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Authenticity in tourism
Authenticity in tourism
Authenticity in tourism
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As the rising number of tourists continues to fuel the booming holidaymaker economy, quests for the ‘authentic self’ rise in response. Fundamentally, the theoretic of ‘object authenticity’ and ‘existential authenticity’ would hold the heaviest denial against the relative positions and definitions taken by those claiming tourism as a quest for the authentic self. However, not all consumers of the tourist market can be classified as a single body of individuals seeking to understand an authentic identity, and not all tourists on a quest for the authentic self understand authenticity and other related concepts in agreement to the same sense. Complications in the field of observed ethnography, such as the authenticity of ‘phantasmic’ tourism and …show more content…
The idea of a backstage area where host populations continue meaningful traditions away from the front stage performances set up for the typical tourist audience has gained impressive rapport amongst the contemporary anthropologist society within the recent decades, and yet it still cannot provide a strong argument for tourism as a quest for the authentic self (Reisinger and Steiner 2006a:68). For this particular type of tourists, many of whom would not refer to themselves as part of what they call “mainstream tourists”, the quest for the authentic self through backstage tourism “leads to surface sociality and materiality to be deemed inauthentic” (Theodossopoulos 2013b:344). In believing themselves to be above falling into the commonly constructed tourist ploys after realizing the artificial presentation of the front stage tourism, those tourists rely on the archaic backstage display to connect with a romanticized authentic self. The approach to supposedly discovering the authentic self is almost synonymous to primitivist tourism, where “tourists seek out encounters with humans felt to incarnate a condition of extreme archaicness understood as the opposite of global modernity” (Stasch 2014:192). The typical primitivist or backstage visitor can without fail feel strong inclinations to, when encountering what social media has deemed pure and materially disconnected communities such as the Korowai people of West Papua, Indonesia, “describe themselves by their differences of approach relative to other travelers…and [understand the authenticity self as] an idea of a human other who is true to his individual spiritual constitution, and thus, is above all, not staging false appearances for what is in reality an underlying desire for material gain” (Stasch 2014:206-208). Such method for
The Sociology film “Cannibal Tours,” depicts a group of tourists visiting villages or places cut off from the rest of the synchronized world, at which native people live. The main reason they are trying to reach that kind of locations is that they finally want to see with their own eyes, all those things they read and saw in movies. At this particular film, wealthy tourists visit Sepia River, in the jungles of Papa New Guinea, near which inbred cannibal people live. We can clearly see two different perspectives of what the visitors think of the life the indigenous populations are having and on the other hand what the aboriginal peoples think of the modern people and their lives.
Alexis Bunten based her information on personal experience such as working as a staff member for Tribal Tours in Sitka. She is able to provide information about how the tour guides are not at primitive as the tourist may think. Most of what the tour guides are doing is entertainment, which requires them to use commodified personas. Commodified personas can be defined as changing your character into what may be perceived by others. In the article she talks about a storyteller who is a native of Sitka who works as a tour guide. He tells a story but due to having to please the tourist he has added things in and changed the way the story is told. According to the reading “ the tourism worker expresses free choice
After the Second World War mass tourism has increased worldwide and has affected almost all countries. Mexico has become a ‘major tourist destination’ and also ethic tourism has taken off, because tourists became more interested in the indigenous cultures and search for authenticity. Nowadays ethnic tourism makes up ‘10% of Mexico’s tourism sector’ (Van Den Berghe 568). This essay will especially examine the commoditisation of the Maya identity; Maya was ‘a highly developed Mesoamerican culture centred in the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico’ (McKay et al 307). Over the last two decades Western tourists have become interested in Indian cultures, traditions and artefacts and they would like to see ‘living Maya culture’, therefore tour guides, tourees, middlemen and artisans have started to work in the ethnic tourism sector. According to Medina ‘The commoditization of culture for tourism may involve the utilization of new channels to access cultural traditions of great antiquity’ (354). To illustrate this: only 20.5% of the inhabitants of San Jose Succotz identifies with the Maya culture (Medina 360). Maya culture is less available through lived experience, because Maya languages and rituals disappear, therefore villagers working in the ethnic tourism sector have to gain knowledge by utilizing other, new channels. Ethic tourism often develops around archaeological sites; tour guides will take tourists to Maya ruins and transfer knowledge that they had gained from the ethnographers, archaeologists, and epigraphers (Medina 362). Some people argue that this ‘staged culture’ is not similar to the ‘authentic culture’. It might be possible that the culture transferred to the tourists at the moment is different from the way Mayans used to do. H...
