Negotiating post-nuclear identities through tourism development in the ‘atomic town’ Visaginas

This article considers how, by applying participatory approaches and involving stakeholders in tourism development as a process of interpretation of the nuclear past, present, and post-nuclear future, variant forms of tourism (energy, nuclear, Soviet industrial heritage, recreational) promoting different narratives might stimulate change and negotiation around local identity in the ‘atomic’ town Visaginas in Lithuania. This paper presents the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology that was employed to elaborate on the virtual nuclear tourism route in the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant region in an attempt to empower local communities through tourism development. The researchers have been collaborating with a variety of tourism stakeholders and endeavor to play a mediating role in complex negotiations around identity development through tourism. The authors pose the question as to how dissonance between practicing authentic identities and self-exoticization, community empowerment and commodification, participatory approach to heritagization and critical approach to negative legacy could be resolved.