism associations and the local government on how they sought to retore a positive image of the prefecture and rebrand it into a new type of tourism destination that focuses on the strengths of its breweries. Findings The results indicate that through a combination of collaboration between the breweries, local government and the local communities, the sake breweries were able to reverse many of the negative effects of the 2011 GEJE. The success of the sake industry has prompted the local government to focus more strongly on tourism marketing that places sake products and breweries at the center of its campaign to promote the region. Research limitations/implications While this paper focuses on the recovery of breweries, it does not include the recovery of wineries in Fukushima, which have made similar progress in their recovery. In addition, the interviews focused primarily on the perspectives of the suppliers and not the consumers. Practical implications The results of this research can help guide other destinations undergoing prolonged association with negative images on the path toward image recovery. In particular, this paper highlights the importance of a coordinated strategy by all stakeholders, the local government, businesses and communities, to create a united image and response for addressing the causes of these image problems and to create new opportunities for all stakeholders. Originality/value This research contributes to the field of image restoration, which combines theories regarding destination marketing and crisis management. Also, the research highlights the importance of collective stakeholder mobilization when attempting to help communities that are facing economic and tourism crises.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the commonalities and contrasts in the tourism objectives and strategies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, thereby revealing the foundations and pillars underlying the strategic initiatives implemented.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study applied the resource-based view (RBV) lens to the country level. A comparative analysis of the tourism strategy in each GCC country was undertaken to determine commonalities and contrasts between the different strategies and to classify them into clusters. In the next stage, in-depth interviews were carried out to validate the findings.FindingsFour distinct clusters were identified in this paper: lifestyle glamor, emerging giant, sports-induced country branding and eco-friendly regional-based strategies.Practical implicationsThe findings and cluster classification are pertinent to policymakers and industry marketers in crafting tourism development plans.Originality/valueThis study analyzed the economic diversification strategies adopted by GCC countries as new entrants in the tourism sector and classified them into four clusters.

The topic investigated is the social-ecological system of Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) fishing and aquaculture as a tourism product in an era of climate change. Arctic charr is a resilient salmonid species that was traditionally an important part of the sustenance economy in Arctic and Subarctic communities as a source of fresh food throughout the year. Arctic charr populations have declined in recent years, in part due to climate change. These changes in the freshwater ecosystems in turn affect the cultural and economic traditions of freshwater fishing and consumption. This development has consequences for the tourism industry as hunting, fishing and consuming local and traditional food is important in branding tourism destinations. Fisheries are no longer the source of this important ingredient in the Nordic culinary tradition, instead aquaculture production supplies nearly all the Arctic charr consumed. In this paper, we pool the resources of an interdisciplinary team of scholars researching climate change, freshwater ecology, aquaculture and tourism. We integrate knowledge from these fields to discuss likely future scenarios for Arctic charr, their implications for transdisciplinary social ecosystem approaches to sustainable production, marketing and management, particularly how this relates to the growing industry of tourism in the Nordic Arctic and Subarctic region. We pose the questions whether Arctic Charr will be on the menu in 20 years and if so, where will it come from, and what consequences does that have for local food in tourism of the region? Our discussion starts with climate change and the question of how warm it is likely to get in the Nordic Arctic, particularly focusing on Iceland and Norway. To address the implications of the warming of lakes and rivers of the global north for Arctic charr we move on to a discussion of physiological and ecological factors that are important for the distribution of the species. We present the state of the art of Arctic charr aquaculture before articulating the importance of the species for marketing of local and regional food, particularly in the tourism market. Finally, we discuss the need for further elaboration of future scenarios for the interaction of the Arctic charr ecosystem and the economic trade in the species and draw conclusions about sustainable future development.

IntroductionIn the wine world, authenticity is not just desired, it is actively required. That demand comes from a complex of producers, distributors and consumers, and other interested parties. Consequently, the authenticity of wine is constantly created, reworked, presented, performed, argued over, contested and appreciated.At one level, such processes have clear economic elements. A wine deemed to be an authentic “expression” of something—the soil and micro-climate in which it was grown, the environment and culture of the region from which it hails, the genius of the wine-maker who nurtured and brought it into being, the quintessential characteristics of the grape variety it is made from—will likely make much more money than one deemed inauthentic. In wine, as in other spheres, perceived authenticity is a means to garner profits, both economic and symbolic (Beverland).At another level, wine animates a complicated intertwining of human tastes, aesthetics, pleasures and identities. Discussions as to the authenticity, or otherwise, of a wine often involve a search by the discussants for meaning and purpose in their lives (Grahm). To discover and appreciate a wine felt to “speak” profoundly of the place from whence it came possibly involves a sense of superiority over others: I drink “real” wine, while you drink mass-market trash (Bourdieu). It can also create reassuring senses of ontological security: in discovering an authentic wine, expressive of a certain aesthetic and locational purity (Zolberg and Cherbo), I