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (1998). Objects of Ethnography. Destination Culture : Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dean MacCannell explores the concept of “authenticity,” a quality of genuineness that many people spend time searching for. Throughout the chapter “Staged Authenticity” of The Tourist, there are points that explore this common desire for wholesome experience in new places. In the societal structure of today, however, it is becoming more and more difficult to find authenticity, as we get further and further “mystified” looking for a true and sincere reality. MacCannell makes statements regarding how difficult it is to find realness in the modern world, but never makes a claim that clearly defines authenticity. Instead, MacCannell’s use of paradoxical phrases, visual examples that are relevant to readers, and self-contradiction around the ideas of mystification and reality strengthen his point that there is no concrete definition of authenticity.
The progression of technology and its presence in society has strongly molded the way people live their lives today, and the way they will continue to live their lives years from now. But with this advancement of science and increased order, there is a consequence that seems to be a heavy price to pay: the loss of human emotion and freewill, and the submission to organization and commands. The tourist industry is one such manufactured machine, so to speak, that influences people's views in certain aspects. One of these aspects, culture, is a main focus of post-modernist writer Bryan Turner, who believes that "tourism invents and demands empathy...makes cultures into museums...[creates] the illusion of authenticity, [and therefore] reinforces the experience of social and cultural simulation" (qtd. in Burns 33). One only needs to take a look at the verbs used in this quote--invents, demands, makes, reinforces-- to see how mechanized tourism sounds. In addition to these verbs that would be associated with something mechanical, the key word simulation further supports the notion that when man created the tourist industry, he in fact invented a machine. Man appears to be forgetting, however, that he created the machine, but he is not the machine; he gave life to the mechanism, but he should not give his life to the mechanism. He is, however, falling to the pattern of the latter in each case; man is becoming the product he makes, following orders and decreasing his choices, and in the process, losing his costly traits of humanity. A great example of this phenomenon is man's creation of Disney World. What seems to be a land of fun and innocent childlike enjoyment...
According to Schneider, defining “authenticity” is a battle between indigenous peoples and the tourists who purchase their arts and crafts. As “tourist” art grows with the realization of international tourism as means of development and economic growth in marginalized communities, foreign assumptions affect the perception of indigenous arts and crafts as “legitimately” indigenous. Indigenous peoples readily “transform” functional items into feasible commodities; “goods such as “indigenous blouses and shawls” easily become “alien place mates and pillow cases,” enabling indigenous peoples to survive (Schneider 80).
Tourism is a typical activity of fashion that the public participate widely and it has grown in importance over recorded human history. Innumerable articles refer tourism as “the world’s largest industry”; policy-makers, analysts, and scholars often speak of the size of the tourism compared to that of other industries (Smith 2004: 26). These series of misleading statement, together with the mass media’s reports (out of context), make the idea that tourism is a single large industry branded into many people’s minds. However, in this essay I will demonstrate that it is a simplistic and misleading idea, which should be replaced by the plural term, “tourism industries”. Moreover, tourism is not the world’s largest industry, but largest service sector.
