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Comment by 陳老頭 on December 19, 2021 at 10:16am

Erik Cohen·AUTHENTICITY AND COMMODITIZATION IN TOURISM

Abstract: Three basic assumptions, common in the literature on tourism, regarding "commodi-tization," "staged authenticity," and the inability of tourists to have authentic experiences are re-examined. Authenticity is conceived as a negotiable rather than primitive concept, the rigor of its definition by subjects depending on the mode of their aspired touristic experience. New cultural developments may also acquire the patina of authenticity over time— a process designated at "emergent authenticity." It is also argued that commoditization does not necessarily destroy the meaning of cultural products, although it may change it or add new meanings to old ones.

Conclusions contrary to the deductions following from the above assumptions are spelled out, and a new approach to the study of authenticity and meaning in tourism, which could help the formulation of a more discerning tourism policy, is advocated. Keywords: authenticity, commoditization, cultural tourism, tourist experience, tour-ism policy, tourist arts and crafts. （See next column）

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 19, 2021 at 10:15am

Erik Cohen is the George S. Wise Professor of Sociology (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 91905, Israel). He has done sociological and anthropological research in Israel and Peru and a series of studies on tourism, urban life, Christianity, and social change in Thailand.

INTRODUCTION： Much of the contemporary literature on the nature of modern tour-ism and its impact upon host societies relies on several important assumptions. In a most general way, these assumptions can be formulated as follows:First, tourism is said to lead to "commoditization" (Greenwood, 1977) of areas in the life of a community which prior to its penetration by tourism have been within the domain of economic relations regulated by criteria of market exchange (cf. Appadurai 1986). Local culture generally serves as the principal example of such commoditization.

In particular, "colorful" local costumes and customs, rituals and feasts, and folk and ethnic arts become touristic services or commodities, as they come to be performed or produced for touristic consumption. Sexual services, in the form of tourist-oriented prostitution, are another major example of commoditization. The critical issue is that corn-moditization allegedly changes the meaning of cultural products and of human relations, making them eventually meaningless: "We already know from world-wide experience that local culture . . . is altered and often destroyed by the treatment of it as a touristic attraction. It is made meaningless to the people who once believed in it . . . ",(Green-wood 1977:131). Furthermore, according to the same sourq, since local culture can be commoditized by anyone, without the consent of the participants (1977:137), it can be expropriated, and the local people exploited.

Second, commoditization is said to destroy the authenticity of local cultural products and human relations; instead a surrogate, covert "staged authenticity" (MacCannell 1973) emerges. As cultural products lose their meaning for the locals, and as the need to present the tourist with ever more spectacular, exotic and titillating attractions grows (Boorstin 1964:103),  contrived  cultural  products  are  increasingly "staged" for tourists and decorated so as to look authentic. Fake "airport art" (Graburn 1967) is sold to tourists as if it were a genuine cultural product. Above all, tourists, who are apparently permitted to penetrate beyond the "front" areas of the visited society into its "back" (MacCannell 1973:597-8), are in fact cheated. Such b ck regions are frequently inauthentic "false backs," insidiously staged  or tourist consumption. Thus, for example, localities may be staged a  being remote, or "non-touristic," in order to induce tourists to "discover' em (MacCannell 1973:594); and native inhabitants of "exotic" places, re taught to "play the native" in order to appear "authentic" to the/tourists (cf. Cohen 1982a:19-21).

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 10, 2021 at 9:34pm

（Con't）Three, "staged authenticity" is said to thwart the tourist's genuine desire for authentic experiences. MacCannell (1973:597) argued that "Touristic consciousness is motivated by the desire for authentic experiences, and the tourist may believe that he is moving in that direction . . . " However, it is often the case that " . . . what is taken to be entry into a back region is really entry into a front region that has been totally set up in advance [i.e., has been staged] for touristic visitation." According to MacCannell (1973:593), the tourist, in his desire for authentic experience, is the Modern embodiment of the religious pilgrim. Tourism thus appears to become a modern surrogate for religion (MacCannell 1973:589; cf. also Cohen In Press b.). However, it is implicit in Mac Cannell's analysis that there is no salvation in tourism: the tourist establishment dominates the tourist industry, and by misleading tourists to accept contrived attractions as "authentic," creates a "false touristic consciousness." A fully developed mass tourist system surrounds the tourist with a staged tourist space, from which there is "no exit." The modern tourist-pilgrim is thus damned to inauthenticity: "Tourists make brave sorties out from their hotels hoping, perhaps, for an authentic experience, but their paths can be traced in advance over small increments of what is for them increasingly apparent authenticity proffered by [staged] tourist settings. Adventurous tourists progress eorn stage to stage, always in the public eye, and greeted everywhere by their obliging hosts" (MacCannell 1973:602).

