Boosterism

Temples and Holy Relics

“Do you know how to play the fiddle?” the Athenian statesman Themistocles (c. 524–c. 460 BCE) was asked. “No,” he said, “but I understand the art of raising a little village into a great city” (as cited in Boorstin 1995, p. 113). Ever since, boosters have been promising to do the same for their hometowns, though predicting and promoting development is a difficult task. In the Old Testament, it is the Lord who appears to make the great development decisions: Pious cities flourish; proud and profane cities are destroyed.

The origins of boosterism may date to the competitive Greek city-states such as Athens, which built magnificent temples not only to honor and propitiate the gods but also, in a boosterish sense, to glorify the city. Boosterism may also be seen at work in the medieval European town that promoted market fairs to stimulate trade or that boasted of possessing sacred relics to encourage the pilgrimages from which the town profited.

That a community might promote itself is an ancient idea, but that it should also encourage visitors to settle there is a modern notion that would have been bewildering to the majority of the world's people, who, throughout history, have lived in agricultural settlements. Because villagers resided in places where land and resources were often scarce, they feared having too many mouths to feed and were wary of strangers, settlers, and change. In contrast, the modern booster, an optimist who believed that there would always be enough food to go around, welcomed newcomers who could contribute to communal prosperity.