Chapter 3
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity
About two decades ago MacCannell (1973, 1976) introduced the concepi of authenticity to the sociological study of tourist motivations and experiences. Since then authenticity has become an important item on the agenda of tourism research, and there has been a parallel growth of literature on this issue (Brown 1996; Brunei- 1989, 1994; Cohen 1979a, 1988b; Daniel 1996; Ehrentraut 1993; Harkin 1995; Hughes 1995; Littrell, Anderson and Brown 1993; Macdonald 1997; Moscardo and Pearce 1986; Pearce and Moscardo 1985, 1986; Redfoot 1984; Salamone 1997; Selwyn 1996a; Slienhav-Keller 1993; Silver 1993; Turner and Manning 1988; Wang 1997a;). However, with the concept of authenticity being widely used, its ambiguity and limitations have been increasingly exposed. Critics have questioned its usefulness and validity because many tourist motivations or experiences cannot be explained solely in terms of the conventional concept of authenticity. Tourist activities such as visiting friends and relatives, beach holidays, ocean cruising, nature tourism, trips to Disneyland, and travel for special interests such as shopping, fishing, hunting, sports, and so on have little to do with authenticity in MacCannell's sense of the term (Schudson 1979; Stephen 1990; Urry 1990a). AsvUrry observes, "/the "search for authenticity' is too simple a foundation for explaining contemporary tourism" (1991a:51).
Of course, authenticity is still relevant to certain types of tourism, such as ethnic, historical or cultural tourism, all of which involve some kind of presentation or representation of the Other or of the past. Yet if the concept of authenticity is of limited applicability, how can it be of central importance in tourism studies? Can researchers continue to employ it while ignoring its associated difficulties? Should they discard it alto-
46
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity       47
gether, or should they redefine its meaning in order to justify and enhance its explanatory power? This chapter concentrates on the third of these options, namely rethinking the meaning of "authenticity" in terms of existential philosophers' use of the expression. While the two conventional meanings of authenticity in the literature—objective authenticity and constructive authenticity—are discussed, the third usage—existential authenticity—is suggested as an alternative.
This chapter has two aims. First, three different approaches—objectivism, constructivism, and postmodernism - to the issue of authenticity in tourism are reviewed and analyzed. As a result, three different types of authenticity—objective, constructive (or symbolic), and existential authenticity - are clarified. Second, it is suggested that, under the condition of postmodernity, both objective authenticity and constructive authenticity, as object-related authenticity, can only encompass a limited range of tourist experiences, whereas existential authenticity, as activity-related authenticity, is germane to the understanding of a greater variety of experiences. Existential authenticity is further classified into two dimensions—intra-personal and inter-personal authenticity.
In the four sections which follow, the first reviews and analyzes the literature on authenticity in tourism. On the basis of this overview, the second section suggests that existential authenticity offers an alternative perspective. Existential authenticity is also defined and conceptualized in relation to certain kinds of tourism thai cannot be properly explained by the conventional model of the "search for authenticity". The third section discusses the touristic concern for authenticity in the wider context of institutional modernity. Finally, in the fourth section, the concrete forms of existential authenticity—intra-personal and inter-personal authenticity—are discussed.
Different Approaches to Authenticity in Tourism
"Authenticity" is a term that is used in so many different senses and contexts that it has become difficult to define (Golomb 1995:7). According to Trilling, its original usage was in the context of the museum,
where persons expert in such matters lest whether objects of art are what they appear to be or are claimed lo be, and therefore worth the price that is asked for them—or, if this has ahead)' been paid, worth the admiration they are being given (1972:93).
The term was also borrowed to refer to human existence and "the peculiar nature of our fallen condition, our anxiety over the credibility of existence   and   of   individual   existence"   (1972:93).    For   example.
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Rousseau used the word "authenticity" CO refer to the existential condition of being, and he regarded society as the major cause that destroyed it.
However, it is mainly the museum-linked usage of authenticity that has been extended to tourism. For example, the products of tourism, such as works of art. festivals, rituals, cuisine, dress, and so on, are usually described as "authentic" or "inauthentic" in terms of the criterion of whether they are made or enacted "by local people according to custom or tradition". In this sense, "authenticity connotes traditional culture and origin, a sense of die genuine, the real or the unique" (Sharpley 1994:130). However, the application of the museum-linked usage of the term to tourism oversimplifies the complex nature of authenticity in tourist experiences. First of all./authenticity in tourism can be differentiated into two separate issues—the authenticity of tourist experiences (or authentic experiences) and dial of toured objects/ These quite separate aspects are often confused as one. Handler and Saxton note this distinction when they point out that "An authentic experience ... is one in which individuals feel themselves to be in touch both with a 'real' world and with dieir 'real' selves" (1988:243) . Selwyn (1996a) goes a ste]) further by linking the experience of a "real" world to "authenticity as knowledge", namely "cool" authenticity, and in relating the experience of a "real" self to "authenticity as feeling", namely "hot" authenticity. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the emotional experience of the "real" self ("hot authenticity") necessarily entails, coincides with, or results from the epistemological experience of a "real" world out there ("cool authenticity"), as if the latter were the sole cause of the former. As will be shown, differentiation of "the authenticity of experiences" from "the authenticity of toured objects" is crucial for introducing "existential authenticity" as an alternative source of authentic experiences in tour-isniyCertain toured objects, such as nature, are in a strict sense irrelevant to authenticity in MacCannell's terms. However, nature tourism is surely one of the main ways of experiencing the "real" self. That is to say, nature tourism implies an existential authenticity rather than the authenticity of objects/
Second, the complex nature of authenticity in tourism is evident from the fact that it can be further classified into three different tvpes—objective, constructive, and existential authenticity (Table 3.1)./Objective authenticity is linked to the museum usage of the term. It refers to the authenticity of die original that is also the toured objectjft follows that the authenticity of tourist experience depends on the toured object being perceived as authentic. In this way of thinking, an absolute and objective criterion is used to measure authenticity. Thus, even though tourists themselves may think diat they have had an authentic experience, it can still be judged as /'«authentic, given that many toured objects are in
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity       49 Table 3.1. Three Types of Authenticity in Tourism Experiences
Object-related authenticity
Activity-related authenticity
Objective authenticity refers to the authenticity of originals. Correspondingly, authentic experiences in tourism are equated to an epistemological experience (i.e., cognition) of the authenticity of originals.
Constructive authenticity refers to the authenticity projected onto toured objects by tourists or tourism producers in terms of their imagery, expectations, preferences, beliefs, powers, etc. There are various versions of authenticity regarding the same objects. Correspondingly, authentic experiences in tourism and the authenticity of loured objects ate constitutive of one another. In this sense the authenticity of toured objects is in fact a symbolic authenticity.
Existential authenticity refers to a potential existential state of Being thai is to be activated by tourist activities. Correspondingly, authentic experiences in tourism are to achieve this activated existential state of Being within the liminal process of tourism. Existential authenticity has little to do with the authenticity of toured objects
fact false and contrived, or form part of what MacCannell (1973) calls "staged authenticity".
