Touristic authenticity, touristic angst, and modern reality

Touristic Authenticity, Touristic Angst, arid Modern Reality Donald L. Redfoot

Duke University

ABSTRACT: The tourist has become the symbol of a peculiarly modern type of inauthenticity. This paper explores the criticisms that have been directed at the "reali ty experiences" of the tourist. In so doing, the following inexhaustive typology of "touristic realities" is developed: 1t the first-order or "true tourist ," 2} the second-order or "Angst-ridden tourist ," 3} the third-order or "anthropological tourist ," and 4 / t he fourth-order or "spiritual tourist ." Each of these types represents a progressively more intense search for "real i ty" through travel. Each is, however, criticized for participating in its own form of inauthenticity.

After exploring the "reality experiences" and criticisms of each of these travelters~ the paper turns the tables on the "cultured despisers" of tourism to argue that perhaps the lowly first-order tourist is not so inauthentic after all. True, this traveller may not be having a "real" heroic adventure, but such is not the goal. Rather, the reality experienced by the first-order tourist is a pleasurable liberation from the normal concerns of everyday life which simultaneously reaffirms commitment to that reality. Quite frequently the first-order tourist is less concerned about having a "real" experience in the visited place than in experiencing family and friendship relationships-- relationships completely ignored by the "anti-touristic tourists" in their search for authenticity in someone else's "reality."

Historically, there have been many reasons to travel--to seek fortune in faraway lands, to seek religious experience in a pilgrimage, to seek the personal and national aggrandizement of colonial conquest, or to seek escape, in exile, from persecution. Stories of those who sought escape from the everyday reality of home are the stuff of great legends. By stepping out of the reality of the familiar and the everyday, these travellers have provided rich symbols of heroic confrontation with the unknown and the mysterious. While the actual experiences of these earlier travellers may have been less than heroic, they have been viewed metaphorically in heroic terms--good, evil, or tragic.

To these earlier types of travellers must be added a relative newcomer--the tourist. In contrast to the rich metaphorical potency of

The author would like to thank Peter L. Berger, Harry C. Bredemeier, Warren L Susman, and M. Kathy Kenyon for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. This research was supported in part by NIMH grant no. 5 T32 NH14660. Address correspondence to: Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, Duke University, Durham, NC 27710.

Qualitative Sociology, 7(4), Winter 1984 291 © 1984 by Human Sciences Press

292 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

these earlier wanderers, the tourist is likely to represent a ridiculous kind of impotence. The fortune-seeker of old is a producer of exotic goods; the tourist is merely a consumer of well-known sights. The pilgrim is a spiritual wanderer in quest of the ultimately real; the tourist looks for what Walker Percy {1975:53} has called "a Platonic ideal of the Quaint and the Picturesque." The colonial adventurer conquers foreign lands; the tourist "captures" only snapshots. The "exiled soul" expresses the deepest spiritual yearning for a home; the tourist seeks only a good time, "get t ing away from it all." In contrast to the images of these other travellers, no one ascribes heroic charac- teristics to the tourist. Heroic metaphors give way to images of a middle-aged man or woman wearing bermuda shorts and a ridiculous hat asking directions to the American Express office while being irritated that the natives do not speak English. In short, the " tour is t" is a metaphor for shallowness and inauthent ic i ty--"a derisive label for someone who seems content with his obviously inauthentic experiences" {MacCannell, 1976:94}.

Criticisms of tourism sound remarkably similar whether they come from the right or the left end of the political spectrum. Both sides relegate touristic experience to a lower ontological s ta tus - -a "pseudo" experience {Boorstin, 1962). Both sides lay the blame on capitalism's ability to convert experience into a cheap "commodi ty" to be sold to a mass market. Both sides, therefore, view touristic inauthenticity as symptomat ic of the general authenticity of modern life. The difference between them depends on whether this inauthenticity is at t r ibuted to bourgeois false consciousness {Sontag, 1977; Turner and Ash, 1976) or to bourgeois philistinism {Boorstin, 1961; Fussell, 1980). Touristic inauthenticity reflects either an alienated consciousness not yet liberated or a fall from grace.

An alternative image of the tourist has been presented in the work of Dean MacCannell (1973, 1976). Far from being content with inauthentic existence, MacCannell 's tourists are on a modern day "ques t" in search of authenticity. These tourists constantly a t tempt to go behind the "s taged authentici ty" of the surface in order to reach the "real i ty" that presumably lies there. He comes to the Durkheimian conclusion that

• . . sightseeing is a form of ritual respect for society and that tourism absorbs some of the functions of religion in the modern world. The dimension of social life analyzed in this paper is its authenticity or, more exactly, the search for authenticity of experience that is everywhere manifest in our society. The concern of moderns for the shallowness of their lives and inauthenticity of their experiences parallels concerns for the sacred in primitive society {1973:589-901.

