Noel B. Salazar


Noel B. Salazar is a sociocultural anthropologist known for his transdisciplinary work on mobility and travel, the local-to-global nexus, discourses and imaginaries of 'Otherness', heritage, cultural brokering, cosmopolitanism and endurance.

Life

Noel B. Salazar was born in Dunkirk, France, of a Spanish father and a Belgian mother. He grew up in the historical Flemish town of Bruges, a celebrated cultural tourism destination. Salazar studied psychology, philosophy, and development studies at the University of Leuven, neuropsychology at the University of Essex, and anthropology and African studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is research professor in anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, where he founded .

Theory

Noel B. Salazar's main research interests include anthropologies of mobility and travel, heritage, the local-to-global nexus, discourses and imaginaries of alterity, cultural brokering, cosmopolitanism, and endurance. His anthropological work synthesizes ethnographic findings with conceptual frameworks developed within anthropology, sociology, geography, cultural studies, tourism studies, philosophy and psychology. Salazar has won numerous grants for his research projects.
While at the University of Pennsylvania, Salazar experienced first-hand the benefits of transdisciplinary research. His involvement within the Department of Anthropology's Public Interest Anthropology project taught him the necessity of bridging the divide between academia and the wider public. Together with archaeologist Benjamin W. Porter, now professor at the Near Eastern Studies Department, UC Berkeley, he applied the public interest perspective to heritage tourism. Understanding the changing meaning and value of cultural heritage is still high on his research agenda.
It forms part of Salazar's broader work within the subfield of the anthropology of tourism. He uses the findings from his intended ethnographic fieldwork to shift the predominant focus in tourism studies on tourist and impact studies to a study of tourism service providers, showing their crucial role as intermediaries. In his book, Envisioning Eden: Mobilizing Imaginaries in Tourism and Beyond, he critically analyses the circulation and dynamics of tourism imaginaries, illustrated with ethnographic data from Yogyakarta and Arusha.
One of Salazar's key concepts is the one of imaginaries, which he describes as "culturally shared and socially transmitted representational assemblages that are used as meaning-making devices ". He is currently using this concept to research the role of dominant discourses and images of mobility in cultures across the globe. Salazar conceives mobility as a locally circulating socio-cultural construct that positively values the ability to move, the freedom of movement, and the tendency to change easily or quickly. Salazar tries to bridge the academic gap between tourism and migration studies by studying the analytical purchase of mobility as an overarching concept. More concretely, his cultural mobilities research helps us to understand the complex connections between tourism imaginaries and ideas of transcultural migration. This work happens in close collaboration with established anthropologists such as Nina Glick Schiller, Nelson H. H. Graburn and Alan Smart.

Publications

Monographs

  • 2018 '. Oxford: Berghahn.
  • 2010 '. Oxford: Berghahn.

Edited volumes

  • 2022 . London: Routledge.
  • 2020 . Oxford: Berghahn.
  • 2017 . Oxford: Berghahn.
  • 2017 . London: Routledge.
  • 2016 . Oxford: Berghahn.
  • 2014 London: Routledge.
  • 2014 Oxford: Berghahn.

Special journal issues

  • 2024 Theme issue of Critique of Anthropology 44.
  • 2024 Theme issue of Focaal 99.
  • 2023 Theme issue of Mobility Humanities 2.
  • 2021 Theme issue of Mobilities 16.
  • 2021 Theme issue of Anthropologie et Sociétés 44.
  • 2017 Theme issue of Social Anthropology 25.
  • 2013 Theme issue of Social Anthropology 21.
  • 2013 Theme issue of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39.
  • 2011 Theme issue of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 18.
  • 2005 Theme issue of International Journal of Heritage Studies 11.
  • 2004 Theme issue of Anthropology in Action 11.

Journal articles (selection)

  • 2024 International Journal of Heritage Studies 30:181-194.
  • 2023 Mobilities 18:582-592.
  • 2022 Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies 11:3-21.
  • 2022 Etnografia 2:6-24.
  • 2022 Mobility Humanities 1:62-75.
  • 2021 Journal of Sociology 57:165-176.
  • 2021 Mobilities 16:20-23.
  • 2020 Culture & Psychology 26:768-777.
  • 2018 Tempo Social 30:153-168.
  • 2017 American Anthropologist 119:723-747.
  • 2017 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 24:123-155.
  • 2014 Tourism Recreation Research 39:259-265.
  • 2013 Anthropological Quarterly 86:669-696.
  • 2013 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39:183-200.
  • 2013 Social Anthropology 21:178-185.
  • 2013 Annals of Tourism Research 43:81-99.
  • 2013 History and Anthropology 24:233-252.
  • 2012 Annals of Tourism Research 39:863-882.
  • 2012 Journal of Sustainable Tourism 20:9-22.
  • 2011 Identities: Global Studies in Power and Culture 18:576-598.
  • 2011 Identities: Global Studies in Power and Culture 18:i-ix.
  • 2010 International Journal of Tourism Anthropology 1:55-69.
  • 2010 Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, 1:53-68.
  • 2009 Cahiers d'Études Africaines 193-194:49-71.
  • 2009 Tourism Review International 12:259-273.
  • 2008 Civilisations 57:207-222.
  • 2007 Tourism Recreation Research 32:23-30.
  • 2006 Annals of Tourism Research 33: 833–852.
  • 2006 Tabula Rasa: Revista de Humanidades 5:99-128.
  • 2006 Universitas Humanística 62:319-333.
  • 2005 Annals of Tourism Research 32:628-646.
  • 2005 International Journal of Heritage Studies 11:361-370.

Service

Noel B. Salazar serves on the editorial boards of, among others, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Transfers,
and Applied Mobilities. He is editor of the Worlds in Motion Book Series .
From 2011 until 2015, he served on the Executive Committee of the European Association of Social Anthropologists. In 2013, Salazar was elected as President of the association. Within EASA, he founded the Anthropology and Mobility Network. In 2018, he was elected as Secretary-General of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences for a five-year period, after having served a five-year term as Vice-President of the organization. Between 2013 and 2018, he was also a member of the Young Academy of Belgium.
Salazar is a founding member of the American Anthropological Association Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group, now Council on Heritage and the Anthropology of Tourism. From 2012 until 2018, he was chair of the Commission on the Anthropology of Tourism of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and took up that position again in 2024. He is an expert member of the ICOMOS International Cultural Tourism Committee and the UNESCO-UNITWIN Network 'Culture, Tourism and Development'.