TY  - JOUR
TI  - On the Trail of Alexander von Humboldt in the Altai: A Mental Time Travel?
T2  - The Russian Sociological Review
IS  - The Russian Sociological Review
KW  - mental time travel
KW  - space
KW  - fluids
KW  - networks
KW  - tourism
KW  - Altai
KW  - Alexander von Humboldt
AB  - The article discusses "trail travel" as mental travel in time as well as the idea of a symbolic presentation of a material object and the material framing of social relations, which altogether produce tourism. In order to reveal the meaning of the material for "trail travel", the author uses the three metaphors conventional for actor-network theory (space, networks, and flows) unconventionally. The author illuminates the meaning of space for time travel through "containerization", that is, the allocation of a material object into which the traveler can "enter" and, in so doing, move through time. In other words, the container, in this case, is not the previously-criticized territory preserved for tourists, but the packed space-and-time. The metaphor of fluid allows the author to reveal how a tourist, looking at a material object (such as a geological exhibit), can observe the retroactivity of time explaining the space changes. Finally, the network metaphor allows the author to show that time is not a flow of irreversible sequences, but a way of representing space. In this way, the article weaves together space and time and shows, that in "trail travel", time is space and space is time.
AU  - Olaf Guenther
AU  - Vitaly Vedernikov
UR  - https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2021-20-2/482222591.html
PY  - 2021
SP  - 185-199
VL  - 20