According to Smith (1988), an author of a specialist dictionary on tourism, the word ‘tourist’ was reportedly introduced in 1800 and the word ‘tourism’ in 1811. However, what exactly is tourism? Who are tourists? Regardless of the fact that both terms have now been part of the English language for over two centuries, there is still no universally acknowledged effective definition for either. For over many decades, researchers and practitioners have produced many precise definitions for both ‘tourist’ and ‘tourism’ but no definition of either term has become widely recognised. According to Smith (1988), he suggests that there “probably never will be a single definition of tourism” as economists, psychologists and geographers perceive certain things about tourism in their field (Smith 1988 as cited in Leiper 1995:3). However, any approach to defining tourism can be useful for the persons proposing it and for those who perceive the world in the subjective way. In this essay, academic authors such as Krapf and Hunziker (1942), Stear (2005) and McIntosh and Goeldner (1977) each define ‘tourism’ in different methodical approaches. After discussing ‘tourism’, the focus then shifts to ‘tourists’ where again, Stear (2005), Leiper (1979) and Weaver and Lawton (2006), defines ‘tourists’ and its heuristic concepts.
Specifically, the communication of authentic meanings appears to vary in terms of how public or personal the meanings are to the informant as well as by degree of travel experience. We term these two distinctions 'conspicuous authenticity’ and 'idiosyncratic authenticity.’ When meanings are generally transparent, public, or evident to the casual observer, we call that conspicuous authenticity. In contrast, idiosyncratic authenticity emphasizes private meanings that tend to focus on the symbolic, intangible elements of the souvenir, which are not often evident to an outsider. While no set of meanings is exclusively public or private, we assert that there is a tendency toward this
Background The travel and tourism industry is one of the leading growing sectors in the UK and across the globe. The development of this industry is closely interconnected to the broader technological and socio-economic changes, which are evolving continuously, and are consistently changing the nature of supply and demand in the travel and tourism industry. Tourism has attracted a significant number of attention during the last decade, with studies being conducted on a diverse and broad range of topics, which includes marketing and advertising tourism in various cities across the globe (Pearce, 2001, 926). Distribution is one of the most crucial factors in the hospitality, travel and tourism sectors’ ability to acquire higher market share, achieve greater levels of profitable revenue, and to perform at an acceptable level in terms of financial returns. Majority of the research, specifically in the field of marketing, has been related to the components of promoting a place and selling the city (Levy & Matos 2002, 241; Law, 2002, 5).
As I researched, this article stuck out to me because over the years cruise tourism has been the fastest growing category of leisure tourism. It is recognized as a successful and dynamic subsector of the global tourism industry, amongst the main cruise lines occupying the highest ranks of the tourism and leisure sector. Unfortunately, because of the coastline and marine surroundings, indigenous economies and on the sociocultural nature of port areas, cruise tourism has grown becoming a vast concern. This article on issues of cruise tourism discussed selective concerns about this particular industry through a responsible tourism lens.
Tourism provides the individual to have an opportunity to experience things and to live, momentarily at least, extraordinary lives. For many people, travel is an escape from their everyday lives. It’s something that most only get to do maybe once or twice a year, or for many more people, even less often than that. Therefore, it’s through travel stories, photos and videos, that help feed that desire to travel to somewhere new.
In observing the symbiotic relationship between ethics and morals two theories, which relate to the concepts of right and wrong, here morality being the core address between what is right and wrong, while ethics an ancient theory, which dates back to ancient Greece derives from the word Ethos, which by translation addresses customs, conduct, or character (Northhouse, 2010, p. 424). Moreover, elaborating further, ethics address the manner in which morality is observed by a group or an individual thus despite the grounded theory of morals the right and wrong standing true the manner in which it is observed changes with ethics. For example in the Christian underpinning polygamy is observed as unethical, but in the Middle East having a different religion it is Ethical
The memorable experience of a tourist was a key research issue in the 1960’s (Urliely, 2005:29), becoming common in the social science literature by the 1970’s (Quan & Wang,2004:299). During the literature development, the memorable experience of a tourist was debated by authors, such as (MacCannell, 1973:589) who associated it to authenticity, and (Cohen,1979:179) who discovered experience in terms of theoretical theory.