Souvenirs

The Material Cultre of Tourism

Michael Hitchcock, Ken Teague

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138733978
• eBook ISBN: 9781351740142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2000: Souvenirs, broadly conceived, are generally thought to be the material counterpart of travels, events, relationships and memories of all kinds. The material items classed as souvenirs discussed in this text have memorial functions, usually connected with the owner's travels. But not all of the items are souvenirs of tourism; they are also souvenirs of other past phenomena, such as political events (suffragettes), colonial history (India), former artistic pre-eminence (Awaji Ningyo puppetry) or former ways of life (South American ceramic archaisms). The authors do not necessarily focus on material souvenirs in their memorial function as prompters of memory. They also use their case studies as starting points for the discussion of many interesting contemporary phenomena, such as cottage industries for economic development in Mexico and Ainu, as devices to invigorate or maintain artistic practices, as emblems of cultural conformity (Surrealists) or as symbolic weapons in national and international political arguments. A key focus of many of the chapters is the question of meaning: what is the meaning of any particular souvenir or collection, and for whom does it bear that meaning?

1 Introduction

MICHAEL HITCHCOCK

Souvenirs are mementos of places and occasions and, though often regarded as ephemeral, may be counted among the most valued items acquired by international tourists during a vacation (Littrell, 1990, p. 229). Items purchased on holiday are meaningful and are often more than simple mementos of time and place. Souvenirs acquired during a holiday are associated with the travel experience, but are also linked to a generalized image of a culture, or even a specific town or village. Many tourists read around the subject to find out more about their purchases, and some become specialist collectors and experts. Specialist tours involving handicrafts form a small but increasingly important niche market. Other tourists are oriented towards clothing and ready to wear jewellery as expressions of taste and identity.

The essays in this volume suggest that souvenirs, though often difficult for museums to categorize, are not simply 'messengers of the extraordinary' (Gordon, 1986). It is as significant to know what a souvenir is as to appreciate how it is perceived. It is as important to know how authenticity is constructed as it is to enquire whether or not a souvenir is genuine. Different social worlds are connected through the production, sale and purchase of souvenirs and at each point of interaction meanings and identities may be negotiated. The evolution of souvenir arts is not a simple unilinear process, either as degeneration of traditional art form on one hand or as transformation to a modern art on the other (Cohen, 1993a, p. 2).

Historically, handicrafts satisfied the functional and ceremonial needs of societies that were not closely integrated into market economies. Improved transportation and distribution systems have enabled mass produced goods to penetrate these societies. Changes in buying patterns have lead to a loss of income among craftsmen and women in the developing world, and economic necessity has forced many of them to search for alternative markets (Popelka and Littrell, 1991, p. 393). Tourism is clearly important in this context since the developing world's share of receipts from tourism may be as high as 26 per cent (Sinclair and Asrat, 1990, p. 496). There are, however, difficulties associated with modifying traditional goods and developing new ones for customers such as tourists. Producers understand the needs and preferences of their own societies, but these criteria cannot invariably be applied to customers from other cultures (Graburn, 1982).

The body of literature concerning souvenirs is diverse and it would be reasonable to suggest that all the major disciplines in the humanities and social science have at some point considered this topic. An overarching cross-disciplinary analysis, though undoubtedly worthwhile, lies beyond the confines of this volume and it is the intention of this chapter to concentrate on the related subject fields of sociology, anthropology and museum ethnography. Even within these cognate disciplines discussions concerning souvenirs are highly eclectic, but what is significant about this volume is that many of the papers take as their starting point the edited volume entitled Ethnic and Tourist Arts (Graburn, 1976). Before the appearance of this volume many commentators tended to disparage the study of tourist arts as a legitimate field of anthropological and sociological investigation (Cohen, 1993a, p. 1). The publication of Graburn's book marks the start of more objective and substantive research as is confirmed by the growing number of books and articles devoted to this field of enquiry.

Given the orientation of much of this volume, the purpose of this introduction is to help contextualize Graburn's own work and the papers that engage with him. In a chapter which appears in the Ashgate volume that precedes this one, Building on Batik, Graburn provides some observations that can serve as a opening for this collection of papers. Drawing on his work among the Inuit, he describes how the indigenous people of the Canadian and American Arctic were drawn into the world system as trappers; only later did tourism become important. They produce souvenirs to satisfy the following quite different demands. First, they provide buyers with attractive arts and crafts. Second, they strive to control the outside world's image of themselves. Third, they aim to be commercially viable in an increasingly competitive world. Running through these observations are a number of related questions which, for the sake of convenience, can be divided into four themes that help to orientate this book: authenticity, identity, consumption and commodification, and development.