^Constructive authenticity is the result of social construction. Authenticity is not seen as an objectively measurable quality./Things appear authentic not because they are so but because they are constructed as such in terms of social viewpoints, beliefs, perspectives, or powers. Authenticity is thus relative, negotiable/(Cohen 1988b), contex-tually determined (Salamone 1997), and even ideological (Silver 1993). It can be the projection of dreams, stereotyped images and expectations onto loured objects (Bruner 1991; Silver 1993)./In this sense, what the tourist seeks are signs of authenticity or symbolic authenticity (Culler 1981).
/Unlike objective and constructive (or symbolic) authenticities, which relate to whether and how toured objects are authentic, existential authenticity comprises personal or intersubjective feelings that are activated by the liminal process of tourist behaviors. In such liminal experiences, people feel that they are themselves much more authentic and more freely self-expressed than they are in everyday life, not because die toured
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objects are authentic, but rather because they are engaging in non-everyday activities, free from the constraints of daily life. Thus, analytically speaking, in addition to objective and constructive authenticities, existential authenticity is a distinctive source of authentic experiences in tourism. Unlike object-related authenticity, which is an attribute, or a projected attribute, of objects, existential authenticity is a potential existential stale of Being which is about to be activated by tourist activities. In this sense, it can also be understood as a variant of what Brown (1996) calls an "authentically good time". Existential authenticity, as activity-related authenticity, is thus logically distinguishable from object-related authenticity (see Table 3.1).
The Approach of Cognitive Objectivism: Authenticity as the Original
In his nostalgic critique of mass tourism in terms of heroic travel in the past, Boorstin (1964) condemns mass tourism as a collection of "pseudo-events", which are brought about by the commoditization of culture and the associated homogenization and standardization of tourist experiences. For Boorstin, under commoditization not only are tourist attractions contrived scenes or pseudo-events, but also the "tourist seldom likes the authentic ... product of the foreign culture; he prefers his own provincial expectations" (1964:106). The tourist is thus gullible: "he is prepared to be ruled by the law of pseudo-events, by which the image, the well-contrived imitation, outshines the original" (1964:107; emphasis added). Clearly Boorstin's concept of "pseudo-events" implies a notion of Objective authenticity. Authenticity is thus the authenticity of the "original", and tourist experiences are kinds of pseudo-events because they are seldom able to see through the inauthenticity of contrived attractions (for a similar view see Dovey 1985; Fussell 1980).
Whereas Boorstin scorns mass tourism and mass tourists, his critics, such as MacCannell, restore sacredness and quasi-pilgrimage significance to the motivations of tourists, Based on Goffman's (1959) differentiation of the "front region" from die "back region", MacCannell points out that the "concern of moderns for the shallowness of their lives and inauthenticity of their experiences parallels concerns for the sacred in primitive society" (1973:589-590). It is thus justifiable for tourists to "search for authenticity of experience" (1973:589). However, according to MacCannell (1973, 1976). there is increasingly a contradiction between the tourist's demand for authenticity (related to a back region) and the staged authenticity in tourist space.
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity        51
It is always possible that what is taken to be entry into a back region is really entry into a front region that has been totally set up in advance for touristic visitation (1973:597).
However, as Selwyn (1996a:6-7) indicates,/MacCannell uses "authenticity" in two different senses: authenticity as feeling and authenticity as knowledge. Indeed, when MacCannell points out that tourism involves "the search for authenticity of experience" or for "authentic experience", his tourists are concerned about the stale of their authentic feelings. Yet when he refers to "staged authenticity", his tourists turn to a quest for the authenticity of originals, and consequently become the victims of staged authenticity/Thus, their experiences cannot be considered authentic even if the/the mselves think they have had authentic experiences. What is implied here is a conception of objective authenticity (a similar view on staged authenticity can also be found in Duncan 1978).
Both Boorstin and MacCannell insist on a museum-linked and cognitive objectivisi conception of authenticity, in their references to pseudo-events or staged authenticity. The touristic search for authentic experiences is thus no more than an epistcmological experience of loured objects which are found to be authentic. The key point at issue is, however, that authenticity is not an either/or matter, but rather involves a much wider spectrum, rich in ambiguity. That which is judged to be unauthentic or staged authenticity by experts, intellectuals, or elites may be experienced as authentic and real from an "emic" perspective. Indeed, this may be the very way that mass tourists experience authenticity. Thus, a revisionist position occurs in response to the complex and constructive nature of authenticity, that is, constructivism.
The Approach of Constructivism: Authenticity ax Construction
From the approach of constructivism, to view authenticity as an original or the attribute of an original is too simplistic to capture the complexity of authenticity. Thus, authenticity in MacCannelľs sense has been questioned by many commentators (Bruner 1989:113; Cohen 1988b:378; Handler and Liiinekin 1984:286; Lanfant 1989:188: Spooner 1986:220-1; Wood 1993:58). According to Bruner (1994), authenticity has four different meanings. First, it refers to the "historical verisimilitude" of representation, namely authentic reproduction which resembles the original and thus looks credible and convincing. For instance, the 1990s New Salem resembles the 1830s New Salem where Abraham Lincoln lived. Second, authenticity means genuine, historically accurate, and immaculate simulation. Authenticity in both the first and the second
52        Tourism and Modernity
senses involves the nature of a copy or reproduction rather than the original. Museum professionals use authenticity primarily in the first sense, but sometimes in the second. Third, authenticity "means originals, as opposed to a copy: but in this sense, no reproduction could be authentic, by definition" (Brunei" 1994:400). Finally, in the fourth sense authenticity refers to the power which authorizes, certifies, and legally validates authenticity. For example.
New Salem is authentic, as ii is the authoritative reproduction of New Salem, the one legitimized by the stale of Illinois. There is only one officially reconstructed New Salem, the one approved by the state government (1994:400).
Thus, as authenticity involves a range of different meanings, to confine authenticity to an original is oversimplistic. As a response and revision, the disciples of constructivism treat authenticity as social construction.
Constructivism is not a coherent doctrine. It is sometimes used interchangeably with "constructionism". While constructionism shares with constructivism most connotations, the former stresses the social or inter-subjective process in the construction of knowledge and reality, and is often used in conjunction with "social", i.e., social constructionism (Berger and Luckmann 1971: Gergen 1985; Geigen and Geigen 1991). For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion below constructionism will be treated as a sub-perspective within the general perspective of constructivism. There is no space here to outline the history of constructivism and its variants. However, certain basic characteristics of constructivism can be identified (for a detailed discussion see Schwandt 1994). First, its main ontological assumption is that "there is no unique 'real world' that preexists and is independent of human mental activity and human symbolic language" (J. Bruner 1986; quoted in Schwandt 1994:125). Reality is rather better viewed as the result of the many versions of human interpretation and construction. It is thus pluralistic and plastic. Second, con-structivists hold to a pluralistic and relativist epistemology and methodology. It is claimed that the validity of knowledge is not to be found in the relationship of correspondence to an independently existing world. On the contrary, "what we take to be objective knowledge and truth is the result of perspective. Knowledge and truth are created, not discovered by mind" (Schwandt 1994:125), For constructivists, multiple and plural meanings of and about the same things can be constructed from different perspectives, and humankind may adopt different constructed meanings depending on the particular contextual situation or its intersubjective setting.
