From forbidden site to global attraction: Alula's narrative re-engineering

作者：Hamdan Basyar, Dhurorudin Mashad, Muhammad Fakhry Ghafur, Nostalgiawan Wahyudhi, Defbry Margiansyah · 发表于：Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1016/j.annale.2026.100232 · 研究领域：Socioeconomic Development in MENA、Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research、Religious Tourism and Spaces

This paper examines the socio-political and religious transformations in Saudi Arabia's AlUla region, with a focus on Hegra. Once avoided for religious reasons, the site has been repurposed within Vision 2030. This study offers a systematic textual account of this narrative shift using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on three corpora: state documents (including the tourism website), media, and religious texts. Framed by late-rentierism, neopatrimonialism, spectacle tourism, and citizenship theories, it shows AlUla's transformation as deliberate narrative engineering rather than mere economic reform. The state leverages neopatrimonial authority to curate heritage, reshape national belonging, and stage a controlled modern image—demonstrating how discourse functions as a central tool of power in heritage politics.