It follows from these assumptions that commoditization, engendered by tourism, allegedly destroys not only the meaning of cultural products for the locals but, paradoxically, also for the tourists.  It thus emerges that, the more tourism flourishes, the more it allegedly becomes a colossal deception. These assumptions are highly persuasive and appealing to both sociologists and critics of modern society. But the conclusion seems far-fetched and hard to accept; unless, of course, one adopts a view of modern society as completely absurd and dominated by sinister powers, so that its members are surreptitiously misled to believe that they have genuinely authentic experiences, while in fact being systematically debarred from having them. However, before one goes to that extreme, it would be prudent to examine critically the above assumptions, in order to reach perhaps some more realistic conclusions.

 

AUTHENTICITY

"Authenticity" is an eminently modern value (cf. Appadurai 1986:45 Berger, 1973; Trilling 1972), whose emergence is closely related to the impact of modernity upon the unity of social existence. As institutions become, in Nietzsche's words, "weightless" and lose their reality (Berger 1973:86; Trilling 1972:138), the individual is said to turn into himself. "If nothing on 'the outside' can be relied upon to give weight to the individual's sense of reality, he is left no option but to burrow into himself in search of the real. Whatever this ens realissimurn m y then turn out to be, it must necessarily be in opposition to any extern al [modern] social formation. The opposition between self and society has now reached its maximum. The concept of authenticity is one way of articu-
lating this experience" (Berger 1973:88).

Modern man is thus seen, from the perspective of a contemporary existential philosophical anthropology, as a being in quest of authenticity. 

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 7, 2021 at 5:41pm

（con't）Since modern society is inauthentic, those modern seekers who desire to overcome the opposition between their authenticity-seeking self and society have to look elsewhere for authentic life. The quest for authenticity thus becomes a prominent motif of modern tourism, as MacCannell (1973, 1976) so incisively showed. However, here is also found the source of the confusion which the unexplicated use of this term introduced into tourism studies. In Mac Cannell's writings, as indeed in those of the researchers who followed his line of analysis (e.g., Redfoot 1984), the "quest for authenticity" is a "primitive" concept, which is at best illustrated, but left undefined. However, one appears to understand intuitively what is meant by it. It is a quest for that unity between the self and societal institutions, which endowed pre-modern existence with "reality" (Berger 1973:85). The alienated modern tourist in quest of authenticity hence looks for the pristine, the primitive, the natural, that which is as yet untouched by modernity. He hopes to find it in other times and other places (MacCannell 1976:160), since it is absent from his own world.

The difficulty with this use of the concept of "authenticity" in tourism studies is that it is a philosophical concept which has been uncritically introduced into sociological analysis. Furthermore, in tourism studies, the concept is used to characterize a criterion of evaluation used by the modern tourist as observer. The question, whether the "tourees" observed by the tourist at all possess such a concept, and if so, which traits of their own culture they consider to be "authentic" is rarely, if ever raised. Finally, the social analyst is tacitly assumed to understand the tourist's quest for "authenticity" because both belong to the modern world; they both appear to conceive of "authenticity" in similar, unproblematic terms. "Authenticity" thus takes up a given or "objective" quality attributable by moderns to the world "out there." The only apparent difference between the tourist and the social analyst is that the latter is more circumspect than the former. He is therefore assumed tb-)be able to penetrate beyond appearances, and discover the deception of "staged authenticity" (MacCannell 1973) perpetrated by the tourees, or the tourist establishment. The unsuspecting tourist, who is less sophisticated and knowledgeable than the analyst, is assumed to be taken in by such prevarications. It then follows that, if the tourist had the analyst's debunking knowledge, he would reject the "staged authenticity" of the

sights as contrived and lacking in authenticity. MacCannell and others who adopted his conceptual framework did not raise the possibility that the tourist and social analyst may conceive of authenticity in different terms.

