Books as Souvenirs and Itineraries: Grassroots Literary Tourism in Bandung, Indonesia

Abstract

This article examines how a form of literary tourism can instead be assembled from below, by a micro-scale bookshop entrepreneur, without state initiative and without inherited literary fame. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Deni Rachman, founder of Lawang Buku/Toko Buku Bandung, and Gan Gan Jatnika, founder of Geowana Ecotourism, the study traces how a curated line of Bandung-themed books sold as souvenirs (Oleh-Oleh Boekoe Bandoeng) and a programme of literary trips built directly from books and co-narrated by their authors both convert an ordinary book trade into a visitor attraction. Read through bonding, bridging and linking social capital and the place branding also tourist souvenir literature, the findings show that each pathway rests on a distinct but structurally similar relational infrastructure: long-standing ties with book and literary communities, bridging ties with visitors and influencers, and linking ties with tour guides, publishers and authors formalised through informal revenue-sharing. The retail pathway commodifies the book as an object to be carried home; the itinerary pathway commodifies the book as a route to be walked. The article theorises both as expressions of grassroots literary tourism for a place branding, a mode of city branding assembled as an adaptive response to small-business constraints rather than as a designed campaign, and situates the informants' shared emic notion of a 'book ecosystem' as a vernacular framework theory from the Global South for understanding the fragilities, permitting barriers and thin margins that threaten this alternative tourism pathway.