Re-Investing Authenticity

Tourism, Place and Emotions

Britta Timm Knudsen, Anne Marit Waade, Britta Timm Knudsen, Anne Marit Waade

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781845411879
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

From the highly influential concept of 'staged authenticity' discussed by Dean MacCannell, to the general claim of longing for authenticity on behalf of all Western consumers, made by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, it is obvious that the concept of authenticity is still worth considering. This ground-breaking book re-thinks and re-invests in the notion of authenticity as a surplus of experiential meaning and feeling that derives from what we do at / in places. In Re-investing Authenticity - Tourism, Place and Emotions international scholars representing a wide range of disciplines, examine contemporary performances of authenticity in travel and tourism practices: From cultural place branding to individual pilgrim performances; from intensified experiences of imaginary crime scenes to the rhetorical features of the encounter with the traumatic and; from photography performing memories of place to experiences of wilderness producing excitement, this book demonstrates how the feeling of authenticity within places is produced.

Chapter 1

Performative Authenticity in Tourism and Spatial Experience: Rethinking the Relations Between Travel, Place and Emotion

BRITTA TIMM KNUDSEN AND ANNE MARIT WAADE

Introduction

As the concept of authenticity continues to haunt consumers and cultures, Pine and Gilmore (2007: xii) argue: 'Now more than ever, the authentic is what consumers really want.' For Pine and Gilmore the craving for authenticity is a reaction to a strong technologically mediatised, commercialised and socially constructed reality. One could think of this 'craving' as a 'longing' for the immediate, non-commercialised, brute natural world, characterised by the real authentic.

In this chapter we suggest that the reaction to, or the longing for, something other than a mediatised, commercialised and socially constructed reality is neither a 'thing' you can possess nor a 'state of mind', but something which people can do and a feeling which is experienced. In this sense, authenticity is performed, and through the term performative authenticity we aim at bridging the two positions that have emerged in tourism studies with respect to the concept of authenticity, namely: objectrelated (authenticity synonymous to original and trace) and subjectrelated modes of authenticity (existential authenticity covering bodily feelings, emotional ties, identity construction and narration related to place). Through the notion of performative authenticity we wish to point to the transitional and transformative processes inherent in the action of authentication in addition to the contradictory position existing between phenomenological and social constructivist perspectives in which meanings and feelings of self and place are both constructed and lived through the sensuous body.

Authentication is taking place in between two entities and expresses the interrelatedness of different entities. Whether one is a performing body or a city/region/country, it is possible to 'authenticate' sites, sights, places and to enhance the tourist's/traveller's understanding and their sense of intimacy, self-reflection and feelings toward their surroundings. The media play an important role in the concept of performative authenticity on several levels. Novels, film, television series and documentaries provide representations of place which can stimulate a 'desire' to visit a destination. Various other forms of in-situ media such as DVD narrations and audio guides, along with personal guides, act to ocument and enhance experience on site. The media in various forms also play a significant role in the communicative afterlife of a site visit. Performative authenticity is related to a striving towards indexical authenticity – a view of the place as the real thing – and it is the relation between these two actions/strivings that we develop further throughout this chapter.

In rethinking the relationships between travel, place and emotion we want to bring tourist-specific discussions into broader interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives, in which representation, spatial practice and emotions are reflected. This book includes empirical as well as theoretical reflections regarding several levels and expressions of authenticity and presents a range of suggestive studies of cases and places both inside and outside the Scandinavian context.

Several topics are raised by the authors in their chapters, regarding authenticity and place. There are five main perspectives represented:

(1)developing new theoretical concepts;

(2)mediatised places;

(3)place performances and rituals;

(4)emotionalised places; and

(5)branded places.