In contrast to MacCannell, it is suggested that "authenticity" is a socially constructed concept and its social (as against philosophical) connotation is, therefore, not given, but "negotiable." The manner of the negotiation of its meaning should hence ?e made a major topic in the sociological and anthropological study of tourism. Several specific issues have to be distinguished.

 

Differential Conceptions of Authenticity                           

According to Trilling (197    •93) the provenance of the word "authenticity" " . . . is in the museuih, where persons expert in such matters test whether objects of art [and by extension, ethnographic objects] are what they appear to be or are claimed to be, and therefore . . . worth the admiration they are being given." The approah to "authenticity" current until recently among cutators and ethno  aphers will hence help to clarify the socially constructed nature of the concept. 

Comment by 陳老頭 on December 2, 2021 at 12:49pm

（Con't）One of the paradoxes of the progressive professionalization of curators of primitive and ethnic art in the world's museums has been that a growing number of objects were declared to be "fakes," not because any new information had been discovered on the objects themselves, but rather because the connotation of the concept of fakery had been gradually extended. "Purist" curators and art historians tended to conceive of authenticity in primitive and ethnic art in ever more rigorous terms. Thus, McLeod, the director of the Museum of Mankind and an expert of African art, defined "genuine" (i.e., authentic) African art as" . . . any piece made from traditional materials by a native craftsman for acquisition and use by members of local society (though not necessarily by members of his own group) that is made and used with no thought that it ultimately may be disposed of for gain to Europeans or other aliens" (McLeod 1976:31).

Another author, also discussing African art, declared as authentic "Any object created for a traditional purpose and by a traditional artist . . . ," but only if it " . . . conforms to traditional forms" (Cornet 1975:52, 55; emphases in the original). Like McLeod, Cornet also argues that, in order to be acceptable as authentic, the product should not be manufactured "specifically for the market" (1975:52).

Both authors hence emphasize the absence of commoditization as a crucial consideration in judgments of authenticity. It is noteworthy that Cornet proposes his definition despite his observation that there are cases where " . . . fakes [i.e., inauthentic objects] have become authen-
tic" (197.5:54), and cites as example objects produced by African artisans, in the past, for European patrons.

Such strict attitude  to authenticity, while in one sense professional, reflect in another the general modern preoccupation with authenticity which, indeed, appears to have contributed to the growing rigour of professional attitudes. Authenticity, for curators and ethnographers, is principally a quality of pre-modern life, and of cultural products produced prior to the penetration of modern Western influences: hence the common emphasis on cultural products which were "hand made" from "natural" materials. This emphasis obviously reflects the alienation of modern man from artificial and machine-made products. "The machine . . . could  make  only  inauthentic things,  dead  things . . " (Trilling 1972:127). The same is essentially true for those anthropologists who, in quest of an "ethnographic present," seek to recapture the society and culture of the people whom they study as these had been before the "contaminating" c9ntact with the Western world.

Here too, scientific consensus mingles with the more personal, modern quest for the "pristine" and "authentic." Curators, ethnographers, and anthropologists thus constitute the most fitting prototypes of Mac Cannell's tourist who seek authenticity in other times and other places. Redfoot (1984:299-301), indeed, classifies anthropologists as "third-order tourists" who, according to Levi-Strauss, " . . . reject the artifices in their own culture and seek an alternative reality in 'quest"; once there, however, they (unlike Redfoot's "fourth-order tourists") " . . . refrain from "going native" (1984:300). The anthropologist, thus " . . . digs deeper [than other tourists] in a quest for authenticity . . . " though, his quest " . . . is doomed to failure because of the subjective distancing from the 'primitive' built into the anthropologist's role" (1984:301).(Erik Cohen, 1988, Authenticity & Commodization in Tourism, Annals of Burtsm &march, Vol. 15, pp. 371-386, 1988)