have found a cherishable object which can be reliably traced to one particular place on Earth, therefore possessing integrity, honesty and virtue (Fine). Appreciation of wine’s authenticity licenses the self-perception that I am sophisticated and sensitive (Vannini and Williams). My judgement of the wine is also a judgement upon my own aesthetic capacities (Hennion).In wine drinking, and the production, distribution and marketing processes underpinning it, much is at stake as regards authenticity. The social system of the wine world requires the category of authenticity in order to keep operating. This paper examines how and why this has come to be so. It considers the crafting of authenticity in long-term historical perspective. Demand for authentic wine by drinkers goes back many centuries. Self-conscious performances of authenticity by producers is of more recent provenance, and was elaborated above all in France. French innovations then spread to other parts of Europe and the world. The paper reviews these developments, showing that wine authenticity is constituted by an elaborate complex of environmental, cultural, legal, political and commercial factors. The paper both draws upon the social science literature concerning the construction of authenticity and also points out its limitations as regards understanding wine authenticity.The History of AuthenticityIt is conventional in the social science literature (Peterson, Authenticity) to claim that authenticity as a folk category (Lu and Fine), and actors’ desires for authentic things, are wholly “modern,” being unknown in pre-modern contexts (Cohen). Consideration of wine shows that such a view is historically uninformed. Demands by consumers for ‘authentic’ wine, in the sense that it really came from the location it was sold as being from, can be found in the West well before the 19th century, having ancient roots (Wengrow). In ancient Rome, there was demand by elites for wine that was both really from the location it was billed as being from, and was verifiably of a certain vintage (Robertson and Inglis). More recently, demand has existed in Western Europe for “real” Tokaji (sweet wine from Hungary), Port and Bordeaux wines since at least the 17th century (Marks).Conventional social science (Peterson, Authenticity) is on solider ground when demonstrating how a great deal of social energies goes into constructing people’s perceptions—not just of consumers, but of wine producers and sellers too—that particular wines are somehow authentic expressions of the places where they were made. The creation of perceived authenticity by producers and sales-people has a long historical pedigree, beginning in early modernity.For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, wine-makers in Bordeaux could not compete on price grounds with burgeoning Spanish, Portuguese and Italian production areas, so they began to compete with them on the grounds of perceived quality. Multiple small plots were reorganised into much bigger vineyards. The latter were now associated with a chateau in the neighbourhood, giving the wines connotations of aristocratic gravity and dignity (Ulin). Product-makers in other fields have used the assertion of long-standing family lineages as apparent guarantors of tradition and quality in production (Peterson, Authenticity). The early modern Bordelaise did the same, augmenting their wines’ value by calling upon aristocratic accoutrements like chateaux, coats-of-arms, alleged long-term family ownership of vineyards, and suchlike.Such early modern entrepreneurial efforts remain the foundations of the very high prestige and prices associated with elite wine-making in the region today, with Chinese companies and consumers particularly keen on the grand crus of the region. Globalization of the wine world today is strongly rooted in forms of authenticity performance invented several hundred years ago.Enter the StateAnother notable issue is the long-term role that governments and legislation have played, both in the construction and presentation of authenticity to publics, and in attempts to guarantee—through regulative measures and taxation systems—that what is sold really has come from where it purports to be from. The west European State has a long history of being concerned with the fraudulent selling of “fake” wines (Anderson, Norman, and Wittwer). Thus Cosimo III, Medici Grand Duke of Florence, was responsible for an edict of 1716 which drew up legal boundaries for Tuscan wine-producing regions, restricting the use of regional names like Chianti to wine that actually came from there (Duguid).These 18th century Tuscan regulations are the distant ancestors of quality-control rules centred upon the need to guarantee the authenticity of wines from particular geographical regions and sub-regions, which are today now ubiquitous, especially in the European Union (DeSoucey). But more direct progenitors of today’s Geographical Indicators (GIs)—enforced by the GATT international treaties—and Protected Designations of Origin (PDOs)—promulgated and monitored by the EU—are French in origin (Barham). The famous 1855 quality-level classification of Bordeaux vineyards and their wines was the first attempt in the world explicitly to proclaim that the quality of a wine was a direct consequence of its defined place of origin. This move significantly helped to create the later highly influential notion that place of origin is the essence of a wine’s authenticity. This innovation was initially wholly commercial, rather than governmental, being carried out by wine-brokers to promote Bordeaux wines at the Paris Exposition Universelle, but was later elaborated by State officials.In Champagne, another luxury wine-producing area, small-scale growers of grapes worried that national and international perceptions of their wine were becoming wholly determined by big brands such as Dom Perignon, which advertised the wine as a luxury product, but made no reference to the grapes, the soil, or the (supposedly) traditional methods of production used by growers (Guy). The latter turned to the idea of “locality,” which implied that the character of the wine was an essential expression of the Champagne region itself—something ignored in brand advertising—and that the soil itself was the marker of locality. The idea of “terroir”—referring to the alleged properties of soil and micro-climate, and their apparent expression in the grapes—was mobilised by one group, smaller growers, against another, the large commercial houses (Guy). The terroir notion was a means of constructing authenticity, and denouncing de-localised, homogenizing inauthenticity, a strategy favouring some types of actors over others. The relatively highly industrialized wine-making process was later represented for public