Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society

J. Patrick Williams, Phillip Vannini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351956659
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Across sociology and cultural studies in particular, the concept of authenticity has begun to occupy a central role, yet in spite of its popularity as an ideal and philosophical value authenticity notably suffers from a certain vagueness, with work in this area tending to borrow ideas from outside of sociology, whilst failing to present empirical studies which centre on the concept itself. Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society addresses the problems surrounding this concept, offering a sociological analysis of it for the first time in order to provide readers in the social and cultural sciences with a clear conceptualization of authenticity and with a survey of original empirical studies focused on its experience, negotiation, and social relevance at the levels of self, culture and specific social settings.

Chapter 1

Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society

Phillip Vannini and J. Patrick Williams

Framing Authenticity

In their 2007 book entitled Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, James Gilmore and Joseph Pine argue that contemporary industrial and information societies are being commodified and virtualized, with everyday life becoming saturated with “toxic levels of inauthenticity [that] we’re forced to breathe” (43). The authors cite a variety of issues to support their claim, including the ideas that most of the emails we get are not from people we know or feel we should trust; less news comes from the first-hand accounts of journalists in the field, but is rather recycled in the blogosphere; previously unnecessary terms such as “real person” have emerged in the field of customer service to describe who we are trying to reach; friends are not “really” friends unless we confirm them on our MySpace or Facebook accounts. Their list goes on with an underlying theme rooted in technology and consumption: namely, contemporary shifts in mediated reality and experience are pushing consumer populations to yearn for authenticity.

For the sociologically mindful, questions quickly emerge from reading their claims. How can the alleged crisis of (in)authenticity be empirically studied, and in what ways are individuals and groups being affected—emotionally, psychologically, socially, spiritually? And perhaps more basically, are the processes they describe really creating “toxic levels” of inauthenticity? How does one measure that toxicity? Or asked differently, how does one distinguish the authentic from the inauthentic, the real from the fake, the genuine from the fraudulent, the true from the false? In order to decide whether such questions can even be answered, we must first ask a more basic question. What is authenticity?

Each of these questions require care in answering, for recent decades have witnessed the growth of a schism in how social scientists understand the very nature of social reality, and thus the nature of authenticity itself. Much of traditional sociology has approached the world from a realist perspective that assumes the obdurateness of reality and social facts. Gender, race, and other social phenomena are considered real in the same way a building is real: no matter how you try, you can’t wish one or the other out of existence. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s (1967) seminal book, The Social Construction of Reality, however, marked a watershed moment in which the underlying assumptions of the realist perspective were called into doubt. Through a precise and sustained critique, they questioned the foundations of the social facts paradigm. Skin color, for example, which had long been assumed to be an objective marker of a racial identity, came to be seen as infinitely variable. Moreover, it became obvious that through language, socialization, and cognition do we go about placing people into arbitrary racial (and other) categories. Over the last forty years, the social constructionist perspective has gained increasing popularity across many social science disciplines.

The realist-constructionist dichotomy relates directly to both academic and lay assumptions about authenticity. To get a sense of a realist perspective, we need look no further than the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). There, authenticity is first defined as being “in accordance with fact, as being true in substance.” Consider recent photo advertisements by two rival vodka makers. Swedish brand Absolut pictures its vodka bottle with a halo above its neck and the description “Absolut perfection” below, while in a competing ad a bottle of Russia’s Stolichnaya vodka (complete with its display of four gold medals) is presented underneath the slogan “Choose authenticity.” Both advertisements promote the sense that their product is authentic vodka, unblemished and true in substance. Of course, the question of whether the Swedes or the Russians make a more authentic vodka remains unanswered. The OED also defines authenticity “as being what it professes in origin or authorship; as being genuine.” Fighting against an alleged graduate school curriculum that stifles one’s creativity in lieu of procedural rules, Don Jacobs’ (2008) book, The Authentic Dissertation: Alternative Ways of Knowing, Research, and Representation, offers “a road map for students who want to make their dissertation more than a series of hoop-jumping machinations that cause them to lose the vitality and meaningfulness of their research.”¹ In this second definition we get the sense that authenticity is rooted in creativity and selfexpression rather than in conformity to social forces. A third definition offered by the OED characterizes the authentic as that which is “real, actual.” Here the authentic stands against replicas, pretense, and posing—a narrative common in popular culture, as Gilmore and Pine demonstrate in chapter after chapter of their book. What each of these definitions share in common is the reification of authenticity in everyday culture and discourse. Authenticity is to be understood as an inherent quality of some object, person or process. Because is it inherent, it is neither negotiable nor achievable. Authenticity cannot be stripped away, nor can it be appropriated. In short, the object, person or process in question either is authentic or is not, period.

