Branding industrial heritage in the wake of the cultural turn: the case of Santralistanbul

Evinç Doğan*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper draws on a multidisciplinary framework by bringing heritage studies into focus from a cultural analytic point of view, also informed by relevant branding perspectives. It aims to examine how the advent of the cultural turn and the attendant economic and symbolic processes affect post-industrial landscapes to be repurposed and marketed in new ways. The old power plant of Silahtarağa, which was rebranded as Santralistanbul and transformed into a cultural space hosting the Museum of Energy, is studied within the scope of this paper to gain a deeper understanding of meanings, uses, and values as part of the broader social context. A social semiotic methodological avenue is pursued whereby the transformations undergone by the focal heritage site are addressed against the background of the three metafunctions, namely representational, organizational, and interactional, which are adapted from Halliday (1985) and applied to a museum setting through the multimodal framework developed by Ravelli and Heberle (2016). The paper begins with background information on the Silahtarağa Power plant and its transformation into Santralistanbul. It is followed by a literature review of the changes brought about by the cultural turn while reflecting on the relationship between industrial heritage and branding through cultural industries and the flagship projects that replaced heavy industries. After exposing the methodological framework, the multimodal semiotic analysis is applied to the case of the Museum of Energy.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-21
Number of pages21
JournalInternational Journal of Marketing Semiotics and Discourse Studies
Volume11
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, International Journal of Marketing Semiotics and Discourse Studies. All Rights Reserved.

Keywords

  • auto-ethnography
  • heritage branding
  • industrial heritage
  • multimodality
  • Santralistanbul
  • social semiotics

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