This general constructivisl perspective is applied to the issue of authenticity by Bruner (1994), Cohen (1988b), Hobsbawn and Ranger (1983). Bruner (1994:407) clearly labels his treatment of authenticity as a con-
Modernily and the Tourism of Authenticity        53
structivist perspective. Although there are differences among the adherents of constructivism, a few common viewpoints on authenticity in tourism can be identified, as follows.
First, there is no absolute and static original or origin upon which the absolute authenticity of originals relies. "We all enter society in the middle, and culture is always in process" (Bruner 1994:407). Second, as the approach of the "invention of tradition" (Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983) shows, origins and traditions are themselves invented and constructed in terms of living contexts and the needs of the present. Furthermore, the construction of traditions or origins involves power and is hence a social process. As Bruner puts it, "No longer is authenticity a property inherent in an object, forever fixed in time; it is seen as a struggle, a social process, in which competing interests argue for their own interpretation of history'^ 1994:408).
Third, authenticity or inauihenticiiy is a result of how persons see things and of their perspectives and interpretations. Thus, the experience of authenticity is pluralistic, relative to each type of tourist, who may have their own way of definition, experience, and interpretation of authenticity (Littrell et al 1993; Pearce and Moscardo 1985, 1986; Redfoot 1984). In this senstyif mass tourists empathically experience toured objects as authentic, then their viewpoints are real in their own right, regardless of whether experts propose an opposite view from an "objective" perspective (Cohen 1988b).
Fourth, with respect to the different cultures or peoples that are to be loured, authenticity is a label attached to loured cultures in terms of the stereotyped images and expectations held by members of a tourist-sending society. Culler (1981) demonstrates this point from a semioiic perspective. For example, real Japaneseness is what has been marked as such; however, what is located in japan without being marked is hv.a sense not real Japaneseness and hence is not worth seeing (1981:133)/Authenticity is thus a projection of tourists' own beliefs, expectations, preferences, stereotyped images, and consciousness onto toured objects, particularly onto toured Othep/fAdams 1984; Bruner 1991; Duncan 1978; Laxson 1991; Silver 1993). As Bruner puts it. tourists' authentic experiences are not based on any real assessment of natives, such as New Guineans, but rather "a projection from Western consciousness" (1991:243). "Western tourists are not paying thousands of dollars to see children die in Ethiopia; they are paying to see the noble savage, a figment of their imagination"(1991:241).
Fifth, even though something in the beginning may be inauthentic or artificial, it can subsequently become "emergent authenticity" as time goes by. Such is the case with Disneyland or Disney World in the United States (Cohen 1988b:380). The infinite retreat of the "now" will eventually make anything that happens authentic. Authenticity is thus an
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emerging process. It is also context-bound. In an examination of the two San Angel Inns, the original in Mexico City and its "daughter" at Disney World in Florida. Salamone (1997) claims that both versions of the inn are authentic, each in its own way. and each makes sense within its own context.
In effect, Tor constructivists, tourists are indeed in search of authenticity; however, what they seek is not objective authenticity (i.e., authenticity as originals) but a symbolic authenticity which is the result of social construction. Toured objects or toured others are experienced as authentic not because they are originals or reality but/because they are perceived as the signs or symbols of authenticity (Culler 1981). Symbolic authenticity has little to do with reality. It is more often than not a projection of certain stereotypical images held and circulated within tourist-sending societies, particularly within the mass media and the promotional tourism materials of Western societies (Britton 1979; Silver 1993).
The Approaches of Postmodernism: the End of Authenticity?
Postmodernism is not a single, unified, and well-integrated approach. Rather a diversity of postmodern views or approaches exist (for a detailed discussion see Hollinshead 1997). However, as regards authenticity in tourism the approaches of postmodernism seem to be characterized by the deconstruction of authenticity. Whereas modernist researchers such as Boorstin (1964) and MacCannell (1973, 1976) worry about pseudo-events or staged authenticity in tourist space, postmodernist researchers do not consider inauthenticity as problematic at all.
Eco's (1986) writing on "hyperreality" represents a typical postmodernist position on the issue of authenticity in tourism. Indeed, Eco totally deconstructs the concept of authenticity through destructuring the boundaries between the copy and the original, or between sign and reality, boundaries upon which the whole issue of Boorstin's and MacCannell's objective authenticity relies. For Eco, the most typical model of hyperreality i.s illustrated by the example of Disneyland in the United States, for Disneyland was born out of fantasy and imagination. Thus, it is irrelevant whether it is real or false, since there is no original that can be used as a reference.
Based on Eco's idea of "hyperreality", the French postmodernist writer, Baudrillard (1983) borrows the concept "simulacrum" from Plato to explain different cultural orders in history. According to Baudrillard (1983:83) there are three historical "orders of simulacra" which refer to different relationships between simulacra and "the real". The first order of simulacra emerges in the period from the Renaissance to the
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity       55
beginning of the industrial revolution. The dominant simulacrum of this period is "counterfeit", which indicates the emergence of representation. The second order of simulacra—"production"—appears in the industrial era, which indicates the potential for exact technical reproduction and reproducibility of the same object. The third order of simulacra is simulation, which refers to the contemporary condition. In the postmodern world individuals "live by the mode of referendum precisely because there is no longer any referential" (1983:116). "The contradictory process of true and false, of real and the imaginary, is abolished" (1983:122). The world is a simulation which admits no originals, no origins, no "real" referent but the "metaphysic of the code" (1983:103). Like Eco, Baudrillard also uses Disneyland as a prime example of simulation (1983:23).
In a discussion of the culture of Disney, Fjellman claims that:
The concepts of real and lake, however, are too blunt to capture the subtleties of Disney simulations. At WDW things are notjusi real or fake but real real, fake real, real fake, and lake fake (1992:255).
Therefore in Disneworld there is no absolute boundary between the real and the fake. The real may turn into the fake and vice versa. The "Disney plan is tojuxtapose the real and the fake", and the "lines between the real and the fake are systematically blurred" (1992:255).
Implied in the approaches of postmodernism is justification of the contrived, the copy, and the imitation. One of the most interesting responses to this postmodern cultural condition is.Cohen's recent justification of contrived attractions in tourism. According to him./posimo-dern tourists have become less concerned with the authenticity of the original (Cohen 1995:16). Two reasons can be identified. First, if the cultural sanction of the modern tourist has been the "quest for authenticity", then that of the postmodern tourist is a "playful search for enjoyment" or an "aesthetic enjoyment of surfaces" (1995:21). Secondly, the postmodern tourist becomes more sensitive to the impact of tourism upon fragile host communities or tourist sights. Staged authenticity' thus helps protect a fragile toured culture and community from disturbance by acting as a substitute for the original and keeping tourists away from it (1995:17). Moreover, modern technology can make the inauthen-tic look more authentic- For example, audiotapes of bird-song can be played repeatedly and in the exact frequency desired by park managers (Fjellman 1992). This technology can make recorded bird-song sound more authentic than actual bird-song since the latter is influenced by the uncertainty of when birds are present and when they sing. As McCrone, Morris and Keily put it,
Authenticity and originality are. above all, matters of technique.... What is interesting to post-modernists about heritage is that reality depends on
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how convincing the presentation is, how well the "staged authenticity"
works__The more "authentic" the representation, the more "real" it is
(1995:46).