consumption as being consonant with both tradition and nature.The interplay of commerce, government, law, and the presentation of authenticity, also appeared in Burgundy. In that region between WWI and WWII, the wine world was transformed by two new factors: the development of tourism and the rise of an ideology of “regionalism” (Laferté). The latter was invented circa WWI by metropolitan intellectuals who believed that each of the French regions possessed an intrinsic cultural “soul,” particularly expressed through its characteristic forms of food and drink. Previously despised peasant cuisine was reconstructed as culturally worthy and true expression of place. Small-scale artisanal wine production was no longer seen as an embarrassment, producing wines far more “rough” than those of Bordeaux and Champagne. Instead, such production was taken as ground and guarantor of authenticity (Laferté). Location, at regional, village and vineyard level, was taken as the primary quality indicator.For tourists lured to the French regions by the newly-established Guide Michelin, and for influential national and foreign journalists, an array of new promotional devices were created, such as gastronomic festivals and folkloric brotherhoods devoted to celebrations of particular foodstuffs and agricultural events like the wine-harvest (Laferté). The figure of the wine-grower was presented as an exemplary custodian of tradition, relatively free of modern capitalist exchange relations. These are the beginnings of an important facet of later wine companies’ promotional literatures worldwide—the “decoupling” of their supposed commitments to tradition, and their “passion” for wine-making beyond material interests, from everyday contexts of industrial production and profit-motives (Beverland). Yet the work of making the wine-maker and their wines authentically “of the soil” was originally stimulated in response to international wine markets and the tourist industry (Laferté).Against this background, in 1935 the French government enacted legislation which created theInstitut National des Appellations d’Origine (INAO) and its Appelation d’Origine Controlle (AOC) system (Barham). Its goal was, and is, to protect what it defines as terroir, encompassing both natural and human elements. This legislation went well beyond previous laws, as it did more than indicate that wine must be honestly labelled as deriving from a given place of origin, for it included guarantees of authenticity too. An authentic wine was defined as one which truly “expresses” the terroir from which it comes, where terroir means both soil and micro-climate (nature) and wine-making techniques “traditionally” associated with that area. Thus French law came to enshrine a relatively recently invented cultural assumption: that places create distinctive tastes, the value of this state of affairs requiring strong State protection. Terroir must be protected from the untrammelled free market. Land and wine, symbiotically connected, are de-commodified (Kopytoff). Wine is embedded in land; land is embedded in what is regarded as regional culture; the latter is embedded in national history (Polanyi).But in line with the fact that the cultural underpinnings of the INAO/AOC system were strongly commercially oriented, at a more subterranean level the de-commodified product also has economic value added to it. A wine worthy of AOC protection must, it is assumed, be special relative to wines un-deserving of that classification. The wine is taken out of the market, attributed special status, and released, economically enhanced, back onto the market. Consequently, State-guaranteed forms of authenticity embody ambivalent but ultimately efficacious economic processes. Wine pioneered this Janus-faced situation, the AOC system in the 1990s being generalized to all types of agricultural product in France. A huge bureaucratic apparatus underpins and makes possible the AOC system. For a region and product to gain AOC protection, much energy is expended by collectives of producers and other interested parties like regional development and tourism officials. The French State employs a wide range of expert—oenological, anthropological, climatological, etc.—who police the AOC classificatory mechanisms (Barham).Terroirisation ProcessesFrench forms of legal classification, and the broader cultural classifications which underpin them and generated them, very much influenced the EU’s PDO system. The latter uses a language of authenticity rooted in place first developed in France (DeSoucey). The French model has been generalized, both from wine to other foodstuffs, and around many parts of Europe and the world. An Old World idea has spread to the New World—paradoxically so, because it was the perceived threat posed by the ‘placeless’ wines and decontextualized grapes of the New World which stimulated much of the European legislative measures to protect terroir (Marks).Paxson shows how artisanal cheese-makers in the US, appropriate the idea of terroir to represent places of production, and by extension the cheeses made there, that have no prior history of being constructed as terroir areas. Here terroir is invented at the same time as it is naturalised, made to seem as if it simply points to how physical place is directly expressed in a manufactured product. By defining wine or cheese as a natural product, claims to authenticity are themselves naturalised (Ulin). Successful terroirisation brings commercial benefits for those who engage in it, creating brand distinctiveness (no-one else can claim their product expresses that particularlocation), a value-enhancing aura around the product which, and promotion of food tourism (Murray and Overton).Terroirisation can also render producers into virtuous custodians of the land who are opposed to the depredations of the industrial food and agriculture systems, the categories associated with terroir classifying the world through a binary opposition: traditional, small-scale production on the virtuous side, and large-scale, “modern” harvesting methods on the other. Such a situation has prompted large-scale, industrial wine-makers to adopt marketing imagery that implies the “place-based” nature of their offerings, even when the grapes can come from radically different areas within a region or from other regions (Smith Maguire). Like smaller producers, large companies also decouple the advertised imagery of terroir from the mundane realities of industry and profit-margins (Beverland).The global transportability of the terroir concept—ironic, given the rhetorical stress on the uniqueness of place—depends on its flexibility and ambiguity. In the French context before WWII, the phrase referred specifically to soil and micro-climate of vineyards. Slowly it started mean to a markedly wider