Story-weaving: homo narrans, popular culture and the role of stories in tourism

This article proposes to understand popular culture-inspired tourism as a process of ‘story-weaving’. Exploring the role of stories from the perspectives of tour guides and visitors, we analyse the collaborative process in which biographical stories, places and histories become entwined. Drawing on Walter Fisher's ‘narrative paradigm’ and his understanding of humans as ‘ homo narrans’ or storytelling animals, we argue that story-weaving goes beyond stories being packaged and sold to visitors by tour guides or shaping fan experiences of place. Through interviews with Scotland-based tour guides who run Outlander tours and with visitors as well as participant-based observations we unpack the dynamic nature of story-weaving and examine how visitors and tour guides participate in it as a way of engaging with and in tourism.