Thus, die quest for "genuine Fakes" (Brown 1996) or inauthenticity is justifiable in postmodern conditions. In Ritzer and Liska's terms.
Accustomed to the simulated dining experience at MacDonald's, the tourist is generally not apt to want to scrabble for food at the campfire, or to survive on nuts and berries picked on a walk through the woods. The latter may be "authentic", but they are awfully difficult, uncomfortable, and unpredictable in comparison to a meal at a local fast-food restaurant or in the dining room of a hotel that is part of an international chain. Most products of a postmodern world might be willing to eat at the campfire, as long as it is a simulated one on the lawn of the hotel.
Thus, we would argue, in contrast to MacCannell, that many tourists today are in search of inauthenticity (1997:107).
Both constructivists and postmodernists reveal the crisis of the authenticity of the original (objective authenticity). However, postmodernists are much more radical than constructivists. If constructivists are reluctant to dig a grave for "authenticity" and try to rescue the term by revising its meanings, then postmodernists are quite happy to do so—they have buried it. Indeed, with accelerating globalization under postmodern conditions it is increasingly difficult for the authenticity of the original, such as a marginal ethnic culture, to remain immutable. For postmodernists, gone is the authenticity of the original. Thus, it is no small wonder that diey abandon the concept of authenticity altogether and instead justify inauthenticity in tourist space. However, a postmodernist deconstruction of the authenticity of the original implicitly paves the way for defining existential authenticity as an alternative authentic experience in tourism/ despite the fact that postmodernists themselves refuse to explore this possibility.
Conceptualizing Existential Authenticity in Tourist Experiences
There has been a long tradition of ontological conceptualization of existential authenticity (Berger 1973; Berman 1970; Golomb 1995; Heiddeger 1962; Taylor 1991; Trilling 1972), ranging from Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre to Camus (see Golomb 1995). Existential authenticity has also been a long-term political concern, dating back to the time of Montesquieu and Rousseau (Berman 1970: Trilling 1972). In commonsense terms,/existential authenticity denotes a special existential state of Being in which individuals are true to themselves, one which acts as. a counterbalance to the loss of "true self in public roles and public spheres in modern Western society/
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(Berger 1973). According to Heidegger (1962), to ask about the meaning of Being is to look for the meaning of authenticity. Indeed, there are a number of researchers have discussed the relevance of such an existential authenticity to tourist experiences. For example, Turner and Manning criticize the view that "authenticity is a thing-like social fact, at once a property or characteristic of both actors and settings" (19S8: 137). They explain:
authenticity is only possible once the taken-for-grantecl world and the security it offers are called into question. This is dependent on a specific mood-anxiety—which, in subjecting everydayness to questioning, reveals the groundlessness of human existence (1988:137).
Turner and Manning clearly show the suitability of applying existential philosophers' (such as Heidegger's) ontological notion of authenticity to tourist experiences. However, they fail to take any further steps towards developing it. After questioning the validity of the conventional concept of authenticity, Hughes suggests that "authenticity must be rethought", and that "one must turn to a qualified existential perspective to recover authenticity in late modernism" (1995:790.796). Neumann hints at an existential authenticity in tourism in his case study of tourist experiences in the Cannon Valley in the United States.
/Travel often provides situations and contexts where people confront alternative possibilities for belonging to the world and others that differ from everyday life. Indeed, part of the promise of navel is to live and know the self in other ways (1992:183).
As previously mentioned, Selwyn (1996a) draws a groundbreaking distinction between "hot authenticity" and "cool authenticity". His concept of hot authenticity, particularly the hot authenticity in relation to myths of the authentic self, is a specific expression of existential authenticity. This realization becomes more evident when he refers to/iuthenticity as the "alienation-smashing feeling/'. Similarly, what Brown (1996) calls an "authentically ... hedonistic ... good time" illustrates the temporal nature of existential authenticity.
ThiiSyéxistential authenticity, unlike object-related authenticity, often has nothing to do with the issue of whether or not toured objects are authentic. In search of experiences which are existentially authentic, tourists are preoccupied with an existential state of Being, activated by certain touristic pursuits/To put it another way, existential authenticity in tourism is the authenticity of Being which, as a potential, is to be subjectively or intersubjectively experienced by tourists as the process of tourism unfolds. Daniel's (1996) discussion of "experiential authenticity" in dance performances can be used to exemplify existential authenticity in touristic experiences. Daniel argues that the experiential authenticity linked to dance performances, such as the rumba in Cuba.
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is derived from tourists participating in the dance rather than being merely spectators. She writes:
Many tourists are drawn into participation by the amiable feelings, sociability, and the musical and kinesthetic elements of dance performance. Often, noi knowing the rales, they do not wait to be invited to dance, but spontaneously join in. They explore their rhythmic, harmonic, and physical potential and arrive at sensations of well being, pleasure, joy. or fun. and at times, frustration as well.
As tourists associate these sentiments with dancing, the dance performance transforms their reality. For many tourists, the dance becomes their entire world at that particular moment. Time and tensions are suspended. The discrepancies of the real world are postponed. As performing dancers, tourists access the magical world of liminality which offers spiritual and aesthetic nourishment. Tourism, in moments of dance performance, opens the door to a liminal world that gives relief from day-to-day. ordinary tensions, and, for Cuban dancers and dancing tourist particularly, permits indulgence in near-ecstatic experiences (1996:789).
Here, if the rumba is treated only as a toured object (spectacle), then it involves objective authenticity in MacCannell's sense, that is, its authenticity lies in the fact of whether or not it is a genuine re-enactment of the traditional rumba. However, once it is turned into a kind of tourist activity it constitutes an alternative source of authenticity, i.e., existential authenticity, which has nothing to do with the issue of whether this particular performance is an exact re-enactment of the traditional dance. In reality, as Daniel soon discovers, new elements, are always being integrated into the old rumba. Thus, even though the rumba in which tourists participate may be inauthentic or contrived in MacCannell's sense, it generates a sense of existential authenticity due to its creative and "'near-ecstatic" nature.
However, an unanswered question arises with regard to existential authenticity. As mentioned above, existential authenticity in its common-sense acceptance means thai "one is true to oneself". This interpretation may seem a little odd at first, since "being true or false" is usually an epistemological issue, a criterion used to judge the nature of utterances, statements, theories, or knowledge. How can the self also be related to the question of "being true or false"? Surely the justification cannot be made in epistemological terms. Rather, one can make sense of the quest for an authentic self only in terms of the ideal of authenticity to be found within modern societies. This ideal is formulated in response to the ambivalence of the existential conditions of modernity. It emerges as a reaction to "the disintegration of sincerity"or pretense, and its occurrence is closely related to the feeling of a loss of "real self" in public roles (Berger 1973:82). The ideal of authenticity can be characterized by either nostalgia or romanticism. It is nostalgic because it idealizes the ways of life in which people are supposed to be freer, more innocent,
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity       59
more spontaneous, purer, and truer to themselves than present generations (such ways of life are usually presumed to exist in the past or in childhood). People are nostalgic about these ways of life because they want to relive them in the form of tourism at least temporarily, empathi-cally, and symbolically. It is also romantic because it emphasizes naturalness, sentiments, and feelings in response to the increasing self-constraints of reason and rationality in modernity. Therefore, in contrast to everyday roles, the tourist role is linked to this ideal of authenticity. Tourism is thus regarded as a simpler, freer, more spontaneous, more authentic, or less serious, less utilitarian, and romantic lifestyle which enables tourists to keep a distance from, or transcend, their daily lives: Examples of related pursuits include camping, picnicking, making camp-fires, mountaineering, walk-abouts. wilderness solitude, and adventure. In these activities people are not literally concerned about the authenticity of toured objects. Rather, they are seeking their authentic selves with the aid of tourist activities or toured objects.
