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Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya: An Ambivalent Modernism by Brian L. McLaren (Hardcover, 2006)

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To be a tourist in Libya during the period of Italian colonization was to be surrounded by modern metropolitan culture, including its systems of transportation and accommodation and its hierarchies of political and social control, as well as indigenous architecture and culture. Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya shows how Italian authorities in Libya made use of the contradictory forces of modernity and tradition to both legitimise their colonial enterprise and construct a vital tourist industry. Although one of the essential goals of tourists was to escape the boundaries of the metropole in favour of experiencing difference, that difference was almost always framed, contained, and even defined by Western culture. McLaren argues that the modern and the traditional were entirely constructed by colonial authorities, who balanced their need to project an image of a modern and efficient network of travel and accommodation with the necessity of preserving the characteristic qualities of the indigenous culture.What made the tourist experience in Libya distinct from that of other tourist destinations was the constant oscillation between modernizing and preservation tendencies. The movement between these forces is reflected in the structure of the book, which proceeds from the broadest level of inquiry into the Fascist colonial project in Libya to the tourist organization itself, and finally into the architecture of the tourist environment, offering a way of viewing state-driven modernization projects and notions of modernity from a historical and geographic perspective. This is an important book for architectural historians and for those interested in colonial and postcolonial studies, as well as Italian studies, African history, literature, and cultural studies more generally