symbolic complex involving persons and personalities, techniques and knowhow, traditions, community, and expressions of local and regional heritage (Smith Maguire). Over the course of the 20th century, terroir became an ever broader concept “encompassing the physical characteristics of the land (its soil, climate, topography) and its human dimensions (culture, history, technology)” (Overton 753). It is thought to be both natural and cultural, both physical and human, the potentially contradictory ramifications of such understanding necessitating subtle distinctions to ward off confusion or paradox. Thus human intervention on the land and the vines is often represented as simply “letting the grapes speak for themselves” and “allowing the land to express itself,” as if the wine-maker were midwife rather than fabricator. Terroir talk operates with an awkward verbal balancing act: wine-makers’ “signature” styles are expressions of their cultural authenticity (e.g. using what are claimed as ‘traditional’ methods), yet their stylistic capacities do not interfere with the soil and micro-climate’s natural tendencies (i.e. the terroir’sphysical authenticity).The wine-making process is a case par excellence of a network of humans and objects, or human and non-human actants (Latour). The concept of terroir today both acknowledges that fact, but occludes it at the same time. It glosses over the highly problematic nature of what is “real,” “true,” “natural.” The roles of human agents and technologies are sequestered, ignoring the inevitably changing nature of knowledges and technologies over time, recognition of which jeopardises claims about an unchanging physical, social and technical order. Harvesting by machine production is representationally disavowed, yet often pragmatically embraced. The role of “foreign” experts acting as advisors —so-called “flying wine-makers,” often from New World production cultures —has to be treated gingerly or covered up. Because of the effects of climate change on micro-climates and growing conditions, the taste of wines from a particular terroir changes over time, but the terroir imaginary cannot recognise that, being based on projections of timelessness (Brabazon).The authenticity referred to, and constructed, by terroir imagery must constantly be performed to diverse audiences, convincing them that time stands still in the terroir. If consumers are to continue perceiving authenticity in a wine or winery, then a wide range of cultural intermediaries—critics, journalists and other self-proclaiming experts must continue telling convincing stories about provenance. Effective authenticity story-telling rests on the perceived sincerity and knowledgeability of the teller. Such tales stress romantic imagery and colourful, highly personalised accounts of the quirks of particular wine-makers, omitting mundane details of production and commercial activities (Smith Maguire). Such intermediaries must seek to interest their audience in undiscovered regions and “quirky” styles, demonstrating their insider knowledge. But once such regions and styles start to become more well-known, their rarity value is lost, and intermediaries must find ever newer forms of authenticity, which in turn will lose their burnished aura when they become objects of mundane consumption. An endless cycle of discovering and undermining authenticity is constantly enacted.ConclusionAuthenticity is a category held by different sorts of actors in the wine world, and is the means by which that world is held together. This situation has developed over a long time-frame and is now globalized. Yet I will end this paper on a volte face. Authenticity in the wine world can never be regarded as wholly and simply a social construction. One cannot directly import into the analysis of that world assumptions—about the wholly socially constructed nature of phenomena—which social scientific studies of other domains, most notably culture industries, work with (Peterson, Authenticity). Ways of thinking which are indeed useful for understanding the construction of authenticity in some specific contexts, cannot just be applied in simplistic manners to the wine world. When they are applied in direct and unsophisticated ways, such an operation misses the specificities and particularities of wine-making processes. These are always simultaneously “social” and “natural”, involving multiple forms of complex intertwining of human actions, environmental and climatological conditions, and the characteristics of the vines themselves—a situation markedly beyond beyond any straightforward notion of “social construction.”The wine world has many socially constructed objects. But wine is not just like any other product. Its authenticity cannot be fabricated in the manner of, say, country music (Peterson, Country). Wine is never in itself only a social construction, nor is its authenticity, because the taste, texture and chemical elements of wine derive from complex human interactions with the physical environment. Wine is partly about packaging, branding and advertising—phenomena standard social science accounts of authenticity focus on—but its organic properties are irreducible to those factors. Terroir is an invention, a label put on to certain things, meaning they are perceived to be authentic. But the things that label refers to—ranging from the slope of a vineyard and the play of sunshine on it, to how grapes grow and when they are picked—are entwined with human semiotics but not completely created by them. A truly comprehensive account of wine authenticity remains to be written.ReferencesAnderson, Kym, David Norman, and Glyn Wittwer. “Globalization and the World’s Wine Markets: Overview.” Discussion Paper No. 0143, Centre for International Economic Studies. Adelaide: U of Adelaide, 2001.Barham, Elizabeth. “Translating Terroir: The Global Challenge of French AOC Labelling.” Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003): 127–38.Beverland, Michael B. “Crafting Brand Authenticity: The Case of Luxury Wines.” Journal of Management Studies 42.5 (2005): 1003–29.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1992.Brabazon, Tara. “Colonial Control or Terroir Tourism? The Case of Houghton’s White Burgundy.” Human Geographies 8.2 (2014): 17–33.Cohen, Erik. “Authenticity and Commoditization in Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 15.3 (1988): 371–86.DeSoucey, Michaela. “Gastronationalism: Food Traditions and Authenticity Politics in the European Union.” American Sociological Review 75.3 (2010): 432–55.Duguid, Paul. “Developing the Brand: The Case of Alcohol, 1800–1880.” Enterprise and Society 4.3 (2003): 405–41.Fine, Gary A. “Crafting Authenticity: The Validation of Identity in Self-Taught Art.” Theory and Society 32.2 (2003): 153–80.Grahm, Randall. “The Soul of Wine: Digging for Meaning.” Wine and Philosophy: A Symposium on Thinking and Drinking. Ed. Fritz Allhoff. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. 219–24.Guy, Kolleen M. When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.Hennion, Antoine. “The Things That Bind Us Together.”Cultural Sociology 1.1 (2007): 65–85.Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process." The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Ed. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 64–91.Laferté, Gilles. “End or Invention of Terroirs? Regionalism in the Marketing of French Luxury Goods: The Example of Burgundy Wines in the Inter-War Years.” Working Paper, Centre d’Economie et Sociologie Appliquées a l’Agriculture et aux Espaces Ruraux, Dijon.Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard: Harvard UP, 1993.Lu, Shun and Gary A. Fine. “The Presentation of Ethnic Authenticity: Chinese Food as a Social Accomplishment.” The Sociological Quarterly 36.3 (1995): 535–53.Marks, Denton. “Competitiveness and the Market for Central and Eastern European Wines: A Cultural Good in the Global Wine Market.” Journal of Wine Research 22.3 (2011): 245–63.Murray, Warwick E. and John Overton. “Defining Regions: The Making of Places in the New Zealand Wine Industry.” Australian Geographer 42.4 (2011): 419–33.Overton, John. “The Consumption of Space: Land, Capital and Place in the New Zealand Wine Industry.” Geoforum 41.5 (2010): 752–62.Paxson, Heather. “Locating Value in Artisan Cheese: Reverse Engineering Terroir for New-World Landscapes.” American Anthropologist 112.3 (2010): 444–57.Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.———. “In Search of Authenticity.” Journal of Management Studies 42.5 (2005): 1083–98.Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.Robertson, Roland, and David Inglis. “The Global Animus: In the Tracks of World Consciousness.” Globalizations 1.1 (2006): 72–92.Smith Maguire, Jennifer. “Provenance and the Liminality of Production and Consumption: The Case of Wine Promoters.” Marketing Theory 10.3 (2010): 269–82.Trubek, Amy. The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir. Los Angeles: U of California P, 2008.Ulin, Robert C. “Invention and Representation as Cultural Capital.” American Anthropologist 97.3 (1995): 519–27.Vannini, Phillip, and Patrick J. Williams. Authenticity in Culture, Self and Society. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.Wengrow, David. “Prehistories of Commodity Branding.” Current Anthropology 49.1 (2008): 7–34.Zolberg, Vera and Joni Maya Cherbo. Outsider Art: Contesting Boundaries in Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

IntroductionThe “North” is given explicitly “Nordic” value in extreme metal, as a vehicle for narratives of identity, nationalism and ideology. However, we also contend that “Nordicness” is articulated in diverse and contradictory ways in extreme metal contexts. We examine Nordicness in three key iterations: firstly, Nordicness as a brand tied to extremity and “authenticity”; secondly, Nordicness as an expression of exclusory ethnic belonging and ancestry; and thirdly, Nordicness as an imagined community of liberal democracy.In situating Nordicness across these iterations, we call into focus how the value of the “North” in metal discourse unfolds in different contexts with different implications. We argue that “Nordicness” as it is represented in extreme metal scenes cannot be considered as a uniform, essential category, but rather one marked by tensions and paradoxes that undercut the possibility of any singular understanding of the “North”. Deploying textual and critical discourse analysis, we analyse what Nordicness is made to mean in extreme metal scenes. Furthermore, we critique understandings of the “North” as a homogenous category and instead interrogate the plural ways in which “Nordic” meaning is articulated in metal. We focus specifically on Nordic Extreme Metal. This subgenre has been chosen with an eye to the regional complexities of the Nordic area in Northern Europe, the popularity of extreme metal in Nordic markets, and the successful global marketing of Nordic metal bands and styles.We use the term “Nordic” in line with Loftsdóttir and Jensen’s definition, wherein the “Nordic countries” encompass Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland, and the autonomous regions of Greenland: the Faroe Islands and the Aland Islands (3). “Nordic-ness”, they argue, is the cultural identity of the Nordic countries, reified through self-perception, internationalisation and “national branding” (Loftsdóttir and Jensen 2).In referring to “extreme metal”, we draw from Kahn-Harris’s characterisation of the term. “Extreme metal” represents a cluster of heavy metal subgenres–primarily black metal, death metal, thrash metal, doom metal and grindcore–marked by their “extremity”; their impetus towards “[un]conventional musical aesthetics” (Kahn-Harris 6).Nonetheless, we remain acutely aware of the complexities that attend both terms. Just as extreme metal itself is “exceptionally diverse” (Kahn-Harris 6) and “constantly developing and reconfiguring” (Kahn-Harris 7), the category of the “Nordic” is also a site of “diverse experiences” (Loftsdóttir & Jensen 3). We seek to move beyond any essentialist understanding of the “Nordic” and move towards a critical mapping of the myriad ways in which the “Nordic” is given value in extreme metal contexts.Branding the North: Nordicness as Extremity and AuthenticityMetal’s relationship with the Nordic countries has become a key area of interest for both popular and scholarly accounts of heavy metal as the genre has rapidly expanded in the region. The Nordic countries currently boast the highest rate of metal bands per capita (Grandoni). Since the mid-2000s, metal scholars have displayed an accelerated interest in the “cultural aesthetics and identity politics” of metal in Northern Europe (Brown 261). Wider popular interest in Nordic metal has been assisted by the notoriety of the Norwegian black metal scene of the early 1990s, wherein a series of murders and church arsons committed by scene members formed the basis for popular texts such as Moynihan and Søderlind’s book Lords of Chaos and Aites and Ewell’s documentary Until the Light Takes Us.Invocations of Nordicness in metal music are not a new phenomenon, nor have such allusions been strictly limited to Northern European artists. Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden displayed an interest in Norse mythology, while Venom and Manowar frequently drew on Nordic imagery in their performance and visual aesthetics.This interest in the North was largely ephemeral–the use of popular Nordic iconography stressed romanticised constructions of the North as a site of masculine liberty, rather than locating such archetypes in a historical context. Such narratives of Nordic masculinity, liberty and heathenry nevertheless become central to heavy metal’s contextual discourses, and point to the ways in which “Nordicness” becomes mobilised as a particular branded category.Whilst Nordic “branding” for earlier heavy metal bands was largely situated in romantic imaginings of the ancient North, in the late 1980s there emerged “a secondary usage” of Nordic identity and iconography by Northern European metal bands (Trafford & Pluskowski 58). Such “Nordicness” laid far more stress on historical context, national identity and notions of ancestry, and, crucially, a sense of extremity and isolation. This emphasis on metal’s extremity beyond the mainstream has long been a crucial component in the marketing of Nordic scenes.Such “extremity” is given mutually supportive value as “authenticity”, where the term is understood as a value judgement (Moore 209) applied by audiences to discern if music remains committed to its own premises (Frith 71). Such questions of sincerity and commitment to metal’s core continue to circulate in the discourses of Nordic extreme metal. Sweden’s death metal underground, for example, was considered at “the forefront of one of the most extreme varieties of music yet conceived” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32), with both the Stockholm and Gothenburg “sounds” proving influential beyond Northern Europe (Kahn-Harris 106).Situating Nordicness as a distinct identity beyond metal’s commercial appeal underscores much of the marketing of Nordic extreme metal to international audiences. Such discourses continue in contemporary contexts–Finland’s official website promotes metal as a form of Finnish art and culture: “By definition, heavy metal fans crave music from outside the mainstream. They champion material that boldly stands out against the normality of pop” (Weaver).The focus on Nordic metal existing “outside” the mainstream is commensurate with understandings of extreme metal as “on the edge of music” (Kahn-Harris 5). Such sentiments are situated in a wider regional narrative that sees the Nordic region at the geographic “edge” of Europe, as remote and isolated (Grimley 2). The apparent isolation that enables the distinctiveness of “Nordic” forms of extreme metal is, however, potentially undercut by the widespread circulation of “Nordicness” as a particular brand.“Nordic extreme metal” can be understood as both a generic and place-based scene, where genre and geography “cross cut and coincide in complex ways” (Kahn-Harris 99). The Bergen black metal sound, for example, much like the Gothenburg death metal sound, is both a geographic and stylistic marker that is replicated in different contexts.This Nordic branding of musical styles is further affirmed by the wider means through which “Nordic”, “Scandinavian” and the “North” become interchangeable frameworks for the marketing of particular styles of extreme metal. “Nordic metal”, Von Helden thus argues, “is a trademark and a best seller” (33).Nordicness as Exclusory Belonging and AncestryMarketing strategies that rely on constructions of Nordic metal as “beyond the mainstream” at once exotify and homogenise the “Nordic”. Sentiments of an “imagined community of Nordicness” (Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen 279) have created problematic boundaries of who, or what, may be represented in such categories.Understandings of “Nordicness” as a site of generic “purity” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32) are therefore both tacitly and explicitly underscored by projections of ethnic purity and “belonging”. As such, where we have previously considered the cultural capital of the “Nordic” as it emerges as a particular branding exercise, here we examine the exclusory impetus of homogenous understandings of the Nordic.Nordicness in this context connotes explicitly racialised value, which interpellates images of Viking heathenry to enable fantasies of the pure, white North. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the context of Norwegian black metal, which bases its own self-mythologising in explicitly Nordic parameters. Norwegian black metal bands and members of the broader scene have often taken steps to continually affirm their Nordicness through various representational strategies. The widespread church burnings associated with the early Norwegian black metal scene, for instance, can be framed as a radical rejection of Christianity and an embracing of Norway’s Viking, pagan past.The ethnoromanticisation of Nordic regions and landscapes is underscored by problematic projections of national belonging. An interest in pagan mythology, as Kahn-Harris notes, can easily become an interest in racism and fascism (41). The “uncritical celebration of pagan pasts, the obsession with the unpolluted countryside and the distrust of the cosmopolitan city” that mark much Norwegian black metal were also common features of early fascist and racist movements (Kahn-Harris 41).Norwegian black metal has thus been able to link the genre, as a global music commodity, to “the conscious revival of myths and ideologies of an ancient northern European history and nationalist culture” (Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen 279). The conscious revival of such myths materialised in the early Norwegian scene in deliberately racist sentiments. Mayhem drummer Jan Axel Blomberg (“Hellhammer”) demonstrates this in his brief declaration that “Black metal is for white people” (in Moynihan and Søderlind 305); similarly, Darkthrone’s original back cover of Transylvanian Hunger (1994) prominently featured the phrase “Norsk Arisk Black Metal” (“Norwegian Aryan Black Metal”). Nordicness as exclusory white, Aryan identity is further mobilised in the National Socialist Black Metal scene, which readily caters to ontological constructions of Nordic whiteness (Spracklen, True Aryan; Hagen).However, Nordicness is also given racialised value in more tacit, but nonetheless troubling ways in wider Nordic folk and Viking metal scenes. The popular association of Vikings with Nordic folk metal has enabled such figures to be dismissed as performative play or camp romanticism, ostensibly removed from the extremity of black metal. Such metal scenes and their appeals to ethnosymbolic patriarchs nevertheless remain central to the ongoing construction of Nordic metal as a site that enables the instrumentality of Northern European whiteness precisely through hiding such whiteness in plain sight (Spracklen, To Holmgard, 359).The ostensibly “camp” performance of bands such as Sweden’s Amon Amarth, Faroese act Týr, or Finland’s Korpiklaani distracts from the ways in which Nordicness, and its realisations through Viking and Pagan