Touristic Authenticity and Modern Reality 293

We are faced with two competing images of the tourist 's ex- pe r i ence - the wide-spread notion that tourism is a "trivial, superficial, frivolous pursuit of vicarious, contrived experiences, a 'pseudo- event ' " and MacCannell 's notion that it "is an earnest quest for the authentic, the pilgrimage of modern man" (Cohen, 1979:179). To ex- plore the dimension of authentici ty in touristic travel, this essay suggests four orders of touristic experience {some of them not nor- mally classified as touristic). 1 The focus is on the nature of the anxiety over reality that is experienced by each type of tourist and the accusations of inauthenticity that have been hurled at each. The goal is not to be a complete sociological analysis of the structure of modern tourism, but a more limited understanding of the reality experiences of modern travellers and the anxiety about that reality frequently expressed by critics of touristic inauthenticity.

The First-Order T o u r i s t 2

The first-order tourist, that most unheroic of travellers, has borne the brunt of the accusations of inauthenticity. Travelling with family or a tour group (almost never alone), bearing numerous cameras, visiting famous sites, while comfortably avoiding "real" contact with the surrounding environment, the first-order tourist seems to caricature earlier travellers. Percy {1975:52) argues that, in contrast to those travellers, the tourist a t tempts to avoid an "immediate encounter with being." The ontological problems with the experience of the first-order tourist become immediately obvious when we contrast such experiences with those of " the adventurer," as described by Georg Simmel. In the first place, the first-order tourist violates the temporal order of the adventurer for whom the "immediate encounter" is all that matters. The true adventure is temporally bracketted, set apart in a kind of "exclave" without a pas t or a future that connects it with life as a whole. As Simmel (1971:190) puts it,

For this reason the adventurer is also the extreme example of the ahistorical individual, of the man who lives in the present. On the one hand, he is not determined by the p a s t . . . ; nor, on the other hand, does the future exist for him.

Unlike the adventurer, the first-order tourist comes with a pas t and leaves to a future. Molded by travel brochures, television, and picture postcards, expectations are well formed in advance as to jus t what one is "supposed" to experience. Travel agents, tourist bureaus, and hotels all exist to assure that the experiences approximate the ex-


pectations. The experiences of the first-order tourist are, therefore, predictable-- landmarks suitably "au then t i ca t ed" as " rea l , " "genuine," "authent ic ," or "original" will be visited {MacCannell, 1976:Ch. 6); scenic spots known for their "picturesqueness" will be sought out. In the process, the immediate experience is lost in the meeting of past expectations. Percy {1975:47) compares the experience of a tourist arriving at the Grand Canyon on a tour bus to tha t of the Spanish explorer:

The thing is no longer the thing as it confronted the Spaniard; it is rather that which has already been formulated--by picture postcard, geography book, tourist folders, and the words Grand Canyon. As a result of this preformulation, the source of the sightseer's pleasure un- dergoes a shift. Where the wonder and delight of the Spaniard arose from his penetration of the thing itself, from a progressive discovery of depths, patterns, colors, shadows, etc., now the sightseer measures his satisfaction by the degree to which the canyon conforms to the preformed complex. If it does so, if it looks just like the postcard, he is pleased; he might even say, "Why it is every bit as beautiful as a picture postcard!" . . . The highest point, the term of the sightseer's satisfaction, is not the sovereign discovery of the thing before him; it is rather the measuring up of the thing to the criterion of the preformed complex.

The first-order tourist not only surrenders the "immediate encounter with being" to the "preformed complex" of past expectations but also to a complex of future expectations. This future orientation is symbolized by the ubiquitous camera, the hallmark of this type of traveller (Chalfen, 1979). In taking pictures, experiences are stored up for future reference. The "immediate encounter" is, therefore, judged not only by how it measures up the "preformed complex" but also for how it will look when the pictures are shown "back home." Once removed from authentic experience by the prefabricated expectations of the tourist role, the touristic photographer is twice removed by the temporal distancing of the photographic moment. Typically, family or friends pose in the foreground, literally and symbolically turning their backs to the sett ing tha t they are supposed to be experiencing. Milgram {1976:9) argues that, in the process, photography intrudes as a "contaminat ion of the pleasurable present"3:

The man who sees a beautiful scene, and has a camera, stops to take a picture; but the photographic act may interfere with his fully savoring the experience. There is not only the minor inconveniences of carrying a few pounds of camera equipment, but the interruption of a fully spontaneous set of activities by the need to stop to take pictures and divide his attention between enjoyment of the scene and the mental set needed to photograph it. The photographic act devalues the moment, as he trades the full value of the present instant for a future record of it.