The ironic part of all this is that contemporary culture industries invest their lifeblood in producing the very authenticity they tell us cannot be manufactured. In his 1997 book, Creating Country Music, Richard Peterson dissects decades of popular music as he explores just this issue—the fabrication of authenticity by profit-seekers. Peterson keys us into the modern myth of authenticity, then deconstructs that myth by arguing that authenticity is a socially constructed phenomenon that shifts across time and space. Peterson’s study is but one of many by sociologists in recent years that critique realist assumptions of authenticity. Yet such work has remained relatively dispersed within sociology until now. Drawing primarily from social constructionism, interpretivism, phenomenology, and symbolic interactionism, the chapters in this book tackle issues such as the experience of authenticity in the context of work and aesthetic production, the construction of authenticity in the formation of collective memory, the value of authenticity in consumer culture, material culture, and music fields, as well as the relation between authenticity and identity, and between insincerity and inauthenticity. Aware and weary of sociology’s realist heritage, the authors collectively advance a balanced and pragmatic vision of the concept of authenticity from a variety of qualitative methodological perspectives.

But the question still remains—what is authenticity. Beyond our belief that authenticity is a socially constructed phenomenon, we recognize that authenticity is “ultimately an evaluative concept, however methodical and value-free many of the methods for establishing it may be” (Van Leeuwen 2001:392). Authenticity may be seen as some sort of ideal, highly valued and sought by individuals and groups as part of the process of becoming. Alternatively, authenticity is often something strategically invoked as a marker of status or method of social control. Authenticity is not so much a state of being as it is the objectification of a process of representation, that is, it refers to a set of qualities that people in a particular time and place have come to agree represent an ideal or exemplar. As culture changes—and with it, tastes, beliefs, values, and practices—so too do definitions of what constitutes the authentic. Authenticity is thus a “moving target” (Peterson 2005:1094). A sociology of authenticity must attend to the socially constructed, evaluative, and mutable character of the concept, as well as its impact on a number of social dimensions. In the remainder of this chapter and the rest of the book, we consider the relevance and significance of authenticity in terms of culture, self, and society. Part 1 focuses on definitional and conceptual issues, on the ontological and epistemological foundations of our interpretivist approach to authenticity, and on authenticity and inauthenticity as values and ideals. Part 2 examines personal authenticity, that is, the authenticity of self and the formation and maintenance of authentic self-concepts, personas, and identities. Finally, Part 3 analyzes authenticity in the context of small groups, subcultures, discourses, and contemporary culture and society at large. In what follows we briefly describe the content and relevance of each chapter and situate it into the background of the relevant literature.

The Concept, Value, and Ideal of Authenticity

Following this introduction, Alessandro Ferrara begins Chapter 2 by outlining three important denotations of authenticity. Authenticity can refer to a moral identity functioning as a source for normativity, to the impetus of the cultural movement toward self-realization typical of the twentieth century (see also Lewin and Williams this volume), and the force of example and the ideal and practice of exemplarity. Ferrara dedicates his attention especially to the latter, which he constructs by drawing a philosophical and theoretical cartography of diverse approaches to authenticity. His cartography maps out a terrain of oppositions between substantialist and intersubjective, centered and decentered, integrative and antagonistic, and spontaneity-based versus reflexivity-based approaches to authenticity. Ferrara’s own inclination is toward a type of authenticity that is fully reflective, as he finds that a reflective view of authenticity best allows one to tap into the cognitive moment of the relation that the self has with itself, into the self’s orientation to knowledge, and the practical moment of commitment to value-based action.

Ferrara’s chapter represents an elaboration, clarification, and follow-up to his influential 1998 publication, Reflective Authenticity. In that seminal monograph Ferrara brought together numerous and diverse strains of philosophical, psychoanalytical, and sociological thought to bear upon the question of authenticity. Ferrara’s vision—in both that book and in this chapter—is to show that the idea and value of authenticity, rather than autonomy, is the quintessential node of modern and Western philosophical thinking. In defending his arguments from critiques and misunderstandings of his earlier work, Ferrara here confirms his view that an approach to self and authenticity based on reflexivity “provide[s] us with ways of thinking of limits to the self-shaping power of the self without either locating these limits outside the self or invoking the dubious notion of an essential self to be true to.”