Authenticity

Souvenirs are signs of the tourist's travels and are thus often taken as tangible proof of where he or she has been. In these contexts it is perhaps not surprising that many of questions that have been asked about souvenirs should concern authenticity. Some authors take as a starting point a paper by Dean MacCannell which attracted attention when it was published in 1973. The article was later developed into a much cited book, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1976). These publications may partly be understood as a reaction to Boorstin's (1964) cautionary perspective that just as the mass media create and maintain celebrities for mass consumption, tourism provides pseudo events and inauthentic attractions and destinations for credulous consumers. MacCannell agrees with Boorstin concerning the pervasive inauthenticity of contemporary life and attendant alienation, but disagrees with regard to the motives of the tourist in this context. In contrast MacCannell argues that the tourist is in search of the authentic, but is forced to seek it in other times and places, in a manner that resembles the pre-modern quest for the sacred. Thus the tourist may be characterized as a kind of pilgrim paying his respects to the numerous attractions of the secular world. The tourist industry, according to MacCannell, impedes this sacred quest by creating a tourist space from which there is no escape.

The sacred journey idea was developed further by Nelson Graburn who argues that tourism comprised 'structurally necessary' ritual breaks to the routine that characterizes ordinary experience (1977). Tourism functions outside ordinary time as the secular equivalent of religion. Leaving behind the mundane, the tourist passes through a series of rites of passage, crossing the threshold of the sacred, eventually returning home anew. The journey may be likened to the spiritual death and rebirth that characterizes baptism and pilgrimage. The related perspectives of MacCannell and Graburn are not without their critics, not least of the slightly strange notions that tourism supplies the symbols which makes modern life meaningful on one hand and that tourists search for authenticity in order to engage more closely with society on the other.

Questions concerning authenticity have been the subject of a number of celebrated essays in the social sciences, not all of which directly concern tourism and souvenirs. One of the most frequently cited authors is Baudrillard, especially with regard to his writings on simulation, simulacres and Disneyland (1981). Put simply, his main thesis is that simulacra and simulations replace the real thing. Disneyland is deliberately presented as imaginary in an attempt to persuade us to accept Los Angeles and the surrounding state of America as real. This is necessary, according to Baudrillard, because the surrounding America is itself no longer real, and has instead become hyperreal. A similar stance has been adopted by Umberto Eco in a series of papers that are known as Travels in Hyperreality (1986). Eco advances the controversial view when referring to copies of Old Masters and reconstructions of historic scenes that the fake is so good that the consumer no longer feels the need for the original. This is essentially a critique of the American use of technology in simulation, but as Graburn has suggested, it is absurd for Eco and Baudrillard to find hyperreality only in the USA when their countries of origin are replete with substantial and realistic images of religious and mythological origin - just like Disney.

It is not the intention here to document the cut and thrust of this debate, but to draw attention to the what light these perspectives may shed upon the study of souvenirs. In order to illustrate how best to proceed, it is useful to make two opening remarks. First, souvenirs are intimately connected with the idea of pilgrimage and this applies as much to Western religions such as Christianity as to eastern ones such as Buddhism (see Teague, 1997, p. 183). As the chapters by Houlihan and Scarce show, pilgrimage and tourism in the late twentieth century can easily coexist alongside one another. Second, the tourism industry does provide consumables such as souvenirs, but whether or not gullible tourists assume that they are authentic remains a moot point. Souvenirs are mementos of the out of ordinary experience of the holiday and as such may be likened to holiday photographs, but they are also a great deal more besides.

In the absence of sustained and comparative research on an international scale the response of tourists to souvenirs is difficult to gauge accurately, though some recurring themes may be identified. Littrell, Anderson and Brown, for example, argue that authenticity is usually defined by the tourists who often places emphasis on the handmade, particularly with regard to quality and the time invested in its manufacture (1993, p. 205). These purchases not only evoke memories of the special people encountered on a holiday, but may also be considered to be objects that stand as generalized symbols of the developing world. For one of Littrell's respondents study, the souvenir was not so much valued for its authenticity, but because of its strong empathetic response to the artisan as a representative of the poorer people of the world (1990, p. 238). A similar theme is addressed by Graburn, who argues that many tourist arts depend for their appeal of a definable ethnicity, an expression of the perceived cultural difference between the tourist and the person living in the tourist destination, the touree (1987, p. 396).

As Dougoud argues in this volume, what many tourists appear to be seeking in New Guinea is a set of qualities that correspond to their idea of a traditional primitive life. Tourists seem to ignore evidence of encounters with modernity, but tourees know this and thus make their objects more authentically primitive, according to the codes of this interaction, in order to convey these messages. The resuscitation of ancient crafts, particularly around important archaeological sites, is also a feature of souvenir production. The artisans may have little historical connection with the ancient culture which produced the prototypes that they copy. The goods that they learn to produce are often sold as antiques and, indeed, 'antiquing' has become a style of manufacture (Cohen, 1993a, p. 3).