Lacking value as an immediate experience, argues Sontag {1977:9), "Travel becomes a s t ra tegy for accumulating photographs." In my own exploratory research on family photographs, 4 I encountered a rather extreme example of this temporal displacement of the first- order tourist. One participant described a trip in the following terms: "We took a trip one time where we made some four-thousand-odd miles in ten days and took over a thousand slides. Like I said, I like to come home and enjoy the trip." In contrast to Simmel's description of the adventurer as " the ahistorical individual" who "is not determined by an)- p a s t . . , n o r . . , does any future exist for him," this man was nearly a perfect example of Percy 's (1975:47-48) description of the tourist 's experience:

For him there is no present; there is only the past of what has been formulated and seen and the future of what has been formulated and not seen. The present is surrendered to the past and the future.

Related to the temporal displacements which mediate the "encounter with being" experienced by the first-order tourist, are commitments to the everyday world "back home." The real adventurer, says Simmel (1971:190), is committed to the present experience as the paramountly real. Citing the "erotic-adventurous life" of Casanova as an example, he argues that this present orientation prohibits the true adventurer from making and keeping commitments to the everyday life of interpersonal relations. In contrast, the tour is seen by the first- order tourist as but a brief interlude in the commitments to family, work, and the routines of everyday life. I t is to this world of everyday life that primary allegiance is owed and it is to that world that the tourist will return with a few souvenirs of his "escape" from "real i ty" (Cohen and Taylor, 1976:113-21).

In short, the first-order tourist violates the "real i ty" of the adventure in at least three ways: by surrendering the "immediate encounter with being" both to pas t expectations molded by official authenticators and to future expectations of "how it will look when ! get back home," and by surrendering "sovere ignty" over the present to the commitments of everyday life back home. Unlike the pilgrim who leaves home in quest of the ult imately real, the experiences of this tourist are constant ly in relation to the reality back home-- the trip is simply a temporary escape.

The Second-Order Tourist 5

The second-order tourist, unlike the first-order tourist, is keenly aware of the inauthenticities of the touristic role and experiences a con-


siderable amount of anxiety a n d " shame" in being labelled a " tou r i s t . " This type of tourist is likely to disparage other "mere touris ts" and to seek ways to distinguish "real" experiences from their inauthenticity. This touristic " angs t " {Fussell, 1980:49} or " shame" is nicely described by MacCannell {1976:10}:

. . . touristic shame is not based on being a tourist but on not being tourist enough, on a failure to see everything the way it "ought" to be seen. The touristic critique of tourism is based on a desire to go beyond the other "mere" tourists to a more profound appreciation of society and culture. . .

Given the ubiquity of tourism, this quest for authentici ty requires the development of conscious strategies in order to see the things one went to see while avoiding other "mere" tourists. Travelling alone or at least apart from organized tour groups is a must. Travelling off- season is preferable. This traveller will likely learn at least a few words of the local language and will s tay and eat in places tha t "only the locals know about."

Because of its close association with touristic inauthenticity, photography presents special problems for the second-order tourist. One way to deal with this photographic inauthentici ty is simply to refuse to take pictures. In so doing, one eliminates both the identifying label of the camera and the "contaminat ion" of the present experience which it represents. Since picture-taking is such an integral part of touristic experience, such a refusal borders on an act of deviance. Nonetheless Milgram {1976:10} reports tha t " this contamination of the pleasurable present by the photographic urge is prompting growing numbers of vacationers to leave their cameras at home." One participant in my small sample mentioned some discomfort with the camera, saying

It's quite a problem to have to take pictures. It takes you from a precious time when you want to be seeing something and here one of the two is taking a picture. That may be why we don't take so many. But it's a wonderful record of your trip!

Another way to deal with touristic angst as a second-order tourist and still come home with some pictures involves making subtle distinc- tions in the role played as photographer. This requires the purchase of an expensive 35-millimeter camera with a Japanese or German name, known only to those who "real ly" know photography, in order to distinguish oneself from the users of the K o d a k " Instamat ic ," which is more characteristic of the first-order type. Second-order touristic photographers thereby announce their intentions as being more


"serious" than those of their first-order counterparts. Photography is seen as a means of personal expression, an art form, or even as an oc- cupation6--but not as a symbol of tourism.

An avoidance of touristic angst also requires that one take pictures which are distinctly different in intent and content from those taken by the first-order type. There must be no photographs displaying the family in front of some officially authenticated monument or "picture postcard" shots for this type. Instead, the second-order tourist will take pictures from different angles, with different lenses, perhaps using black-and-white film to capture a unique perspective of some "authent ic" scene not sanctioned in the travel brochures. More importantly, these shots should be directed toward capturing something authentic about the lives of the people observed. This is accomplished by a t tempts to get candid shots of the natives doing native things--all unmediated, of course, by the family's presence in the foreground. A well-travelled participant in my s tudy expressed such a preference in the following terms:

We like to take pictures of scenery and take pictures of people in different parts of the world . . . People just doing their everyday things--a group of bicycles waiting to cross a railroad track, people working in little gardens--that sort of thing.

