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Authenticity?
authentic seal
Authenticity is a broad term. What I find authentic someone else may not. Most people associate it with food and culture—“I just had some authentic Spanish cuisine” or “People in the Czech Republic are known for PDA”. Is it the individual unique experience of a culture or following your guidebook that makes something authentic? MacCannell makes this argument that tourists seek “authenticity” through pilgrimages, traveling essentially through the heritage of a place to gain cultural knowledge specific to your experience. I’m not sure I agree with him.
Authenticity is like a blanket term for travelers to claim that they have had an experience unlike another. But how do you define what is authentic and what is not? And what are the boundaries? I have two examples that support this questioning. Two experiences I found authentic, but in reality could be nothing extraordinary.
About one month ago, I traveled to Cairo with my friend Marita. Our third night, we went to dinner at a friend of Marita’s aunts whom we were staying with. At dinner, there were 16 people from ages six to 86, all expatriates, all living in Cairo, all working for the UN or World Health Organization. The wooden table was long. The only lights in the room were the many candles that ran down the table from one end to the other. There were Norwegians, Italians, and Americans. The grandmothers fought over whom they felt had the cuter grandchildren, the young kids sang, and the parents chatted about current politics in Cairo.
Three weeks ago I traveled to Stockholm for the weekend with some friends. On our last night, my friend Axel (who is from Sweden) made my two friends and me dinner at his suburban home 20 minutes outside of Stockholm. Though there was nothing particularly Swedish about the meal (which was Norwegian salmon and roasted potatoes), it struck me as authentic that I was eating dinner in the home of someone who is from Stockholm as opposed to say, a restaurant in the city.
Perhaps authenticity is defined personally, that there are no boundaries and that perhaps ‘the road less traveled’ is traveled more than you think. I’m not sure. I don’t feel like these experiences were exactly “pilgrimages” but I do think they were culturally enhancing.
Good points
Your post definitely brought up some interesting points about what is in fact "authentic", and what isn't. Just like you alluded to, authenticity, or a sense of it is my opinion, in the eye of the beholder.
Nice post
I think you talk about some really interesting things in this post, and I agree with you, the line between authentic and non-authentic is pretty hard to distinguish. It's especially interesting that in your first example about the dinner with the U.N. workers, you point out that there were people from all around the world. Someone might argue that because you weren't with all native Cairo-ians, you're experience couldn't have been authentically "Cairo", but I think you illustrate nicely that the authenticity of an place is defined by the powerful experiences that constitute your memory of the place.