IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/anture/v119y2026ics0160738326000794.html

Visitor activities in an imaginary country

Author

Listed:
  • Ashman, Rachel
  • Brown, Stephen
  • Patterson, Anthony

Abstract

There are more imaginary countries than real ones. And many of them, from Middle Earth to Moomin World, have been turned into tourist attractions. This paper explores one such country, Barbie Land, a fantasy world that young girls visit when playing with their dolls and which, more than sixty-five years after its ‘discovery’, is being ‘realized’ in physical form. Drawing on 187 autobiographical accounts of remembered childhood play, and with the aid of a mythopoeic map drawn up by a legendary literary theorist, Northrop Frye, the paper explores, encapsulates and evaluates visitor activities in Barbie's imaginary country, noting that travellers' telling tales come in four foundational forms: comedy, romance, tragedy and irony.

Suggested Citation

  • Ashman, Rachel & Brown, Stephen & Patterson, Anthony, 2026. "Visitor activities in an imaginary country," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:anture:v:119:y:2026:i:c:s0160738326000794
    DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2026.104194
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738326000794
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.annals.2026.104194?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:anture:v:119:y:2026:i:c:s0160738326000794. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/annals-of-tourism-research/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.