symbolism, emerges as a claim to ethnic exclusivity. Through imagining the Viking as an ancestral, genetic category, the “common past” of the Nordic people is constructed as a self-identity apart from other people (Blaagaard 11).Furthermore, the “Viking” itself has cultural capital that has circulated beyond Northern Europe in both inclusive and exclusive ways. Nordic symbolism and mythologies are invoked within the textual aesthetics of heavy metal communities across the globe–there are Viking metal bands in Australia, for instance. Further, the valorising of the “North” in metal discourse draws on the symbols of particular ethnic traditions to give historicity and local meaning to white identity.Lucas, Deeks and Spracklen map the rhetorical power of the “North” in English folk metal. However, the same international flows of Nordic cultural capital that have allowed for the success and distinctiveness of Nordic extreme metal have also enabled the proliferation of increasingly exclusionary practices. A flyer signed by the “Wiking Hordes” in May of 1995 (in Moynihan and Søderlind 327) warns that the expansion of black and death metal into Asia, Eastern Europe and South America posed a threat to the “true Aryan” metal community.Similarly, online discussions of the documentary Pagan Metal, in which an interviewee states that a Brazilian Viking metal band is “a bit funny”, shifted between assertions that enjoyment should not be restricted by cultural heritage and declarations that only Nordic bands could “legitimately” support Viking metal. Giving Nordicness value as a form of insular, ethnic belonging has therefore had exclusory and problematic implications for how metal scenes market their dominant symbols and narratives, particularly as scenes continue to grow and diversify across multiple national contexts.Nordicness as Liberal DemocracyNordicness in heavy metal, as we have argued, has been ascribed cultural capital as both a branded, generic phenomenon and as a marker of ancestral, ethnonational belonging. Understandings of “Nordic” as an exclusory ethnic category marked by strict boundaries however come into conflict with the Nordic region’s self-perceptions as a liberal democracy.We propose an additional iteration for “Nordicness” as a means of pointing to the tensions that emerge between particular metallic imaginings of the “North” as a remote, uncompromising site of pagan liberty, and the material realities of modern Nordic nation states. We consider some new parameters for articulations of “Nordicness” in metal scenes: Nordicness as material and political conditions that have enabled the popularity of heavy metal in the region, and furthermore, the manifestations of such liberal democratic discourses in Nordic extreme metal scenes.Nordicness as a cultural, political brand is based in perceptions of the Nordic countries as “global good citizens”, “peace loving”, “conflict-resolution oriented” and “rational” (Loftsdóttir and Jensen 2). This modern conception of Nordicness is grounded in the region’s current political climate, which took its form in the post-World War II rejection of fascism and the following refugee crisis.Northern Europe’s reputation as a “famously tolerant political community” (Dworkin 487) can therefore be seen, one on hand, as a crucial disconnect from the intolerant North mediated by factions of Nordic extreme metal scenes and on the other, a political community that provides the material conditions which allow extreme metal to flourish. Nordicness here, we argue, is a crucial form of scenic infrastructure–albeit one that has been both celebrated and condemned in the sites and spaces of Nordic extreme metal.The productivity and stability of extreme metal in the Nordic countries has been attributed to a variety of institutional factors: the general relative prosperity of Northern Europe (Terry), Scandinavian legal structures (Maguire 156), universal welfare, high levels of state support for cultural development, and a broad emphasis on musical education in schools.Kahn-Harris argues that the Swedish metal scene is supported by the strength of the Swedish music industry and “Swedish civil society in general” (108). Music education is strongly supported by the state; Sweden’s relatively generous welfare and education system also “provide [an] effective subsidy for music making” (108). Furthermore, he argues that the Swedish scene has benefited from being closer to the “cultural mainstream of the country than is the case in many other countries” (108). Such close relationships to the “cultural mainstream” also invite a critical backlash against the state. The anarchistic anti-government stance of Swedish hardcore bands or the radical individualism of Norwegian black metal embodies this backlash.Early black metal is seen as a targeted response to the “oppressive and numbing social democracy which dominated Norwegian political life” (Moynihan and Søderlind 32). This spurning of social democracy is further articulated by Darkthrone founder Fenriz, who states that black metal “…is every man for himself… It is individualism above all” (True Norwegian Black Metal). Nordic extreme metal’s emphasis on independence and anti-modernity is hence immediately troubled by the material reality of the conditions that allow it to flourish. Nordicness thus gains complex realisation as both radical individualism and democratic infrastructural conditions.In looking towards future directions for expressions of the “Nordic” in extreme metal scenes, we want to consider how Nordicness can be articulated not as exclusory ethnic belonging and individualist misanthropy, but rather illustrate how Nordic scenes have also proffered sites for progressive, anti-racist discourses that speak to the cultural branding of the North as a tolerant political community.Imaginings of the North as ethnically homogenous or pure are complicated by Nordic bands and fans who actively critique such racialised discourses, and instead situate “Nordic” metal as a site of heterogeneity and anti-racist activism. The liberal politics of the region are most clearly articulated in the music of Swedish hardcore and extreme metal bands, particularly those originating in the northern university town of Umeå. Like much of Europe’s underground music scene, Umeå hardcore bands are often aligned with the anti-fascist movement and its message of tolerance and active anti-racist, anti-homophobic and anti-sexist resistance and protest. Refused is the most well-known example, speaking out against capitalism and in favour of animal rights and civil liberties. Scandinavian DIY acts have also long played a crucial role in facilitating the global diffusion of anti-capitalist punk and hardcore music (Haenfler 287).Nonetheless, whilst such acts remain important sites of