Comment by 陳老頭 on November 28, 2021 at 9:57am

(con't) Anthropologists, like curators and ethnographers, even if para-Anthropologists, like curators and ethnographers, even if paradigmatic of the modern tourist, appear to entertain more rigorous criteria of authenticity than do ordinary members of the/traveling pub-lic. They belong to the wider category of modern, alienated intellectu-als— indeed, their alienation from modernity often induces them to choose their respective professions.Alienation may well be a structural consequence of the pluralization of modern life-worlds and the "weightlessness" of modern institutions (Berger 1973; Berger et al 1973). However not all moderns are personal-?ly equally alienated or aware of their alienation. Those who continue to identify unreflectively with one or another of the centers of modernity such as the work-ethic or the ethos of material and occupational achievement, are personally less alienated than those who are not so identified. Those who are disposed to reflect upon their life-situation are more aware of their alienation than those who do not tend to such contemplation.Intellectuals, here exemplified by curators, ethnographers, and an-thropologists, will be generally more alienated, and more aware of their alienation, than the rank-and-file middle-classes, and especially the lower middle class, who still strive to attain the material gains which those beyond them already enjoy.Alienation and the qUest for authenticity, however, appear to be positively related (cf. Cohen 1979a:181-2). It follows that intellectuals and other more alienated individuals will engage on a more serious quest of authenticity than most rank-and-file members of society. It is hypothesized further that, the greater their concern for authenticity, the stricter will be the criteria by which they conceive of it. Less alienated and hence less concerned individuals, including most rank-and-file tourists, will be content with much wider, less strict criteria of authen-ticity. This was probably meant by Nettekoven (1973) when he argued that "tourists are not ethnologists" and by Desai (1974:3), when he observed 'that the tourist is not a "stickler for authenticity."However, though most tourists may not seek "'authentic' experiences in any ethnographic sense," Goldberg.(1983:486) cautions that "neither are they content with mere entertainment " Tourists indeed ap-pear to seek authenticity in varying degrees of intensity, depending on the degree of their alienation from modernity. 1Following the preceding analysis, it can be argued that they will also c nceive "authenticity" in different degrees of strictness. In other words,  ndividuals who are less concerned with the authenticity of their tourist'  e .eriences, will be more prepared to accept as "authentic" a cultural pro uct or attraction which more concerned tourists, applying stricter cr), eria, will reject as "contrived."This argument can be restated in terms of the author's earlier typology of "modes of touristic experience" (Cohen 1979a; In Pressb) in which five types. of such modes were proposed, according to the depth of experience the individual seeks in tourism. 

Comment by 陳老頭 on November 26, 2021 at 4:10pm

（con't）Tourism typically involves some encounter with the "Other." Theteeper the experience sought by the tourist, the more strongly, will he tend to embrace this "Other," and to turn it into his "elective center." But, since the salience of that Other-turned-Center thereby increases for the tourist, his concern with its authenticity will grow proportionately. This, in turn, will induce the tourist to adopt stricter criteria for the judgement of authenticity than do those tourists for whom the experience is less salient. It follows that"existential" tourists (Cohen 1979a:189-192), who tend spiritually to abandon modernity and embrace the Other as their elective center and, as it were, "switch worlds" (Berger and Luckmann 1966:144), or "go native" (Redfoot 1984:299 ff) will be the most "purist" of tourists. They will strive to move furthest away from the beaten track and to get in most closely with the natives (e.g., Blakeway 1980; Schneebaum1970). In that, they resemble the anthropologist, curator, and ethnog-rapher. However, unlike the latter, they do not take up the attitude of subjective detachment (Redfoot 1984:299) to the cultural products they encounter. While their experience may thus be fuller and more sponta-neous, they also lack the professional attitude and critical capacity necessary to determine whether the traits by which they determine the "authenticity" of an object or an attraction are genuine or false. Hence they will more easily fall prey to sophisticated forms of covertly "staged authenticity" (MacCannell 1973). Here, the locals or the tourist estab-lishment "stage" precisely those aspects of the cultural product which serve the existential tourists as marks of authenticity, according to their own, strict criteria. Indeed, authenticity-eager tourists like Holland-er's (1981) "political pilgrims," may tend to idealize the destination, and thus eagerly embrace as genuine the very prevarications with which they are served. This kind of staging is particularly insidious, because it acts upon the profound will to believe of serious tourists, and not on the make-believe attitude of the more frivolous ones. The disenchant-ment of such existential tourists may therefore be particularly bitter (cf. Cohen 1979a:196).The further one moves down the scale of modes of touristic experi-ences, the less strict the criteria of authenticity employed by the tourist will tend to become. The criteria of "experimental" tourists who experi-ment with various potential elective centers (Cohen 1979a:189) will still resemble those of existential tourists. "Experiential" tourists (Cohen 1979a:186-8), who seek to participate vicariously in the authentic life of others, will also tend to employ fairly strict criteria of authenticity, close to those of "existential" tourists. However, "recreational" tourists (Cohen 1979a:183-5), who seek in the Other mainly enjoyable restora-tion and recuperation, and hence tend to approach the cultural prod-ucts encountered on their trip with a playful attitude of make-believe (Cohen 1985), will entertain much broader criteria of authenticity. Indeed, they might well be prepared playfully to accept a cultural product as authentic, for the sake of the experience, even though "deep down" they are not convinced of its authenticity (Cohen 1985:295: cf. also Goldberg 1983:485). Hence, a less ingenuous "staging of authen-ticity" will be sufficient to make this kind of tourist accept a product as authentic— though their conviction of its authenticity will also-be less deep than that of "existential" tourists. Finally, "diversionary" tourists (Cohen 1979a:185-6) who seek mere diversion and oblivion on their trip, will remain totally in equanimity and unconcerned with the prob-lem of authenticity of their experiences.