However, some may argue that tourism is also subject to constraints (such as the constraint of schedules, itineraries, queuing, finances, etc.) and that the social control exerted by the tourism industry precludes the so-called freedom to be had from tourism, rendering it only a fantasy and illusion. Thus, the question might be asked: isn't existential authenticity in tourism illusory, and hence inaccessible in reality? The point at issue is that an "emic" perspective, rather than,an external one is more appropriate when answering this question/Certainly, the tourist experience involves its own constraints. However, such constraints may be seen by tourists as the necessary cost of authentic experiences, rather than as an obstacle to existential authenticity. Indeed, in tourism, existential authenticity may be a fantasy. However, such a fantasy is a real one—it is a fantastic feeling, a subjective (or intersubjective) feeling, which is real and accessible to the tourist through tourism. This fantastic feeling is the very feeling characterizing existential authenticity (Dann 1976).
A sense of "authentic self involves a balance between two parts of Being—reason and emotion, self-constraint and spontaneity. Logos and Eros, or what Freud calls the "reality principle" and the "pleasure principle" (Chapter 2). At the risk of oversimplification, to live a life in terms of the dictates of emotions, feelings, spontaneity, or Eros, rather than reason or self-constraints, may be characteristic of a relatively large part of primitive, or precivilized, forms of life. Freud argues thai the opposite is the case of civilized or modern forms of life. However, a sense of inauthentic self arises when the balance between these two parts of Being is broken down in such a way that rational factors over-control non-rational factors (emotion, bodily feeling, and spontaneity, etc.) and leave too little space for satisfaction of the latter. This is the situation
60        Tourism and Modernity
characterizing the ambivalence o ť the mainstream institutional realms of modernity, in which the factors of Logos reign and the factors of Eros are more or less constrained (Chapter 2). For example. Hochschild's (1983) empirical study of how American flight attendants are "'forced" to present a smiling face to customers illustrates how these attendants lose their authentic selves in the service industry.
Thus, under the condition of modernity, the "authentic self emerges as an ideal that acts to resist or invert the dominant rational order of the dominant institutions in modernity./To resist the inauthenticity stemming from the mainstream order of modernity, the "authentic selF' is often thought to be more easily realized or fulfilled in the space outside the dominant institutions, a space with its own cultural and symbolic boundaries which demarcate the profane from die sacred (Graburn 1989), responsibilities from freedom, work from leisure, and the inauthentic public role from the authentic self. As a result, nature, for example, is seen as typical of such a space. Tourism, and nature tourism in particular, is thus an effective way to promote the search for the "authentic self". Of course, such an "authentic self is only achieved in relative terms. It is experienced only within a "liminal zone" (Graburn 1989; V. Turner 1973). In such a liminal zone, persons keep a distance from social constraints (prescriptions, obligations, work ethic, etc.) and invert, suspend, or alter routine order and norms (Gottlieb 1982; Lett 1983; Shields 1991). However, in so doing they do not go as far as to abandon Logos (reason), social order, and social responsibilities altogether; moreover, they are ready to return and adapt to the home society again/
Contextualizing the Issue of Existential Authenticity
The possibilities of tourism as a form of existentially authentic experience have been explored in above section. However, the discussion of authenticity-seeking is limited and does not consider the wider context where authenticity arises as an issue. Therefore, in this section, touristic concern for authenticity is explained in relation to the wider context of modernity as a complex system of contemporary institutions.
Ideal-typically speaking, concern about existential authenticity usually only emerges in modernity (Berger 1973; Berman 1970). "In a closed, static society governed by fixed norms and traditions which are accepted by all its members, authenticity has no place in the vocabulary of human ideals" (Berman 1970:xvii). True, traditonal society can also be constraining, but the nature of the constraints is different. By contrast, existential authenticity becomes an issue in modernity because it disappears from the modern structural, public, or impersonal domain in which, ideal-
Modernily and the Tourism of Authenticity        61
typically speaking, the traditional harmony between individual and society can no longer be maintained. Thus, Berger claims. "The opposition between self and society has now reached its maximum. The concept of authenticity is one way of articulating this experience" (1973: 88). In Sack's terms, authenticity is "a relative evaluation of modern life and place and stands as an indication of our reaction to modern life" (1992:172).
The emergence of the ideal of authenticity can be understood in terms of institutional modernity. In oilier words^-it is the inauthenticity and alienating conditions of institutional modernity that are responsible for the sociogenesis of authenticity as a modern value and concerns In this respect, Marx's critique of alienating labor in capitalism is quite telling. As far as is known, Marx did not use the term "authenticity" in his works. However, he, more than any one else, offers more inspiration for conceptualizing "authenticity" in a broader ontological sense. In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1977), Marx outlines the ontological conditions of inauthenticity from which a broader range of ontological meanings ofauthenticity can be derived. The most inauthentic human activities under capitalism are those experienced by "alienated labor". As Marx writes:
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel contenl but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is
merely a means to sat isfy needs external to it__External labor, labor in which
man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own. but someone else's (1977:65-66).
According to Marx, ideal-typically speaking, labor should be a free and Voluntary activity which is no longer merely a means to ensure survival, but a primary human need. In such an idealized conception of labor, laborers are full "authors" of their labor and thus true to themselves. However, alienated labor under capitalism is an antithesis to this ideal labor (authentic Being). First, it is forced and coerced labor, rather than voluntary labor. Second, it is an instrumental activity, merely a means of ensuring survival, rather than an end or the satisfaction of an intrinsic need. Third, laborers feel unhappy in alienated labor; it is the self-sacrifice and mortification of both their physical and mental well-being. Fourth, it also implies alienation in terms of the interrelationships between human beings, because workers' labor is exploited by their employers: it is not their own. Workers own neither the "authorship"
98
62       Tourism and Modernity
of their work (i.e., their work is designed by the employers) nor the end-product of their labor (which is owned by the employers). Alienated labor is therefore ontologically inauthentic.
Logically, ontological (or existential) authenticity is the opposite of ontological inauthenticity. If Marx does not explicitly define what authenticity is, the meaning of ontological authenticity can be grasped by reading his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. In one place, he mentions "man in entire richness of his being" (1977:96). In another place, he writes of "real individual life" (1977:124). Elsewhere he claims that, "The rick human being is simultaneously the human being in need of a totality of manifestations of life—the man in whom his own realization exists as an inner necessity, as need" (1977:99), and that "man in the entire richness of his being—produces the rich man profoundly endowed with all lhe senses" (1977:97).