Whether the second-order tourist takes thousands of pictures or avoids cameras like the plague, the goal is much the same-- to have a more "immediate experiencing" of the reality being visited. The second-order tourist must often do a great deal of strategic planning and suffer considerable hardship to achieve this authentic experiencing but, having done so, the experience is often very rewarding. Again Percy (1975:52) invents an example:

[A] couple decide to drive from Guanajuanto to Mexico City. On the way they get lost. After hours on a rocky mountain road, they find themselves in a tiny village not even marked on the map. There they discover an Indian village. Some sort of religious festival is going on. It is ap- parently a corn dance in supplication of the rain god. The couple know at once that this is "it."

The ontological s ta tus of this " i t" experience is very complex and "ambiguous ." " I t " must be a spontaneous expression of the natives themselves, "unspoiled" by the intrusive presence of other "mere" tourists. But beyond the external conditions of the " i t " experience, is an important internal aspect; " i t" must be an "ecsta t ic" ex- pe r i ence -bo th in the sense of an emotional high and in the etymologically correct sense described by Peter Berger (1963:136} as


"the act of standing or stepping outside (literally, ekstasis) the taken- for-granted routines of society." Touristic ecs tasy is tha t emotional high achieved by the experience of authentici ty in the lives of people in exotic places.

Suppose that the external criteria are met in Percy 's example-- the Indians are performing their rain dance in "genuine" supplication of the gods and no other tourists litter the landscape. Suppose, moreover, that this couple achieves touristic ecstasy. May we then say that the second-order tourist has achieved authentici ty? Percy {1975:52) an- swers that:

Possibly this may occur. Yet it is more likely that what happens is a far cry from an immediate encounter with being, that the experience, while masquerading as such, is in truth a rather desperate impersonation•

This desperation is rooted in the paradoxical nature of the " i t" experience of the second-order tourist. In the first place, these touristic observer take the keenest interest in details of the lives of the "nat ives" that they themselves would not find interesting in their own society because of their taken-for-grantedness. Pictures of bicycles at a train crossing o r o f people tending their gardens or even of the corn dance in Percy 's example would be rather uninteresting to those for whom these are everyday activities. Despite the a t tempt to achieve an "authent ic" experience, the interest in these activities shown by the second-order tourist is distinctly tha t of the outsider. The goal of this second-order touristic quest is not a detailed knowledge of the folkways of any particular group--any "unspoiled" exotic group will do. Much less is the goal to adopt those folkways as one's own permanent l i festyle-- they would soon become "routinized" drudgery. The ecstasy of the second-order tourist hangs in the tension between participation in an authentic event in the lives of some exotic group and remaining decidedly an outsider. In contrast to MacCannell, Cohen (1979:188) argues that such a tourist

• . . experiences only vicariously the authenticity of the life of others, but does not appropriate it for himself. Hence, though his quest may be essentially religious, the actual experience is primarily aethetic, owing to its vicarious nature. The aethesis provoked by direct contact with the authenticity of others may reassure and uplift the tourist, but does not provide new meaning and guidance to his life.

The touristic ecstasy of the second-order tourist is, moreover, an anxious ecstasy. Anxious, in the first place, over the suspect nature of the tourist role, this touris t is doubly anxious, suggests Percy, because of the possibili ty that " i t " might not be real after all. Suppose, Percy


suggests, that the chief of the Indian village comes out of his hut with a Sears-Roebuck catalogue. The criteria for the "it" experience will have been shattered by this intrusion of modernity. Even while having the "it" experience, Percy notes that the second-order tourist is anxious to return home with a good story and a few "genuine" relics of the experience lest "it" prove to be "too good to be true."

Percy adds a final criticism that such a tourist participates in a more subtle loss of authenticity as a "sovereign knower." The shattering of the "i t" experience reveals a "preformed complex" of its own about what is properly exotic. This "preformed complex" may not be shaped as much by travel brochures and the other official authenticators of the first-order type, but there are expectations nonetheless from higher-brow authenticators of "it" experiences, such as novelists and anthropologists. Percy introduces into his scenario an anthropologist friend to whom the second-order tourists rush in order to be certified as having had a proper "it" experience. In their search for the ecstasy of novelty and their anxiety about whether their experience is cer- tifiably real, the second-order tourists have forgone the possibility of a real "encounter with being."

The Third-Order Tourist 7

Just as Percy's couple deferred to an anthropologist friend as an ex- pert of the exotic, should the anthropologist be classified as a third- order tourist who has a real "encounter with being" in other cultures? Anthropologists would no doubt shudder at my suggestion that they are third-order tourists. Being called a tourist seems to diminish the reality of their work. Despite the fact that cultural anthropologists spend a great deal of time travelling and taking pictures, the apparent incongruity of calling them tourists indicates that theirs is a quite different reality experience. After all, anthropologists would not settle for simple experiences of officially authenticated landmarks, as first- order tourists often do. Moreover, they take great pains to avoid the inauthenticities of the second-order tourist's anxious ecstasy by remaining long enough to more fully understand the everyday reality of the people they study. While anthropologists undoubtedly occasionally experience emotional highs, these are regarded as obstacles to real understanding. Touristic ecstasy is to be rigorously guarded against through the application of scientific methods. Strategies are developed to maintain a subjective detachment, to avoid "going native."