Comment by 陳老頭 on November 22, 2021 at 9:46pm

(Con't) In the view of some experts on ethnic art (e.g., Willett 1976), authenticity and falseness are not a dichotomous pair of concepts. Rather, there exists a continuum leading from complete authenticity, through various stages of partial authenticity, to complete falseness. The question therefore arises: Which are the diacritical traits which, for a given individual, in particular a tourist, Make a cultural product acceptable as "authentic"? The question here is not whether the individual does or does not "really" have an authentic experience in Mac Cannell's (1973) sense, -but rather what endows his experience with authenticity in his own view. Thus one can follow Gottlieb's approach: she " . . . assumes that the vacationers' own feelings and views about vacations are 'authentic,' whether or not the observer judges them to match the host culture" (Gottlieb 1982: 168). However, while Gottlieb does not make any further inquiries into the bases of tourists' feelings and views, it is proposed here to open these to investigation. According to the approach developed above, tourists will differ in the number and kinds of traits necessary to their mind to authentic cultural product.

As the preceding section notes, for tourist professional expert, only a cultural product which appear authentic in all of its varied aspects, would be acceptable as "authentic." This may also be the case with deeply concerned tourists. Thus, on one of the trekking lips in which this author participated in the course of his study of the penetration of tourism into the hill-tribe area of northern Thailand, a French tourist, a teacher by profession, complained about the fact that the people in a tribal village, which had been opened to tourism only a few weeks earlier, used industrially produced plastic cups instead of indigenously produced bamboo cups. The mere adoption of plastic cups, although unrelated to the penetration of tourism, already offended his sense of cultural authenticity.

While this kind of tourist often serves as the prototype of the ideal tourist, he is, statistically speaking, a minority among the huge population of contemporary mass tourism. Such a demand for "total authenticity" will be most prominent among "existentia," or "experimental" tourists, seriously concerned with the Other, as/at least a potential elective center.

Comment by 陳老頭 on November 21, 2021 at 5:23pm

(Con't) The vast majority of tourists do not demand such a "total authenticity!" Even "experiential" tourist , though seriously concerned with the authenticity of their experience, entertaining strict criteria for judgments of authenticity, will often fo us in such judgments on some traits of the cultural product and, disregard others. Hence, they will be prepared to accept a cultural *duct as authentic, insofar as traits, which they consider to be diacritical, are judged by them to be authentic. These traits are then considered sufficient for the authentization of the product as a whole. One could say that they symbolize metonymically the authenticity of the tourist-oriented cultural product as a whole. °Therefore, such tourists will accept a commercialized object as "authentic," insofar as they are convinced that it is indeed ornamented with "traditional" designs and "hand made" by members of an ethnic group (even though it may have been made of different materials or, in a different form than the "traditional" product and was produced expressly for the market). They may similarly accept as "authentic" a commercialized replication of local customs, such as a dance or a ritual, in so far as it is performed identically by members of the local group, as is its non-commercialized counterpart. A recent