The authenticity of the artefact is linked by purchasers to the perceived authenticity of the experience. The purchase of the souvenir, as is noted by Evans, often represents the only interaction between the tourist and the touree beyond the confines of the hospitality industry.

The person with whom the tourist interacts in the marketplace is often assumed to have a close cultural link to the items being sold, but this is not necessarily the case. Souvenirs move along the hub and spoke distribution systems of market economies and may involve quite different producers and retailers. Goods drawn from the length and breadth of the vast Indonesian archipelago may, for example, be purchased in Kuta Beach, Bali, often without any information whence they came. Production may also be delegated to a client group such as the Zapotec/Mixtec who work in the style of the Dineh (Navaho). Sometimes ethnic groups become so closely associated with particular kinds of goods and services that others cash in on their reputation. Much of the trade in Sumba textiles has little to do with the island of that name and originates in factories in Java where cheap copies are mass produced.

Deirdre Evans Pritchard adds, moreover, that the items bought by tourists are often judged by the yardstick of what is in museums or private collections (1989). This is a problematic issue as far as this volume is concerned since many items of great aesthetic and ethnographic value in Western museums were originally collected as souvenirs. It is not only the tourists who orientate themselves by museum collections, but also many producers. As Wilkinson notes, museum objects are used by many Ainu as points of reference and other indigenous peoples elsewhere doubtless do the same. As the contributors to this volume acknowledge, the existence of such objects in museums is problematic. Within many museums no sharp line is drawn between archaeology and anthropology, and many place material from contemporary cultures in what is now referred to as the 'developing world' alongside ancient cultures. Many of these artefacts were collected by travellers and tourists and have at least a partial history as souvenirs. Some are nothing but souvenirs.

Fascination with ancient artefacts and curios of the kind seen in museums and historic sites is stimulated by emotional responses to the past and the attendant social attitudes (Evans Pritchard, 1993, p. 14). The relationship between tourism and the collection of antiquities is not solely a twentieth century phenomenon. Marketing the past has long been well established in tourism, especially with regard to the Grand Tour. The authenticity of religious relics came under attack in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, and the void was filled by a demand for antiquities (ibid., p. 15). The collection of arts and curiosities is not simply a Western phenomenon, but the pervasive attitudes towards the past that influence modern tourism have European and American origins. The commodification of the past through the antiquities market for tourists and collectors has helped to shape the growing heritage industry (Cohen, 1993, p. 6).

Identity

Tourism does not invariably bring different peoples into contact with one another, though it is often assumed that tourists are attracted to exotically different societies (Wood, 1997, p. 19). The idea that tourism does do this remains, however, a dominant feature of the modern global industry. Many tourists, even when visiting a foreign land, may not stray much beyond the boundaries of the hospitality sector, but if they do so, it may often be in context of buying souvenirs. There is also a demand within global tourism for access to what are perceived as ethnically distinct cultures which van den Berghe has characterized as the 'search for the other', the quest for the 'ethnically exotic, in as untouched, pristine, authentic form' as can be found (1994, p. 8). Destination activities for tourists interested in these kinds of cultural attractions may include '... visits to native homes and villages, observation of dances and ceremonies, shopping for primitive wares and curios ...'(Smith, 1989, p. 4). For some this may be the main purpose of the holiday, whereas for others it comprises a minor part of a wider itinerary.

In his...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Souvenirs with Soul: 800 Years of Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela
• 3 Tourism and Material Culture in Turkey
• 4 Reproducing India: International Exhibitions and Victorian Tourism
• 5 From Earliest Contacts: An Examination of Inuit and Aleut Art in Scottish Collections
• 6 Exotic Souvenirs of the Travelling Surrealists
• 7 Women's Suffrage Souvenirs
• 8 'Souvenir-gifts' as Tokens of Filial Esteem: The Meanings of Blackpool Souvenirs
• 9 Transformations of the Tourist and Souvenir: The Travels and Collections of Philla Davis
• 10 Contemporary Crafts as Souvenirs, Artefacts and Functional Goods and their Role in Local Economic Diversification and Cultural Development
• 11 Tourism and Ainu Identity, Hokkaido, Northern Japan
• 12 Awaji Ningyo: Its Changing Role Within a Local, National and International Community
• 13 Stealing Souls for Souvenirs: Or Why Tourists Want 'the Real Thing'
• 14 Tourist Markets and Himalayan Craftsmen
• 15 Ceramic Arts of Peru and Ecuador: Echoes of the Prehispanic Past and Influences of the Tourist Present
• 16 Souvenirs from Kambot (Papua New Guinea): The Sacred Search for Authenticity
• 17 Souvenirs, Ethics and Aesthetics: Some Contemporary Dilemmas in the South Pacific
• 18 Kente Connections: The Role of the Internet in Developing an Economic Base for Ghana
• 19 Dalecarlian Masques: One Souvenir's Many Voices
• 20 The 'Whimsey': A Part of American and Canadian Victoriana