So what is the nature of this reality which the anthropologist takes such great pains to experience and convey in an impersonal manner?


L6vi-Strauss notes that we must took at the relationship of anthropologists to their own cultural home as well as at their relationships to the cultures they are studying. Far from one's own home, says L6vi-Strauss (1974:383), one is likely to experience not only a distancing of miles but also a subjective distancing from the artifices of modernity which it represents--a "disdain for, and occasionally hostility towards, the customs prevailing in his native setting." The anthropologist reaches out to another culture in a peculiar kind of nostalgia--not a yearning for one's own home as the term originally meant (Davis, 1979), but a yearning for the homes of others. Sontag (1966:75) perceptively argues that there is a spiritual dimension to the anthropologist 's quest (as represented by L6vi-Strauss), in which he "is engaged in saving his own soul."

But L6vi-Strauss was quite aware that anthropologists also find themselves in a paradoxical situation. They may reject the artifices in their own culture and seek an alternative reality in a "quest ." But once there they refrain from "going native." Moreover, they expend great energy, anxiously recording and protecting a way of life which they would be loath to adopt if forced to do so. The source of their anxiety is not the same as the touristic angst of the second-order tourist, who is anxious lest " i t " be too good to be true; it is the broader "historical anxiety" (Sontag, 1966:73) that the artifices of modernity are rapidly destroying the few remnants of primitive reality that still exist. There is a desperation about the a t tempt to film, photograph and record all primitives before they disappear entirely. That quintessential third- order tourist, Margaret Mead (1975:4), laments that

All over the world, on every continent and island, in hidden recesses of modern cities as well as in the hidden valleys that can be reached only by helicopter, precious, totally irreplaceable, and forever irreproducible behaviors are disappearing.

Mead (1975:8) urges the photographing and recording of these primitives in order to build an archive not only for anthropologists, but also for "their descendents, who (after the recurrent spasms of modernization, technological change, and a t tempts at new forms of economic organization) may wish to claim once more the rhythms and handicrafts of their own people." Like Noah's ark or a zoo at tempting to save a remnant of an endangered species with which to replenish the earth, so the anthropologist saves remnants of disappearing cultures in an archive in the hope that the "primit ive" experience will not be irretrievably lost.S

After all this effort and spiritual anguish, however, L6vi-Strauss expresses the anxiety that this experience is not "real" after all. He


frequently alludes to the spiritual nature of his quest, but he concludes tha t it is a "mut i la t ion" comparable to the "li t t le glass of rum" offered to convicts jus t prior to their executions (1974:389). If "salvat ion" is the goal, then anthropologists have to admit their own fall from grace; they can be only "specta tors" of the vanishing realities tha t history is mercilessly obliterating. Wistfully, L~vi-Strauss {1974:43) longs for a "vanished reality":

I wished that I had lived in the days of real journeys, when it was still possible to see the full splendor of a spectacle that had not yet been blighted, polluted, and spoilt; I wished that t had not trodden ~hat ground as myself, but as Bernier, Tavernier, or Manucci did . . . . For every five years I move back in time, I am able to save a custom, gain a ceremony or share in another belief. But I know the texts too well not to realize that, by going back a century I am at the same time foregoing data and lines of inquiry which would offer intellectual enrichment.. . I have only two possibilities: either I can be like some traveller of the olden days, who was faced with a stupendous spectacle, all, or almost all, of which eluded him, or worse still, filled him with scorn and disgust; or I can be a modern traveller, chasing after the vestiges of a vanished reality. I lose on both counts . . .

Unlike Mead, L~vi-Strauss finds no solace in recording these remnants of primitive behavior. Bitterly he denounces the practice of bringing back anthropological photographs in order to appease the public's appetite for a record of primitive reality. To him the photographs of the third-order tourist represent both the artifices of modernity and the empty "cannibalism of history":

Perhaps the public imagines that the charms of the savages can be ap- propriated through the medium of these photographs. Not content with having elhminated savage life, and unaware of even having done so, it feels the need feverishly to appease the nostalgic cannibalism of history with the shadows of those that history has already destroyed. (1974:4 I)

The Fourth-Order Tourist 9

The anthropologist, as third-order tourist, digs deeper in a quest for authenticity, but this quest is doomed to failure because of the subjective distancing from the "primit ive" built into the anthropologist 's role. The fourth-order tourist seeks to overcome this distancing by going native. These tourists are literally "engaged in saving their own souls" through an explicit rejection of modern culture. This type, who would be most appalled at being called tourists, includes the modern- day pilgrims who seek ult imate spiritual reality not in their own cultural tradition but in experiences of ether traditions. This fourth-


order tourist is generally typified by the upper-middle-class drop-out who is par t of the spiritual movement " turning Eas t " {Cox, 1977}.