To put it simply, ontological authenticity is about the "real individual life". But what is the real—and hence authentic—life? According to Marx, real individual life involves the "entire richness of his being". In other words, real individual life involves the comprehensive development and fulfilment of personal potential. For Marx, such an ontological authenticity is impossible under capitalism because it is characterized by "alienated labor": rather, "real individual life" can only be realized in an ideal society (e.g., communist society) in which the full development of each is the condition of the full development of all, that is to say, the contradiction between the individual and society is abolished. As Marx writes,
Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one:
then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc__Ever)' one of
your relations to man and to nature must be specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life (1977:124).
Thus, according to Marx, personal authenticity (real individual life) entails an ontologically authentic community or society (i.e., human relationships) in which the quest for personal authenticity is no longer at odds with the community or society as a whole. Apart from that, personal authenticity also entails an ontologically authentic human relationship to nature. Thus, authentic inter-human relationships, authentic human-nature relationship, and the authentic self are dialectically interdependent. The realization of each is the condition for the realization of the other two. Therefore, Marx's "real individual life" refers to a broader meaning of ontological authenticity, in which touristic authenticity-seeking would only be a specific instance.
Ontological (existential) inauthenticity is a malaise found in modernity. Such ontological inauthenticity has found many expressions in modern    social    theories.    Marx's    "alienation",    Weber's    "iron    cage",
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity        63
Durkheim's "anomie", Simmel's "estrangement" in the money economy, Marcuse's "one-dimensional man", Camus's "absurdity". Habermas's "the colonization of lifeworld", and so on are all examples.
Modernity refers to the new social order of the last two or three centuries. From an institutional perspective, modernity—as embodied in capitalism (Marx), industrialism (Durkheim), and formally rationalized bureaucracy (Weber)—is a structural foundation that is responsible for the loss of existential authenticity. The range of loss is broad, including the loss of authenticity from human relationships (the loss of community), human-nature relationships (the loss of natural nature), and intrapersonal relationships (the loss of self), which can be schematically illustrated (Table 3.2).
Table 3.2 indicates the following. First, the capitalist system of commodity production is characterized by the "relations of production" in which the owners of private capital exploit the non-owners who sell their labor for wages (Marx 1954). This impersonal, contractual, and interest-calculated relationship between the owners of private capital and the non-owners has destroyed the traditional, spontaneous, and authentic community in which, ideal-typicallv speaking, a kind of "social authenticity" is embedded. In capitalist economic relations which entail the "com-moditization of labor power", human relationships are certainly no longer authentic. Thus, authentic human relationships must be sought outside the economic system, in the private sphere, in an emotional community, and so on. Second, formally rationalized organizations (Weber), as exhibited in the state and business sectors, impose strict labor disciplines upon individuals which may be at odds with their "real" wishes or unconscious intentions. To adapt to organizational and environmental pressures, individuals must accept strict self-constraint at the expense of (or at least part of) their spontaneity, impulses,
Table 3.2. Institutional Modernity and Ontological Inauthenticity
Institutional modernity
Dimensions
Ontological inauthenticity
Capitalism (Marx)
Formally rationalized organizations (Weber)
Industrialism (Durkheim)
Inter-personal
relationships
Intra-pcrsonal relationships (reason and emotions) Humanity-nature relationships
Instrunientalization and comniodification of human relationships split of self; self-constraints; self-masking
Technological environments, man estranged from nature, environmental crises
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and desires. Thus, the formally rationalized organization may give rise to a feeling of loss of personal authenticity. Third, industrialism, as a form of modern inanimate or technological power over nature, multiplies human productivity (Durkheim). However, in so doing, it brings about "risks" and dangers of its own (Beck 1992). As a result, humans have lost an authentic relationship with nature.
What underlies these three mainstream institutions of modernity (capitalism, industrialism, and the formally rationalized organisation) is the principle of the "primacy of instrumental reason" (Taylor 1991). About instrumental reason, Bauman writes:
the modern way of acting is described as rational: dictated by instrumental reason, which measures the actual results againsi the intended end and calculates the expenditure of resources and labor. The catch, however, is that not all cosis are included in the calculation—only those that are born by the actors themselves; and not all results are monitored—only those that are relevant to the set task as defined by or for the actors. If. on the other hand, all losses and gains were taken into account ... the superiority of the modern way of doing things would look less certain. It might well transpire that the ultimate outcome of the multitude of partial and separate rational actions is more, not less, overall irrationality (Bauman 1990b: 193-194).
Therefore, although the institutional complex of modernity brings about extraordinary material, organizational, and intellectual achievements, it is essentially ambivalent. The institutional complex of modernity supplies people with affluence, freedom, and social order, but also leads to the loss of authenticity in the dimension of their relation to others, to nature, and to themselves.
^Howevec/to say that modernity leads to ontological inauthenticity should not imply that modernity is totally evil. On the contrary, given that any society is both "evil" and "good", or enabling as well as constraining in Giddens's (1979) sensCytÓodernity, especially late modernity, is the most enabling and liberating institutional order that human beings have found so far, although it is also constraining. Self-evidently, complaints against the dark side of modernity are made on the basis of a basic satisfaction with the living conditions altered by modernity^ People from the Third World emigrate to advanced societies because they want to have immediate access or a short-cut to the condition of modernity, which is thought of as better than the conditions found in their own countries. By contrast, people in developed countries are eventually satisfied with their own societies (Brunei" 1991:240). Therefore, it is more correct to say that modernity is ambivalent. It is this ambivalence at the heart of modernity that tourism has to confront.
Modernity, especially late modernity, has triumphed because most people prefer it to a traditional form of life. "The achievements of mod-
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity       65
entity in human liberation and culture are obvious even though it is fashionable today to emphasise the bad results of many modern strategies" (Kolb 1986:260-261). However, as modernity progresses its discontents grow as well, partly because of its existential inauthenticity. The emergence of such discontents implies that something needs to be changed. Obviously, if one cannot expect a total change of the project of modernity as a whole, then the immediate and simplest solution is to leave the home environment. /"For someone who dreams of changing lives, of changing life, travel is the simplest approach" (Toclorov 1993:271). Thus, modern people like travel. Of course, the concrete purposes of travel are various and innumerable, but in a most common meaning travel has been implicitly adopted as an action that resists the condition of existential inauthenticity/
Arising from this resistance to the ontological inauthenticity of modernity is a sense of existential authenticity. Modern people travel away from home in order to "forget" or "escape" the malaise of modernity by entering an alternative, fantastic, and separate world. Tourism is one way of accessing existential authenticity since it resists the logic and ethic of everyday reality and offers an intensified and concentrated experience of an alternative Being-in-the-world. If daily reality is characterized by complexity, artificiality, and self-constraint, in short, ontological inauthenticity, then tourism provides access to a socially and culturally constructed "Utopian" world in which people legitimately experience simplicity, naturalness, and "communitas" (Turner 1973). Although tourism is about a "Utopian" or "fantastic" world, it is a make-believe world. If tourists think that they have achieved a sense of personal, interpersonal, and human-nature authenticity, then their feelings are ontologically real to themselves. How tourists seek and experience their personal and interpersonal authenticity will be discussed in turn below. The experience of authentic human-nature relationships in tourism will be discussed in the next chapter in relation to ihe technological environment of modernity.