In Chapter 3 Andrew Weigert reflects on the meaningfulness of personal authenticity. Taking an explicitly interactionist approach Weigert conceptualizes the self as an emergent project, as well as the very creative subject and object of that process. Weigert orients his theoretical attention to the temporal properties of personal authenticity, grounding it into the present from the perspectives of the past and the present and their differing motives and motivational sources. Authenticity is to be found in volitional acts unfolding in problematic situations—and more precisely in those acts which index the self’s motivation to feel and act in congruence with personal values. Weigert further extends authenticity into the territory of hope, which he views as central to self-functioning, to meaning formation, and to individual and collective motivation. In doing so Weigert transcends the micro level of the social psychological dynamics of authenticity. For him authenticity connects into wider dialectics of social responsibility, ameliorative reform, and a growing cosmopolitan consciousness.

Weigert’s primary reference to the authenticity literature is by way of Viktor Gecas (1986, 1991, 1994, 2000, 2001) who—following the lead of Turner (1976; Turner and Schutte 1981)—emphasized the meaningfulness of authenticity for the self-concept and its interlinking with larger cultural processes. Gecas’s key contribution laid in particular in his vision of authenticity as motive and motivating resource that is as essential to the self as the better known self-esteem and self-efficacy. Gecas argued that authenticity can serve as both motive and motivation (also see Franzese this volume; Vannini and Burgess this volume) since both work equally well as operative knowledge of self by the self and as expressions of the self’s sociality and agency. In his writings Gecas also linked authenticity to the culture of modernity and the struggles of both the self and social movements within that period.

Any intelligent reflection on the value of authenticity has to be carried out while keeping in mind the importance of its counterpart: inauthenticity. Inauthenticity is not only inevitable, but, according to Dennis Waskul in Chapter 4, even desirable at times. Inauthenticity, insincerity, or simply the necessity to abandon moral struggles and say “to hell with it!” are common features of everyday life, and even of a good life. To explain this important point Waskul takes the reader through a contrived autoethnographic exploration, a breaching social experiment, and a flight of fancy. As he tries to stay true to himself and others for a full day Waskul finds himself incapacitated by the continuous struggles to define what is authentic and morally honest versus what is inauthentic and socially right. And after angering students, coworkers, and family members with his authentic and sincere ways Waskul concludes that not only is inauthenticity necessary, it is often desirable.

Waskul’s chapter eloquently captures the complexity of dramaturgic approaches to the ideal of authenticity. According to Goffman (1959) we wear masks and perform roles for others not because we fancy ourselves thespian-like histrionic characters, but because our expressive action is first and foremost directed at the maintenance of relationships through the saving of face. From a dramaturgic perspective, therefore, the value of authenticity does not reside in choosing a role with which we feel as little distance as possible. Rather, the value of authenticity and inauthenticity lies in being a “more or less person” rather than one’s own “true self” all the time. A “more or less person” inevitably exists through concealment and information control. A more or less person is an actor that understands that social life demands secrecy and thus a certain measure of insincerity and inauthenticity. In pointing out how acting honestly is conceptually different from acting sincerely, Waskul highlights how there is virtue in inauthenticity and thus how impression management is not the epitome of inauthenticity but the very root of what it means to be a functional, socialized, integrated, and lovable member of society.

Discussions of authenticity and inauthenticity are legion within the ever-expanding field of cultural studies, and especially within the interdisciplinary subfield of subculture studies. Classic ethnographic accounts of music-based subcultures, countercultures, lifestyle enclaves, scenes, or simply peer groups (e.g. Frith 1981) have shown that concerns with authenticity lie at the roots of group membership, group collective identity and values, personal and social identity formation and maintenance, and status (e.g. Coco and Woodward 2007; Levitt and Hiestand 2004; Moore 2004; Riley and Cahill 2005; Widdicombe and Wooffitt 1990; Williams 2006; Williams and Copes 2005). But aside from the more micro-sociological concerns with authenticity as congruence to group ideology and with the personal authenticity of group members, the very existence of subcultures and the great diversity of contemporary lifestyle projects of the self bears testament to the widespread preoccupation with individual self-realization, choice, selfexpression, and con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society
• PART 1: THE VALUE, CONCEPT, AND IDEAL OF AUTHENTICITY
• PART 2: THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND PRACTICE OF AUTHENTICITY
• PART 3: THE INTERACTIONAL PRODUCTION, EXCHANGE, AND CONSUMPTION OF AUTHENTICITY
• Index