Surely this person can finally shed the label " tour is t" by virtue of having achieved an authentic spiritual experience. This person buys a one-way ticket, at least spiritually speaking, in a pilgrimage to the primitive. This tourist is not interested in officially authenticated sites, shallow touristic ecstasy, or cultural remnants. While each of the former types of tourists is likely to convey photographically in different ways something of their experience, this " tour is t" is very unlikely to take pictures at all because of their denial of the "eternal present" and their participation in "illusion." This spiritual tourist is commit ted to get t ing behind the "veil of illusion" to absolute reality.

But, alas, this ardent seeker of reality has also received a great deal of criticism for participating in an illusory quest for reality. Gita Mehta (1979) has satirically described the process by which this deeper "real i ty" has become a commodity for skillful entrepreneurs "market ing the Myst ic Eas t . " As if to prove the myst ics r ight - - tha t all is i l lusion--the modern-day pilgrim seems to be the dupe of a complex con game playing on a desperate search for authenticity. Even as sympathet ic a participant-observer as Harvey Cox {1977:71-72} has to conclude that the current vogue of " turning Eas t " has more to do with Western illusions than it does with any "real i ty" that the Eas t has to offer:

Any contemporary traveller to the Orient is so programmed by hun- dreds of years of image-making that his capacity to see what is actually there is much diminished.

Enterprising Orientals have learned, of course, how to show us what we want to see. Perceptive entrepreneurs, East and West, can now sup- ply the pilgrim or tourist (the distinction between the two is seldom clear} with precisely the Orient he or she sets out to see . . . Reality imitates art, and institutions are often shaped around images of what they are believed and hoped to be.

Cohen {1979:196} notes that these spiritual tourists, when confronted with the inevitably flawed nature of the spiritual "centre" of their quest, are forced into one of three options. They can become "realistic idealists" who recognize these f laws-- thus risking a large measure of disillusionment. Alternatively, they can remain "starry- eyed idealists" who are simply duped by the show and engage in "self- delusion." Finally, they can become "critical idealists," "who oscillate between a craving for the centre from afar, and a disenchantment when they visit it." Such a person who feels exiled when at home (1979:190-91), is paradoxically at home only with such an experience of exile from the "centre." In any of these cases, authenticity is a very


precarious balancing of the subjective experiences of home and one's spiritual "cen t re" - -a balance surrounded on all sides by the threat of illusion.

On Tourism: " A Lecture to Its Cultured Despisers"

At this point I would like to turn the spotlight of this discussion from the increasingly desperate a t tempts at authenticity by the touristic types to the critical commentators who have been sitt ing on the sidelines watching. On the one hand are the "cultured despisers" of tourism who see tourism as a metaphor for the general inauthen- t icity of modern life. On the other hand, MacCannell defends the touristic quests for authentici ty as a modern pilgrimage seeking to get behind the artifices of modernity to the realm of authentic existence. Both sides are in agreement that the tourist represents a metaphor for deeper aspects of the modern experience of reality. But what are the ontological criteria used by these commentators in making their critical assessments?

The "cultured despisers" of tourism argue that the reality experienced by the tourist represents either a diminution of a previous reality or a prelude to a liberated reality to come. That tourism reflects a fall from the grace of a previous reality is a favorite line of con- servative critics. Fussell {1980) presents this position as a decline "from exploration to travel to tourism." Boorstin (1962:91-92) suc- cinctly concludes: "The traveller used to go about the world to encounter the natives. A function of travel agencies now is to prevent this encounter." These characterizations represent a remarkable ability to forget the inconvenient facts of history. Did Cortez {a representative of Fussell 's "exploration" era) have a more authentic experience of Aztec culture than a modern tourist would have? Did Lord Byron {a representative of the era of bourgeois "travel") have a more genuine experience of Italian culture than do contemporary visitors to the museums of Florence? Certainly one would have to con- cede that Cortez' regicidal conquest and Byron 's erotic conquests were more adventuresome and, in a way, more heroic than the experiences of the contemporary tourist. But these historicM travellers also came with expectations that separated them at least as far from any genuine experience of the natives as is any unheroic traveller of today. If the experiences of the modern tourist represent a diminution in reality, then the natives are likely to be grateful for the loss.

Tourism's "cultured despisers" on the left do not share this roman- ticization of the past; instead, they romanticize the future. Their


assumption is that the ontological problems with tourism are those of late capitalism, presumed to pass when it does. To my knowledge none of these critics have offered a convincing model of what a non- alienating, non-exploiting form of touristic experience would look like after the revolution. Utopian at tempts, however, to abolish capitalism have not generally resulted in a more immediate "encounter with being"--except , perhaps, in the rather limited sense that they have often reduced existence to a very real struggle for survival.

