Culture on Tour

Edward M. Bruner’s Culture on Tour presents an array of analytical questions to consider when studying a specific tourist site, including, but certainly not limited to: Who constructs the site/performance? Who consumes it? How does it respond to touristic expectations? What is being concealed through the performance (commercial aspect of the encounter, alternative narratives)? How does the performance generate/legitimate power? To me, this last question is the most interesting, and I feel it is linked to Bruner’s understanding of the word “authentic” and its fourfold meaning.

To Bruner, “authenticity” can mean “verisimilitude, genuineness, originality, and authority” in turn (151). Although all the definitions Bruner furnishes for authenticity contribute to our understanding of the question of power in an analytical discourse on tourism, I want to share some thoughts on authenticity as verisimilitude and authenticity as authority.

In Bruner’s example of Bomas, authenticity as verisimilitude enables a “metanarrative” (to use Bruner’s terminology) of cultural and national unity by virtue of putting ethnicity on display in a theatrical and archival setting. By “preserving” ethnicity, the Kenyan government essentially is giving permission for individual ethnic groups and cultural practices to disappear from daily life (by assuming they have [or should have] already done so). Promoting authenticity in this first sense creates the illusion of national unity and a disappearing minority culture. It may even eventually cause these illusions to become material reality (changes in daily life). Verisimilitude requires that the audience of a specific production accept it as sufficiently representative of whatever it is trying to authenticate. Therefore the audience becomes both consumers and producers of authentication. Authenticity as authority then becomes not only a question of “who has the authority to authenticate” (150), but also who has the authority to question that authentication. Bruner makes a case throughout the book that tourists are active subjects who do not necessarily accept all performances as authentic (in any sense). He views tourist productions as “site[s] of struggle ” (128) between the producers and the actual processes of production, but also between performers and audience, and producers and audience.

Other questions Bruner poses, which may be useful in our analyses of historical tourist sites: Who benefits from the production? How? Who are the performers? Are they compensated for their contribution? How? In what physical setting is the production constructed? Is the setting designed to feel “public” or “private”? How much information (historical, ethnographic, political) is offered to the audience? In what depth? Are audiences encouraged to question parts or the whole of the production? Is photography allowed? What souvenirs are offered? Are the “working staff” and the “performers” distinguished/separated? Who is the marketing for the production geared towards? To what extent do audiences have to ‘fill in the blanks’ of the material presented?

I aso saw this today and thought it would be interesting to point out that tourism, or visiting a tourist site can also be symbolic and political. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/world/europe/08pope.html?hp