ROBERTS, RAITZ, and KURTZ This doctoral dissertation study is concerned with the effects of political, economic, and cultural change on tourism development in rural Alaska. The research examines how places are represented, the kinds of organizations that are developed to promote tourism, and the ways in which tourism and its promotion creates collective memories of people and places. It focuses on the case of tourism promotion in Kotzebue, northwest Alaska, and asks several research questions including: `How has traditional and rural Alaska been represented in tourism products, performances, advertising, and development?`; ` How and why did key tourism and rural development organizations adopt a corporate form?`; and `How do practices of shared or social memory (oral and written) construct and reproduce social groups and social identities in the context of rapid tourism development?`. A combination of methods will be used including archival work, textual analysis, and semi-structured and unstructured interviews. The research is at the intersection of rural geography, tourism studies, social memory research, and development theory.