If the "cultured despisers" denigrate the reality experiences of the tourist, then MacCannell 's work elevates it to the level of a modern religious experience of authenticity. But to do so he sets up a curious mixture of a Durkheimian theory of religion as an integrating set of values with an existentialist 's angst over the meaninglessness of existence. But Durkheim's primitives, who worshipped the sacred, were profoundly at home in the world. The sacred provided an all- embracing explanation of the universe. Life might be tough bu t it was certainly not meaningless. The quest for authenticity, on the other hand, is rooted in the peculiarly modern anxiety over the "real i ty" of life's meaning, an anxiety which Arnold Gehlen (1980:66) has perceptively called "a kind of ontological vote of no confidence." Lionel Trilling (1972:93) has noted the close link between the quest for authentici ty and this ontological anxiety:

That the word [authenticityl has become part of the moral slang of our day points to the peculiar nature of our fallen condition, our anxiety over the credibility of existence and of individual existences.

The touristic quest for authenticity leads one deeper and deeper into the reality experiences of other people only at the cost of increasing the distance {objectively and subjectively) from the reality of one's own home. In contrast to Durkheim's notion of the sacred, touristic authen- t icity is possible only through a profound alienation from one's home reality. I t would appear that the more ardently one searches for authenticity, the more it recedes into the u n a t t a i n a b l e - - " . . , there is no way out for them as long as they press their search for authen- t ic i ty" {MacCannell, 1973:601). What s tar ts as a quest for the real becomes yet another manifestation of the ult imate absurdi ty of all realities:

This claim attains with MacCannell almost the status of a "touristic condition" reflecting a generally absurd human condition captured in the works of existentialist philosophers. If for Sartre, there is "No Exit" from the human existence and no way to penetrate the sub- jectivity of others, for MacCannell there is no way for the tourist to penetrate the others' authenticity. Taken to its extreme, the quest of MacCannell's tourist, like that of Camus's or Sartre's heroes, is absurd. (Cohen, 1979:195)


In short, the tourist is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't; condemned to inauthentici ty if he remains content with the surface reality, he is condemned to the absurdity of "chasing after the vestiges of a vanished reali ty" if he seeks a more authentic existence. This would seem to lead us inevitably to Fusselrs (1980:49) conclusion tha t " . . . the anti-tourist deludes only himself. We are all tourists, now, and there is no escape."

This would indeed be the conclusion if we were to assume that, since the tourist does not have a true adventure or a true pilgrimage, nothing real is experienced at all. Let us return for a moment to the experience of the lowly first-order tourist. Lugging along the baggage of past preconceptions, future expectations, and commitments to the world "back home," this tourist certainly does not have an unmediated "direct encounter with be ing"--a t least as far as the place visited is concerned. But, experiencing the trip through the viewfinder of the camera, this tourist is likely to see what the "cultured despisers" of tourism and the Angst-ridden, "anti-touristic touris ts" of the second, third, and fourth orders have failed to see. The viewfinder frames a scene away from the cares of everyday life, all the while announcing commitment to tha t world where these pictures will bring back pleasant memories. I t is a fun scene unembarrassed and un- concerned by its irreality. A b o v e all, standing front and center as the featured aspect of the experience are likely to be family members and friends. When I asked people about the kinds of pictures they liked to take on trips, participants in my own research {Redfoot, 1981} in- dicated over and again such things as:

"Things that display the activities of the family on the trip." "When we travel, the people we know. We like to photograph them--family or friends." "Scenes of where we've been; but more important than that, pictures of people we're with in the scenes." "You want to have members of the family or people to remember or something that you wanted to remember."

Despite the sociological evidence (Schudson, 1979} tha t a very sub- stantial portion of travel is either with family or friends or in order to see family or friends, one looks in vain for references to the shared nature of these experiences amongst the critics of tourism (and scarce reference among social scientific researchers}. Even Cohen's {1979} otherwise excellent essay misses this point when he talks about what he calls the "recreational tourist ." While he does a phenomenological analysis of the reality experienced by his other types, with the recreational tourist he relies on the old functionalist line tha t such tourism provides an escape from the everyday tha t prepares the per-


son for the "serious living" back home. This may be true as far as it goes. But it should also be pointed out this tourist is rarely acting simply in order to be functional to the system. In the experiences of the individuals involved, travel is an experience that is torn off from the workaday world not so that they can be better cogs in the economic machine but so that personal relationships can assert themselves as paramount, as most intensely "real." The "authent ic i ty" of the place visited is, therefore, often quite unimportant- - i t serves only as back- drop whose exotic quality highlights the familiar relationships that are clearly most important. This tourist takes a snapshot so that the experience can take its place among the weddings, births, graduations, and other family-centered events that are collected in the family album--events that some of the same "cultured despisers" of tourism have also disparaged (see, among others, Sontag's, 1977, broadside on family photographs). These collected mementos are not just frivolous times off from life; they represent the shared memories of the private sphere that serve as an important ontological anchor for the modern individual. 10