Some of the authors, such as Gran and Jansson, suggest new elements of theory on issues concerning investing in places economically, corporeally, emotionally and symbolically. Regarding the mediatisation of places and how media influence emotions and spatial experience, case studies cover writing about pervasive gaming in Stockholm (Sandvik); travelogues from the Far East (Ringgaard); personal photo narratives from Greenland (Sandbye); and online travelling and Google Earth communities (Linaa Jensen). Even though all of the chapters include, in one way or another, place performances, some of the authors deal with the concept in specific ways, such as Månsson's work on literary tourism to Scotland; Gyimóthy's work on sport tourism in Western Norway; Sjöholm's work on 'murder walks' in the Swedish of Ystad; and Kayser Nielsen's work on the small village Keurru in Finland. Contributors emphasising the emotionalising of places through myths and sacredness include Selberg, who looks at sacred geography in Norway; Klitgaard Povlsen, who examines the myths surrounding the place of Kullaberg in Sweden; and Refslund Christensen and Østergaard, who look at pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Perspectives on place branding are represented in this volume through analyses of: urban design in Copenhagen (Buhl Hornskov); the branding of major cities such as Berlin and Singapore (Ooi and Stöber); the hybridity of Scandinavian place Solvang in California (Pico Larsen); and the project of Global City in Aarhus Denmark (Aagaard). In total the volume represents a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to the study of authenticity and place experience as cultural production from both inside and outside of the Scandinavian context.

In this introductory chapter we examine the claim for 're-investing' authenticity in the light of the broader cultural frameworks of the new economy and discuss the various conceptualisations of authenticity under the following headings before introducing our own term of performative authenticity:

•From sign to intensity – whereby we consider the shift from a sign economy to an affective and intensive economy;

•Emotional geography – where we discuss this term as it is used to characterise experiences of places within the context of globalisation;

•Hunger for reality and the indexical authenticity – where we establish an understanding of the re-investing authenticity claim through a striving for the real;

•Augmented feeling of authenticity – where we position the concept in a more philosophical context.

•Authenticity as a key issue in tourism studies – which presents important conceptualisations of authenticity in tourism studies. We suggest two aspects of performative authenticity, either relating empathetically to the other or connecting affectively to the world.

We believe the re-investment of authenticity expresses a general discursive frame that includes different agents at different levels. Both individuals, institutions and organizations, e.g. cities, travel agencies, local authorities, agents in cultural and artistic industries, event-managers are taking part in this process.

From Sign to Intensity: Re-investing Authenticity

The symbolic economy is a sign-economy. Within such an economy the value of exchange is measured according to the kind of non-economic capital accumulated and how this produces meaning and feeds identity: what Bourdieu (1979) refers to as symbolic, cultural and social capital. The word economy is used because we recognise the affiliation with the idea of symbolic economies as defined in French cultural theory and sociology (Bataille, 1949; Baudrillard, 1976; and Bourdieu, 1979), and in British cultural and consumer studies that sees culture as economy (Lash & Lury, 2007; Lury, 2003). The term economy within these theoretical realms is used synonymously with the word exchange and the study of symbolic exchange has, since Marcel Mauss (1997), become the study of how exchange (of gifts, goods, communication, between individuals, groups, localities, nationally, globally) and value are connected. From the point of view of businesses and organisations, an increasing interest in cultural value is easily detectable (Pine & Gilmore, 1999, 2007). Associated with an intermingling between the cultural and the economic sphere theorised from the perspective of cultural theory (Gay & Pryke, 2002; Ray & Sayer, 1999), we see that the concept of value has regained interest as a sign of a growing interest in cultural relations, identityproduction, emotional investment, ecology and global responsibility from the perspective of the market (Paine, 2003; Kotler & Lee, 2005).

The so-called 'New Economy' (O'Dell & Billing, 2005; Löfgren & Willim, 2005) is the label that Swedish cultural theorists have used to qualify the intermingling spheres between culture and economy. Notions of the new economy and the affective economy (Clough, 2007) present a step beyond an economy of signs. These economies are presented as being based on investment and exchange, not primarily of meaning and signs as in the symbolic economy but of involvement, energy and the capacity for the user to be affected. As Clough (2007: 25) states: 'In an affect economy, value is sought in the expansion or contraction of affective capacity.' The new economy presents a kind of post-Fordist production beyond material goods and services, which signifies a 'focus on acceleration, [but also on] intensity or 'an emotional or passionate economy', which also means highlighting aestheticisation and performative qualities' (2007: 2). In line with the words of Gilles Lipovetsky, homo consumericus in the new economy is, within consumer studies, no longer considered to be a woman trying to compensate her inner void, but a person who wishes to be reborn via intensifying the present moment (Lipovetsky, 2006).