progressive discourses in homogenous constructions of Nordicness, such an argument for tolerance and diversity is difficult to maintain when the majority of the scene’s successful bands are made up of white, ethnically Scandinavian men. As such, in moving towards future considerations for Nordicness in extreme metal scenes, we thus call into focus a fragmentation of “Nordicness”, precisely to divorce it from homogenous constructions of the “Nordic”, and enable greater critical interrogation and plurality of the notion of the “North” in metal scholarship.ConclusionThis article has pointed towards a multiplicity of Nordic discourses that unfold in metal: Nordic as a marketing tool, Nordic as an ethnic signifier, and Nordic as the political reality of liberal democratic Northern Europe–and the tensions that emerge in their encounters and intersections. In arguing for multiple understandings of “Nordicness” in metal, we contend that the cultural capital that accompanies the “Nordic” actually emerges as a series of fragmented, often conflicting categories.In examining how images of the North as an isolated location at the edge of the world inform the branded construction of Nordic metal as sites of presumed authenticity, we considered how scenes such as Swedish death metal and Norwegian black metal were marketed precisely through their Nordicness, where their geographic isolation from the commercial centre of heavy metal was used to affirm their “Otherness” to their mainstream metal counterparts. This “otherness” has in turn enabled constructions of Nordic metal scenes as sites of not only metallic purity in their isolation from “commercial” metal scenes, but also ethnic homogeneity. Nordicness, in this instance, becomes inscribed with explicitly racialised value that interpellates images of Viking heathenry to bolster phantasmic imaginings of the pure, white North.However, as we argue in the third section, such exclusory narratives of Nordic belonging come into conflict with Northern Europe’s own self image as a site of progressive liberal democracy. We argue that Nordicness here can be taken as a political imperative towards socialist democracy, wherein such conditions have enabled the widespread viability of extreme metal; yet also invited critical backlashes against the modern political state.Ultimately, in responding to our own research question–what is the cultural capital of “Nordicness” in metal?–we assert that such capital is realised in multiple iterations, undermining any possibility of a uniform category of “Nordicness”, and exposing its political tensions and paradoxes. In doing so, we argue that “Nordicness”, as it is represented in heavy metal scenes, cannot be considered a uniform, essential category, but rather one marked by tensions and paradoxes that undercut the possibility of any singular understanding of the “North”. ReferencesBlaagaard, Bolette Benedictson. “Relocating Whiteness in Nordic Media Discourse.” Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: A Postcolonial Exhibition Project in Five Acts. NIFCE, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, Helsinki 5 (2006). 5 Oct. 2017 <http://www.rethinking-nordic-colonialism.org/files/pdf/ACT5/ESSAYS/Blaagaard.pdf>.Brown, Andy R. “Everything Louder than Everyone Else: The Origins and Persistence of Heavy Metal Music and Its Global Cultural Impact.” The Sage Handbook of Popular Music. Eds. Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman. London: Sage, 2015. 261–277.Darkthrone. Transilvanian Hunger. Written and performed by Darkthrone. Peaceville, 1994.Frith, Simon. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.Grandoni, Dino. “A World Map of Metal Bands per Capita.” The Atlantic, Mar. 2012. 5 Oct. 2017 <https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/world-map-metal-band-population-density/329913/>.Grimley. Daniel M. Grieg: Music, Landscape and Norwegian Identity. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006.Haenfler, Ross. “Punk Rock, Hardcore and Globalisation.” The Sage Handbook of Popular Music. Eds. Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman. London: Sage, 2015. 278–296.Hagen, Ross. “Musical Style, Ideology, and Mythology in Norwegian Black Metal”. Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music around the World. Eds. Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. 180–199.Kahn-Harris, Keith. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. New York: Berg, 2007.Loftsdóttir, Kristín, and Lars Jensen. “Nordic Exceptionalism and the Nordic Others”. Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region: Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities. Eds. Kristín Loftsdóttir and Lars Jensen. New York: Routledge, 2016. 1–12.Lucas, Caroline, Mark Deeks, and Karl Spracklen. “Grim Up North: Northern England, Northern Europe and Black Metal.” Journal for Cultural Research 15.3 (2011): 279–295.Maguire, Donald. "Determinants of the Production of Heavy Metal Music." Metal Music Studies 1.1 (2014): 155–169.Moore, Allan. “Authenticity as Authentication.” Popular Music 21.2 (2002): 209–223.Moynihan, Michael, and Didrik Søderlind. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Los Angeles: Feral House, 1998.Spracklen, Karl. “True Aryan Black Metal: The Meaning of Leisure, Belonging and the Construction of Whiteness in Black Metal Music.” Metal Void: First Gatherings. Eds. Niall W.R. Scott and Imke von Helden. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010. 81–92.———. “To Holmgard … and Beyond’: Folk Metal Fantasies and Hegemonic White Masculinities.” Metal Music Studies 1.3 (2015): 359–377.Terry, Josh. “Countries Where Heavy Metal Is Popular Are More Wealthy and Content with Life, According to Study.” Consequence of Sound, June 2014. 5 Oct. 2017 <https://consequenceofsound.net/2014/06/countries-where-heavy-metal-is-popular-are-more-wealthy-and-content-with-life-according-to-study/>.Trafford, Simon, and Aleks Pluskowski. “Antichrist Superstars: The Vikings in Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.” Mass Market Medieval: Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture. Ed. David W. Marshall. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2007. 57–73.True Norwegian Black Metal. Dir. Peter Beste. VBSTV, 2007.Until the Light Takes Us. Dirs. Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell. Variance Films, 2008.Von Helden, Imke. “Scandinavian Metal Attack: The Power of Northern Europe in Extreme Metal.” Heavy Fundametalisms: Music, Metal and Politics. Eds. Rosemary Hill and Karl Spracklen. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010. 33–41.Weaver, James. “Now Trending Globally: Finnish Metal Music.” This Is Finland, June 2015. 5 Oct. 2017 <https://finland.fi/arts-culture/now-trending-globally-finnish-metal-music/>.