The anxiety over authentici ty may point, as Trilling argued, "to the peculiar nature of our fallen condition" as modern individuals. But, as Peter Berger (1973) noted in reviewing Trilling's work, this anxiety over authentici ty is not evenly distributed throughout the population. It seems to be a particular occupational hazard among modern in- teUectuals. Most people, most of the time, seem to muddle through using available resources as ontological sandbags to shore up the realities of identity and meaningful relationships. Typically, this involves a heavy reliance on the private sphere as an ontological anchor amidst the uncertainties of modern life. For such people, tourism is likely to be experienced as a liberation of the private sphere, a time over which they have control to do what they wish, where they wish. Most importantly, it is t ime that can be devoted entirely to family and friendships as the core of what is most importantly real.

For the more adventuresome, this solution may be rather dull. For the angst-ridden spiritual individualists, such commitments to the everyday may be illusory and inauthentic. They will continue to seek authentici ty through flights from the everyday into the exotic. This essay is not intended to disparage such efforts, which are, after all, the source of great poetic imagery. For critics who establish the adventure (Fussell) or the spiritual pilgrimage (MacCannell) as the standard of authenticity, the tourist will represent an irredeemably fallen state. But for those who have an appreciation for the "real i ty" of the everyday, the tourist may be due for a metaphorical rehabilitation as the symbol of the impressive, if unheroic, t r iumph of personal meaning in an increasingly impersonal world.

T o u r i s t i c A u t h e n t i c i t y and M o d e r n Rea l i t y 307

R e f e r e n c e N o t e s

1. There has been no shortage of typotogies of touristic experience. My typology is indebted to MacCannell 's {1973, 1976} use of Goffman's frontstage/backstage metaphor to discuss touristic reality and Cohen's {1979) phenomenvlogical analysis. See also discussions by Schmidt {1979) and Duncan {1978} on the construction of touristic unreality and Pearce's 11982} discussion of the "social role of the tourist ."

2. Compare the following discussion to Cohen's {1979} discussion of the "recreational tourist" and to Pearce's research {1982:28-37} on images of "pleasure first" travel. Among Pearce's sample of Australian students, the tourist was someone who {in order of importance) " takes photos, buys souvenirs, goes to famous places, stays briefly in one place, does not understand the local people tp. 32)."

3. Goffman contrasts the snapshot and the portrait on this point. Posing for a snapshot is criticized as "inauthentic" for storing up images for the future because it denies the immediate experience. Goffman (1979:17) notes, however, that the person having a portrait made is not branded as inauthentic since the meaning of "posing" has little to do with the immediate experience; the person poses nat for the experience of posing but solely in order to make a record for the future.

4. The size of the sample in this explanatory work does not justify many inferences (in a rigorous statistical sense). The study was done with nine married couples and two individuals who had previously been married (one widowed and one divorced}, The data will therefore be used for examples rather than as a test of hypotheses (Redfoot, 1981).

5. Compare the following section to the descriptions in Cohen (1979) of the "ex- periential tourist" and in Pearce's (1982:28-37) study of "high contact" travellers. Note especially the lat ter 's description of the "traveller" as one who "stays briefly in one place, experiments with local food, goes to famous places, takes photos, explores places privately." See also the description of the "overseas s tudent" as one who "experiments with local food, does not exploit local people, takes photos, keenly observes the visited society, takes physical risks."

6. Pearce (1982:28-37) groups the "overseas journalist" with these "high contact" travellers. The roles are seen as similar, as the journalist " takes photos, keenly observes the visited society, goes to famous places, takes physical risks, explores places privately."

7. Pearce's (1982:32) sample saw the anthropologist (as environmental traveller) in the following roles: "keenly observes the visited society, explores places privately, interested in the environment, does not buy souvenirs, takes photos." See also MacCannell's (1976:176ff.) comparison of the anthropologist to the tourist,

8. See Sorenson (1975:464-66) for a similar discussion and criticism of this "cultural zoo philosophy." For a phenomenological analysis of the problems involved in one at tempt to recover the artifacts of a cultural identity, see Handler 's discussion (1984) of Quebec.

9. Compare this section to Pearce's {1982:32} sample, which viewed the "religious pilgrim" as "spiri tual" traveller in the following roles: "searches for the meaning of life, does not live a life of luxury, does not exploit the local people, does not buy souvenirs." See also Cohen's {1979) discussion of the "existential tourist ."

10. For discussions of the "multiple realities" of modern life and the consequent reliance on the "private sphere" for identity see Luckmann t1978), Berger, Berger, and Kellner (1973), and Weigart and Hastings {1977).

308 Q U A L I T A T I V E SOCIOLOGY

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Touristic authenticity, touristic angst, and modern reality

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