Concretizing Existential Authenticity in Tourism Experiences
Analytically speaking, .existential authenticity can be divided into two different dimensions: mira-personal authenticity and inter-personal authenticity. Both can be achieved by means of tourism! As previously indicated, nature, as a space signifying freedom from the structural constraints of society, is most often toured and used as a medium to help learning about a sense of authentic self or intersubjective authenticity.
66        Tourism and Modernity
Intra-personal Authenticity in Touristic Experiences
Bodily Feelings. Obviously, the intra-personal dimension of existential authenticity involves bodily feelings. The body or concern for the body has recently attracted wide academic attention, partly as a reaction to the dominance and longevity of the Cartesian-Kantian tradition which enhances the status of mincl at the expense of body ./Concern for the body is also thought of as an important aspect of tourism/(Veijola and Jokinen 1994). Relaxation, rehabilitation, diversion, recreation, entertainment, refreshment, sensation-seeking, sensual pleasures, excitement, play, and so on are all bodily experiences (Cohen 1979b, 1985; Lett 19S3; Mergen 1986). Touristic search for bodily pleasure also exhibits the characteristics of a ritual, that is, the recreation ritual (Graburn 1983a: 15). Roughly speaking, concern for the body has of two aspects: the sensual and the symbolic. Whereas the latier comprises the culture or sign-system of the body (Featherstone el al 1991), the former involves bodily feelings: On the one hand, in relation to the culture of the body, the body becomes a "display" of personal identity (health, naturalness, youth, vigor, vitality, fitness, movement, beauty, energy, leisure class, taste, distinction, romance, etc.) (Bourdieu 1984; Feathersione 1991a: Rojek 1993). On the other hand, the body is the primary organ of sensibility or feeling. Thus, the body is the inner source of feelings and sensual pleasure. In this seii.se.the body is not merely a corporate substance but also a "body-subject" or the "feeling-subject" (Seaman 1979).
The body is a battlefield. Control and manipulation of the body gives rise to power (Foucault 1977). Part of the power that modernity has over the body comes from the surveillance of a population (Giddens 1990). Another aspect of this derives from time-space structures relating to work and the division of labor (Lefebvre 1991). The commodification of labor power entails the disciplines of labor and the regular presence of the body (the bearer of labor power) in certain structured spatio-temporal areas (workdays and workspace). In both situations, self-control of bodily drives and impulses is necessary.
The power derived from control over the body in the latter sense results in an experience of existential «(authenticity. In other words, existential inauthenticity or alienation is not only spiritual but also bodily. Therefore, concern with bodily feeling is in fact concern with the bodily, or intra-personal. source of the "authentic self' There is no better place than the beach to illustrate bodily concern with the authentic self. On the one hand, in this setting the body shows that it is relaxed and not limited by bodily control or self-control imposed by social structures or the superego. On the other hand, the body alters its routine existence and enters an alternative, yet intensified, experiential state: recreation, diversion, entertainment, spontaneity, playfulness, in short authenticity in the exis-
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity        67
tential sense, Lefebvre's description of the body on the beach is worth quoting at length here:
The beach is the only place of enjoyment that the human species has discovered in nature. Thanks to its sensory organs, from the sense of smell and from sexuality to sight (without any special emphasis being placed on the visual sphere), the body tends to behave as a differential field, II behaves, in other words, as a total body, breaking out of the temporal and spatial shell developed in response to labor, to the division of labor, 10 the localizing of work and the specialization of places. In its tendency, the body asserts itself more (and better) as "subject" and as "object" than as "subjectivity" (in die classical philosophical sense) and as "objectivity" (fragmented in every way, distorted by the visual, by images, etc.) (1991:384).
Thus, a beach holiday, as a specilic form of tourism, illustrates the bodily source of the "authentic sell". Whereas in labor and the division of labor the body is the object of self-control, self-constraint, and organizational manipulation* in tourism the body becomes a "subject" in its own right. That is to say, tourism involves a bodily experience of personal authenticity. In tourism, sensual pleasures, feelings, and other bodily impulses are to a relatively large exlent released and consumed, and the bodily desires (for natural amenities, sexual freedom, and spontaneity) are gratified intensively. In short, all these aspects of tourism constitute an "ontological manifesto" for personal authenticity, However, such bodily sources of "authentic self' can only be explored for a relatively short period of time. They can also only be realized as peak experiences with certain bodily constraints relating to the journey as a necessary cost. They exist as the attractiveness of holiday-making because of their non-everydayness. In turn, their extra-ordinariness serves to restore the order of everydayness that the mainstream institutions of modernity entail.
"Self-making". The touristic experiences of-inua-personal authenticity involve "self-making" or self- identity, /Self-making is an implicit dimension underlying the motivation for tourism, particularly for traveling off the beaten track (e.g., adventure). For many individuals, work and everyday roles impose constraining and monotonous routines in which it is difficult to pursue self-realization. Lasch claims that, modernity has rationalized almost all human activities, and that Ulis rationalization
Leavefs] little room for the spirit of arbitrary invention or the disposition lo leave things to chance. Risk, daring, and uncertainly—important components of play—have no place in industry or in activities infiltrated by industrial standards, which seek precisely lo predict and control the future and to eliminate risk (1979:102).
Consequently, such routinization and over-predictability give rise to the "feeling of loss" (Giddens 1990:98). Thus, if individuals cannot realize
68        Tourism and Modernity
their authentic selves in everyday life, then they are liable to turn to travel or adventure in order to attain this goal (of course this does not imply that nobody can find self-fulfillment in work or routine life);' For example, mountaineers find their alternative selves through searching for challenges from the peaks they climb by matching these with their abilities. These challenges, rare in everyday life, lead to the trial of the self. Thus, by overcoming these challenges a new self is made, which is exhibited in the "flow" experience (Csikszentmihalyi 1975) stemming from mountain climbing (Mitchell 1983. 1988). A similar experience is also exemplified by ocean cruising, in which people "forsake the security and safety of land-based life lor the formidable challenges of ocean and weather", and thus attempt self- creation by seeking suitable challenges in nature and from adventures (Macbeth 1988:214). Indeed, many individuals are dissatisfied with the mundane quality of their everyday lives and thus seek extra-mundane experiences from adventures (Vester 1987). As a result, adventure becomes "a form of leisure, and "plays a significant part in providing an opportunity to compensate for the boredom and lack of authenticity felt in ordinary life" (1987:238). It is a "sensual transcendence" of routine life (1987:239).
Inter-personal Authenticity in Tourist Experiences
In addition to inira-personal authenticity, tourists also search for interpersonal authenticity. Tönnies's thesis that "association" replaces "community" implies the end of "social authenticity" (Fornäs 1995) or "natural sociality" (Maffesoli 1996:80), which is seen as a characteristic of the traditional or emotional community. In other words, in modernity structural areas such as the state and market put an end to "social authenticity". Indeed, various cultural practices aiming at intimacy, friendship, or sociality in modernity can be regarded as actions against the inauthen-ticity of institutional modernity and as a quest for inter-personal authenticity/For example, Maffesoli (1996) has described how various contemporary cultural "tribes" are searching for the experiences of the "emotional community", i.e., a kind of existential authenticity involved in the dimension of inter-human relationships./Tourists are not merely searching for authenticity of the Other. They are also looking for the authenticity of, and between, themselves. Toured objects, or tourism, can be just a means or medium by which tourists are called together/ and an authentic inter-personal relationship between themselves is experienced subsequently.
