The Myth of Santa Fe de Chris Wilson

The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition

Chris Wilson

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 28 feb 1997

A wave of publicity during the 1980s projected Santa Fe to the world as an exotic tourist destination--America's own Tahiti in the desert. "The Myth of Santa Fe" goes behind the romantic adobe facades and mass marketing stereotypes to tell the fascinating but little known story of how the city's alluring image was quite consciously created early in this century, primarily by Anglo-American newcomers.

By investigating the city's trademark architectural style, public ceremonies, the historic preservation movement, and cultural traditions, Wilson unravels the complex interactions of ethnic identity and tourist image-making. Santa Fe's is a distinctly modern success story--the story of a community that transformed itself from a declining provincial capital of 5,000 in 1912 into an internationally recognized tourist destination. But it is also a cautionary tale about the commodification of Native American and Hispanic cultures, and the social displacement and ethnic animosities that can accompany a tourist boom.

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A wave of publicity during the 1980's projected Santa Fe to the world as an exotic tourist destination- America's own Tahiti in the desert. The Myth of Santa Fe goes behind the romantic adobe facades and mass marketing stereotypes to tell the fascinating but little known story of how the city's alluring image was quite consciously created early in the century, primarily by Anglo-American newcomers.

Notă biografică

Chris Wilson started his working life as a Scientific Assistant at the UK Atomic Energy Authority research station at Winfrith Heath in Dorset. He went on to study Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge, and worked for ten years as part of an educational research team with scientist and writer J. G. Bennett, who was well known in the Sixties as a spiritual teacher in the Gurdjieff tradition.By the early 70s Bennett's team had become involved in the new field of Management Communications. During an extended visit to the USA in 1972, on a joint project with the Westinghouse Learning Corporation, Chris was living in Washington DC at a time when young Americans were demonstrating on a massive scale against the Vietnam War. He became involved with the anti-war movement, and by 1974 he had tired of the corporate world and decided to simplify his life by earning his living as a carpenter.He soon found himself working with a small team of likeminded individuals, and in 1978 they made themselves into a coop, which in those days was a highly unusual format for a firm of small builders. But it worked well for a few years, and Chris stayed with it until 1984 when he moved to the Yorkshire Dales to live 'off-grid' with his partner Jane. In the mid-90s they moved to the Bristol area, where he retrained as a psychotherapist and worked for 15 years in private practice. Jane died in 2003 and after a few years Chris sold up and helped to establish a permaculture co-op in Devon. In 2021 he moved to Romania, where he lives with his wife Gina in the village of Limanu, on the Black Sea coast.