Touristification and institutional production of heritage: situated ethnography of a territorial internationalization process in Los Reartes (Córdoba, Argentina)

Abstract

Over recent decades, the expansion of sustainable tourism policies and international territorial recognition programs has integrated small rural localities into global circuits of heritage valorization, tourism competitiveness, and international projection. The objective of this article is to analyze the processes of touristification and heritage-making in Los Reartes (Córdoba, Argentina), with particular attention to the institutional practices through which the territory was progressively transformed into an object of planning, measurement, and tourism legitimation. The study adopts a qualitative methodology based on situated institutional ethnography conducted between 2021 and 2024, combining participant observation within local tourism governance, documentary analysis, and reconstruction of administrative processes related to cartographic production, statistical records, heritage designation, and the preparation of technical documentation for international tourism recognition programs. The findings demonstrate that tourism internationalization operates not only as a strategy of economic promotion, but also as an institutional device for heritage production capable of reshaping territorialities, cultural hierarchies, and local forms of governance. The research also shows how statistics, maps, and technical reports function as technologies of territorial knowledge and government that render landscapes legible within global sustainability standards. The article concludes that touristification should be understood as an everyday institutional process of territorial production rather than merely as a consequence of tourism growth.