Travel in the company offamily/Tamuy tourism is a typical example of experiencing inter-personal authenticity/For Berger (1973:87),^f the family is a major private sphere for modern individuals to experience
Modernity and the Tourism of Authenticity        69
their "true selves", then family tourism is a peak and ritual experience of such existentially authentic family relationships. From most tourists' personal point of view a holiday is a chance for a primary tourist group, such as the family, to achieve or reinforce a sense of authentic togetherness and an authentic "we-relationship''. As Rousseau points out, the relationship between a mother and her child is most authentic. For many families a holiday is to a significant extent taken for the happiness of the children, or is "determined by the whims and emergencies of the children" (Stephen 1990:152). It is. thus, a ritual celebrating this authentic family relationship./Ih recreational travel people not only gain pleasure from seeing sights, events or performances, but also simultaneously experience intensely authentic, natural, and emotional bonds, and real intimacy in family relationship/.
Touristic "communitas". Tourism also provides access to authentically experienced "communitas" in a Turnerian sense. According to Turner (1973), when pilgrims make their journey they are looking for the center that is endowed with most sacred values and charged with high emotions. They simultaneously enter communitas. Communitas is characterized by "liminality", which re_fers to "any condition outside or on the peripheries of everyday life/(Turner 1974:47), that is, any condition that is not concerned with die obligatory tasks (e.g., economic, political tasks) of everyday life./Communitas occurs as an unme-diated, "pure", inter-personal relationship between pilgrims who confront one another as social equals based on their common humanity. In communitas, structures fall apart and differences arising out of institutionalized socioeconomic and sociopolitical positions, roles, and status disappear. Instead, a pilgrim experiences "a spontaneous generated relationship between levelled and equal total and individuated, human beings, stripped of structural attributes" (Turner 1973:216). and "knows only harmonies and no disharmonies or conflict" (1973:221). According to Turner, what has been said about the pilgrim is to a large extent applicable to the tourist, for the tourist's journey can, in a sense, be regarded as a form of rite of passage, as a quasi-pilgrimage/(Turner and Turner 1978) (for a similar view see Graburn 1983a, 1989; MacCannell 1973). Such an experience of communitas in tourism is exemplified by Lett's ethnographic study of charter yacht tourism in the Caribbean:
Charter yachi tourists rarely make reference lo their social or occupational siauus at home. They typically introduce themselves to their fellow tourists by their first names only. Titles of address are seldom used. The charter yacht tourists have left behind most of the possessions that they customarily use to indicate their social and economic status, including automobiles, houses, clothing, and jewellery. In the British Virgin Islands, most of the charter yacht tourists maintain equivalent levels of
70        Tourism and Modernity
consumption. They rent similar yachts, wear similar bathing suits, shop in the same provisioning stores, and buy fuel at the same marinas (1983: 47-48).
In such an ambience tourists can ease themselves of the pressures stemming from the "inauthentic" social hierarchy and status distinctions. Instead, they approach one another in natural, friendly, and authentic ways. Lett continues,
The charter yacht tourists exhibit none of the reluctance to approach and greet strangers that is commonly associated with middle-class U.S. society. Instead, charter yacht tourists are unguarded, open, and even aggressively friendly towards one another (1983:48).
To the extent that tourism supplies possibilities for communitas. tourism makes it relatively easy for people to make new friends. In his ethnographic study of American tourists visiting Indonesia. Brunei" observes that to experience the friendship of a tour group is "one of the most important things about the entire experience" (1995:230). Thus, even after returning home from the package tour, many members of a tour group continue to keep in touch with each other and maintain their friendships. Indeed, a package tour supplies a relaxed ambience and a relatively concentrated period of time for intensive sociality and emotional interaction. This situation brings not only the pleasure of seeing exotic sights, but also pleasure in seeing these sights in the. context, of the lour grou/>.(BmneY 1995). In other words, the pleasure of tourism consists not only of seeing exotic things, but also of sharing and communicating this pleasure with other tourists who are seeing the same sights together. Indeed, as Urry claims, a holiday experience cannot simply be reduced to the experience of objects and services purchased (e.g., ice creams, a flight to Majorca), since it includes a particular social experience which involves consuming particular commodities "in the company of others" (Urry 1990b:25). "Part of what people buy is in effect a particular social composition of other consumers.' Thus, "it is crucial to recognise how the consumption of tourist services is social. It normally involves a particular social grouping, a 'family household', a 'couple', or a 'group'"(1990b:25). In short, tourism is a form of consuming a particular social ambience and experience.
In summary, while objectivists, constructivists, and postmodernists argue about whether and how loured objects are experienced as authentic, it is suggested here that, even when toured objects are totally inauthentic, authenticity-seeking is still possible because tourists can seek an alternative, namely existential authenticity, which is activated by their activities. In addition to conventional objective authenticity and constructive authenticity, existential authenticity is a justifiable alter-
Modemity and the Tourism of Authenticity       71
native source of authentic experiences in tourism. In a number of kinds of tourism such as nature tourism, landscape tourism, green tourism, holidays on the beach, ocean cruising, hobby tourism, adventures, family vacations, visiting friends and relatives, and so on, what tourists seek are their own authentic selves or inter-subjective authenticity, and the issue of whether toured objects are authentic is irrelevant, or less relevant. As the category of existential authenticity can explain a wider spectrum of tourist phenomena than the conventional concept of authenticity, it therefore opens up broad prospects for the trustification of "authenticity-seeking" as the foundation of tourist motivation. Furthermore, authenticity-seeking in tourism is explained sociologically in relation to the wider context of modernit)- in which authenticity arises as a modern value and concern. Tourism is thus one of forms of quest for authenticity in response to the structural inauthenticity of modernity.
In this chapter, the limits of objective and constructive authenticities have been exposed. However, their relevance to tourism is not negated altogether. Further efforts need to be made to discover the empirical relationships between objective, constructive (or symbolic), and existential authenticities, the extent to which each of these authenticities is the major concern of tourists, and the reasons why certain tourists prefer one kind of authenticity over others.
/From an economic perspective, tourism is, in a sense, an industry of authenticity. Tourism involves both the supply and consumption of the commodity of authentic experiences. Existential authenticity becomes a commodity, or a commoditized experience, only in the context of modernity. Existential authenticity' is thus commercially transformed into the packaged experience of "sun, sand, surf, and sex", of the Garden of Eden, the idyllic rustic life, and so on. All these offerings are culturally sanctioned and socially constructed. Existential authenticity is indeed an implicit selling point of the products of tourism. In this sense, tourism is a "dream industry", and buying a holiday is buying a chance to have a dream come true. Thus, metaphorically speaking, modernity uses one hand to lake people to existentially inauthentic situations, but at the same time it uses the Other hand to show pictures of a dream which promises people "salvation" and, as a result, keeps them in its tracks/