On both the individual and the organisational level, the new affective economy implies a comprehensive 're-investing' in authenticity. The consumer (e.g. tourist, traveller) is re-investing in authenticity as a way of intensifying experience, while the local tourist managers and authorities are re-investing in authenticity to brand their city or region. Value depends on the amount of energy invested and the qualitative 'depth' of investment: how intense was the experience? With the sign-economies replaced by intensive and affective economies we see a shift from meaning as hermeneutics to meaning as doing and its emotional impact (Thrift, 2004a; Lash & Lury, 2007). Within the new cultural economy re-investing authenticity is seen in terms of the global strivings of individuals, places, cities, organisations and communities to create experiences, places and culture and to re-intensify the general experience of already existent (insignificant) places. What forms authenticity in contemporary culture will be explored below.

Emotional Geography: Combining Constructivism and Phenomenology

We claim that authentication – the production of authenticity – has become a strategy to appropriate sites/places and a strategy to invest emotionally in places. Emotional geography is a relatively new term in geographical and cultural studies, representing an interdisciplinary field of research in which the affective aspects of places are in focus (Thrift 2004a, 2008; Davidson et al., 2005). Nigel Thrift points to a very important shift from looking upon the affective as a lack of cognitive skills, to the affective as a kind of thinking, connecting bodies and connecting bodies to the world. As in the phenomenology of perception (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), sensations and affects are ways of understanding and thinking, 'often indirect and non-reflective, but thinking all the same' (Thrift, 2004a: 60).

If authenticity is no longer to be seen as objective qualities in objects or places, but rather something experienced through the body, through performance, management and media, authenticity becomes a feeling you can achieve. In tourism authenticity is a feeling you can experience in relation to place. From this perspective, we want to see constructivism and phenomenology (traditionally contrary philosophical and theoretical perspectives) as somehow linked in order to develop an understanding of how emotions and places are related.

Partly due to complex changes in the relationship between market, culture and politics, and partly due to the knock-on effect of the processes of globalisation, places have greater possibilities to become visible and valuable at the global scale (Tomlinson, 1999; Löfgren, 2003). At the same time, because of globalisation, greater value is attributed to the differences between places. Places are branded and becoming objects of consumption; both symbolically as objects for hungry tourists and concretely as they are reconstructed as consumption sites. In addition, they play the role of a cultural context for consumption (Urry, 1990, 2002). From a constructivist point of view, places are constructed, produced, staged and told, and something like an 'authentic place' is not possible.

To critical geographers such as Massey (1998) and Soja (1999) places are mobile, open, hybrid, socially produced and products of power-generated 'battles' between different social agents. Thus places are contested and objects of struggle between different social agents. We argue that it is possible to empower and to re-empower marginal territories, insignificant places, minorities and popular practices through new medias and performative strategies.

Besides the critical geographical approach, we have the phenomenological and existential approaches to places as put forward by Merleau-Ponty (1945), Heidegger (1951), Bachelard (1957), Tuan (1977), Casey (1997), Crouch and Lübbren (2003), Baerenholdt et al. (2004), Davidson et al. (2005), Reisinger and Steiner (2005; 2006). The phenomenological approaches all explore the 'being-in-the world' perspective as a relational, dynamic and spatial experience of the world. In the words of Merleau-Ponty (1945: XI-XII, author's translation): 'The world is not what I think, but what I live; I am open towards the world, I communicate indubitably with it, but I do not possess it; it is inexhaustible.' A bodily phenomenological view, such as the one Merleau-Ponty represents, permits us to work with the dynamic intermingling between inner and outer perspectives. Even if screens, images and technologies mediate between place and body, the body appropriates and lives the place sensuously, through the mediations anyway (Thrift, 2004b). Our claim is that the explicitly mediated character of places (tourism designs, sport devices, site-specific art etc. increases the feeling of authenticity within the tourist and traveler.

