Authenticity

Entry on "Authenticity" in Jafari, Jafar (Editor). Encyclopedia of Tourism. London, , GBR: Routledge, 2000. p 43-45.

A concern for authenticity is a modern value and ideal that resulted from the experience of inauthenticity and alienation in modern society. Such a development can be dated back to Rousseau. A touristic concern for authenticity appeared in nineteenth-century England, where travellers tried to distinguish themselves, the agents of genuine travel, from `tourists'. However, it is only about two decades ago that authenticity was introduced by MacCannell (1973) into tourism social sciences as a research programme. Since then it has become an agenda for study, and there has been a rapid growth in literature focusing on this theme. Although the `quest for authenticity' is criticised as oversimplifying tourist experiences, it qualifies as a key category in the sociology of motivations.

The original usage of authenticity was in the museum, conveying the meaning of whether objects of art are what they appear to be or are claimed to be, and hence worth the price that is asked for them. It is perhaps such a museum-linked usage of authenticity which has been extended to tourism. As a result, products of tourism such as works of art, festivals, rituals, cuisine, dress, housing and others are usually described as authentic or inauthentic in terms of the criterion of whether they are made or enacted by locals according to custom or tradition. Bruner (1994) has transcended this narrow meaning of authenticity by identifying four meanings of authenticity based on verisimilitude, genuineness, originality and authority. Thus, `authenticity' not only means `original', but also refers to the authenticity of reproduction and simulation, both of which also involve authentication by authorities and powers. Selwyn (1996) divides authenticity into two separate types: authenticity as knowledge (`cool authenticity') and authenticity as feeling (`hot authenticity'). Wang (1999) further classifies authenticity in tourism into three different types: objective, constructive (or symbolic) and existential. The sociologists usually ask three kinds of questions with respect to authenticity in tourism: why tourists quest for authenticity; how authenticity is experienced, constructed or produced in tourism; and what the consequences of the search for authenticity in tourism are.

While tourism was criticised as pseudo-events which tourists enjoyed, MacCannell argued that modern tourists are in search of authentic experiences, which `parallels concerns for the sacred in primitive society' (1973: 590). Tourism is thus seen as a kind of secular pilgrimage on a quest for authenticity which exists elsewhere and in other cultures, especially primitive or pre-modern cultures. For MacCannell, the reason why tourists seek authenticity is a structural one; it is the inauthenticity and alienation of modernity that motivate tourists to search for authentic experiences elsewhere.

How authenticity is experienced, constructed or produced in tourism is, however, controversial. Generally speaking, five approaches to this issue can be identified.

First is the approach of cognitive objectivism. Authenticity is treated as the originals or origins, including traditional cultures and people, which are to be cognised by tourists. Paradoxically, the quest for such a kind of authenticity often ends up as contrived experiences of `staged authenticity' (MacCannell 1973). Later on, this approach is loosened by stratifying tourists in terms of the relationships between social class, travel career and varying cognitive abilities (see cognition)or demands for different degrees of authenticity.

Second is constructivist approach. This appears as a revision of the objectivist approach, which is sometimes criticised as too crude a position. Authenticity is seen as a product of social or cultural construction rather than an objective attribute of reality out there, waiting to be unearthed and cognised. Authenticity is thus described as `negotiable', emerging, hermeneutic (Cohen 1988), or involving a power struggle regarding interpretation of heritage or toured objects (Bruner 1994). Seen this way, the authenticity of the past or of traditions, for example, is no more than an `invention' in terms of the need and power of the present.

Third is the semiotic approach (see semiotics). The holders of this approach argue that tourists are the `armies of semioticians' who search for signs of authenticity. According to Culler, `to be fully satisfying the sight needs to be certified as authentic. It must have markers of authenticity attached to it. Without those markers, it could not be experienced as authentic' (1981: 137). Tourism is thus no more than a collection of signs of authenticity, and what tourists quest for is merely symbolic authenticity (see symbolism).

Fourth is the critical approach. Supporters of this approach critically examine the representation of the `Other' in tourism marketing (for example, tourism brochures) and reveal a neo-colonialist ideology that is hidden in the Western discourse, or image, of authenticity (see neo-colonialism). The touristic quest for the authenticity of the Other is seen as no more than a projection of Western stereotyped, biased and neo-colonialist imagery of the noble savage, which has nothing to do with any real assessment of the natives in the Third World.

Fifth is the postmodernist approach. This approach is characterised by abolishing the distinction between copies and originals, or between signs and reality. The modern world is seen as a hyperreality, neither real nor false. The modern world is also explained as a simulation which admits no originals, no origins, and no real referents but only endless simulation. Accordingly, postmodernists declare an end of authenticity and justify inauthenticity in tourism.

It is argued that the quest for authenticity may bring about certain social and cultural consequences. This is often called the `dilemma of authenticity'. For some, this dilemma means that, to be experienced as authentic, a sight must be marked as one; however, what is being marked as authentic is simultaneously inauthentic because it is mediated. For others, the dilemma of authenticity is rather that the very act of quest for authenticity may destroy authenticity itself, since the only full condition of authenticity is isolation. Tourism, as an agent of cultural commoditisation, may thus destroy the meaning of traditional culture. However, this thesis was criticised as an overgeneralisation, for commoditisation is not necessarily destructive to the meaning of cultural products (Cohen 1988). As a postmodern response to the dilemma of authenticity, Cohen (1995) suggests a `sustainable authenticity' by justifying the contrived or copied authenticity in order to use it to prevent authentic cultures from being tourismified and hence destroyed.

As such, tourism in search of authenticity is one of the modern indicators or indexes of the ambivalence of modernity. People are tourists away from home because they `hate' something relating to modernity such as the lack of authenticity and the loss of real self. Simultaneously, however, tourists are able to get away just because of certain enabling conditions of modernity which they `love', such as higher living standards and so on. One cannot ultimately solve the contradiction of modernity and overcome the ambivalence of modernity. Thus, to be `away and at home' may be a persisting dialectic of the contemporary lifestyles, and a touristic search for authenticity may be a sociocultural responsive action with respect to the existential condition of modernity.

References

Bruner, E.M. (1994) `Abraham Lincoln as authentic reproduction: a critique of postmodernism', American Anthropologist 96(2): 397±415.

Cohen, E. (1988) `Authenticity and commoditization in tourism', Annals of Tourism Research 15 (3): 371±86.

Cohen, E. (1995) `Contemporary tourism—trends and challenges: sustainable authenticity or contrived post-modernity?', in R. Butler and D. Pearce (eds), Change in Tourism: People, Places, Processes, London: Routledge, 12±29.

Culler, J. (1981) `Semiotics of tourism', American Journal of Semiotics 1(1±2): 127±40.

MacCannell, D. (1973) `Staged authenticity: arrangements of social space in tourist settings', American Journal of Sociology 79(3): 589±603.

Selwyn, T. (1996) `Introduction', in T. Selwyn (ed.), The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism, Chichester: Wiley, 1±32.

Wang, N. (1999) `Rethinking authenticity in tourism experiences', Annals of Tourism Research 26 (2): 349±70. NING WANG, CHINA