study by Moscardo and Pearce (1986) provides some empirical evidence on this point. They have studied visitors perceptions of Australian historic theme parks. Since such parks "preserve or restore some aspects of a nation's or a region's heritage" (1986:471), they are almost by definition not "authentic" in Mac Cannell's sense. However, the visitors generally did perceive them as "authentic"— in the sense of being accurate reconstructions of Australia's past (1986:474-6), rather than genuine historical remains. Contrary to the authors' claim (1986:472), park operators— and some tourists— appear thus to be using the word "authenticity" differently from social scientists. However, the point of this. argument is that by accepting a particular trait of the site, namely "verissimilitude," as authenticating the site as a whole, the tourists become neither superficial fools satisfied with the spurious, in Boorstin's (1964) sense, nor victims of a prevaricating touristic establishment which "stages" authenticity in Mac Cannell's (1973) sense.

Recreational tourists, whose concern with authenticity is relatively low, may well accept even a substantially staged product and experience as "authentic." This would not be necessarily because they have been misled by the staging, but because even the faintest vestige of, or resemblance to what experts would consider an "authentic" trait of the product, may suffice for them to play the make-believe game of having an "authentic" experience. Therefore, such tourists may playfully consent to buy fake products or experiences as if they were genuine, merely because their resemblance to the genuine thing gives these tourists an inkling of authenticity. The recreation which Gottlieb's (1982) tourists derive from being a "King for a Day" or a "Peasant for a Day," one may argue, derives from their feeling "how it must have been to be a king (or a peasant)"; even though they are perfectly aware of the fact that their own, purchased experience has been staged for their benefit.

Finally, diversionary tourists may enjoy touristic products even if these are, in their own view, completely contrived, insofar as they appeal to them merely as "funny," "cute," or "lovely." A good example of such a product is a pair of embracing monkeys with sun-glasses, made of coconut shells, which are sold in touristic destinations all over southern Thailand, but are totally unrelated to any aspect of local Thai culture, except perhaps that monkeys serve as coconut-pickers in that part of Thailand.

Comment by 陳老頭 on November 20, 2021 at 3:25pm

Emergent Authenticity

Since authenticity is not a primitive given, but negotiable, one has to allow for the possibility of its gradual emergence in the eyes of visitors to the host culture. In other words, a cultural product, or a trait thereof, which is at one point generally judged sa contrived or inauthentic may, in the course of time, become generally recognised as authentic, even by experts, as Cornet's (1975:54) equivocation quoted above demonstrates. Thus, for example, an apparently contrived, tourist-oriented festival (such as the Raymi Festival Cuzco, a "revival" of an ancient Incaic custom) may in due time accepted as an "authentic" local custom. Similarly, craft products only produced merely for sale to visitors and tourists, may eventually become "authentic" products of an ethnic group or region — as happened with, for example, the Eskimo soapstone carvings (Graburn 1976b) or the Haida argillite carvings (Kaufmann 1976). Greenwood (1982:27) remarked that "all viable cultures are in the process of 'making themselves up' all the time." One could call this process "emergent authenticity," just as a parallel process in the ethnic realm was termed "emergent ethnicity" (Yancey et al 1976).

"Emergent authenticity" stresses one aspect or refers to one manifestation, of the wider phenomenon of "invention of tradition," whose ubiquitousness has been so impressively documented in Hobsbawm and Ranger's (1983) volume. In principle it is possible for any new-(angled gimmick, which at one point appeared to be nothing but a staged "tourist trap," to become over time, and under appropriate conditions, widely recognized as an "authentic" manifestation of local culture.

One can learn about this process of gradual "authentication" from the manner in which the American Disneylands, once seen as the supreme example of contrived popular entertainment-, became over time a vital component of contemporary American culture (e.g., Johnson 1981; King 1981). They will, no doubt, in the future be perceived even by historians and ethnographers, as an "authentic" American tradition (cf. Moore 1980).

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