The articles in this volume by Månsson, Sjöholm, Linaa Jensen and Sandvik all deal with tourist designs on places that are directly inspired by mediated representations. The articles show how, and in what ways, places are enhanced by media-representations and also how this enhancement actually changes the status of the place – from being peripheral to being the centre of interest.

Hunger for Reality and Indexical Authenticity

The experience of a place happens through different ways of relating to the place. If we use a semiotic vocabulary from Charles Sanders Peirce upon the sign, a vocabulary that tourist scholars already make use of, we see different degrees of authenticity in play: symbolic authenticity, 'implying that the authenticity of a tourist destination may be defined in terms of how well it meets the customer's own ideas of what the particular destination is about' (Jansson, 2002: 439); iconic authenticity referring to 'how well the event or object resembles the real thing or accurately copies the original or real thing' (Ray et al., 2006: 442) and indexical authenticity being the authentic mode in play when something 'is thought not to be a copy or an imitation' or that it is 'the original' or 'the real thing' (Grayson & Martinec, 2004, cited in Ray et al., 2006: 442). A real experience of a place touches upon its effect upon the tourist and its ability to affect, touch and transform him/her.

We will propose to look upon indexicality not as quality inherent in objects but as a possible outcome of a relation. In aesthetics it is especially Roland Barthes (1980) who in his essay on photography, 'Camera Lucida', pointed to the relation between the documentary photography and its viewer as a sensuous and affective relation mediating between the viewers now and the referential having been-there. The relation between viewer and the referential object is mediated through the photograph indicating absence and presence while being able to produce immediate affective responses, designated by Barthes as the 'punctum' effect.

Barthes's essay has had strong impact on the theory of photography, on art and cultural theory in general, moving the center of interest from the image itself to the relation between the viewer and the image. This relation, according to Barthes, is a relation of primary emotional, affective and sensuous impact. But throughout the 1990s the relation between viewer and medium took a slightly different direction. The hunger for reality and going real tendency has, since the 1980s, been framed in different contexts by philosophers, cultural theorists and art critics (see for instance: Baudrillard, 1981; Deleuze, 1980; Foster, 1996; Knudsen & Thomsen, 2002; Zizek, 2002; Zizek et al., 2006). Lash and Lury (2007) reflect the movement from the symbolic to the real as an effect of globalisation. The shift from the representational realm to a more presentational logic – an indexical authenticity – can be thought of in many ways. It can represent a general inhuman, or trans-human, framework through which bodies are connected to each other and to the world. Connecting affectively to the world through the media represents possibilities of facilitating the pursuit of people's emotional involvement and investment, and therefore producing global solidarity, cultural change and political awareness. On the other hand it can also represent an over-acute will to change and transform what is. The result can therefore be a racist, ethnic, religious or political vision of realising the dream and as a consequence 'destroy all who do not share their version of the really real' (Lindholm, 2008: 145), not to mention the possibilities of manipulation entailed by a focus on affects.

Indexical authenticity is, in our view, an alternative both to the objective authenticity criticised by Ning Wang (1999) and to the relativist attitude that could easily be the result of a light reading of Wang (see below). The quality of indexical authenticity that permits us to transcend the opposition between the objectivity of the place and the subjectivity of the guest is exactly its relational and phenomenological character. Indexical authenticity turns our attention to the inner of the tourist in relation to the place (the intensity of the feeling, the degree of affectedness) and to the referential character of the place, such as the proximity of the site to the real event.

The thrill, joy and excitement and kinaesthetic sensing, that the tourists experience at Voss, Norway in Gyimóthy's Chapter 18 is clearly the expression of an indexical authenticity because the experience of the place is a bodily performance of the landscape and the thrill is the effect on the body due to the bodily performance through the landscape. Black spot tourism (Rojek, 1993), thanatourism (Seaton, 1996), or dark tourism (Lennon & Foley, 2000) represent significant expressions of indexical authenticity, because the encounters with mass-death, disaster and destruction a...