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Why it Never Really was About Authenticity

  • Symposium: Touring the World
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Abstract

Critics of the concept fail to note that staged authenticity is not authenticity but its opposite or negation. This error is illustrated referencing Ed Bruner’s reading of The Tourist in his recent book Culture on Tour.

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Further Reading

  • Bruner, E. (2005). Culture on tour: ethnographies of travel. Chicago: University of Chicago.

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  • Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

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  • MacCannell, D. (1973). “Staged authenticity: on arrangements of social space in tourist settings.”. The American Journal of Sociology, 79(3), 589–603.

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  • MacCannell, D. (1999). The tourist: a new theory of the leisure class. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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  • MacCannell, D. (2008). “Staged authenticity today”. In M. Sorkin (Ed.),Indefensible space: the architecture of the national security state (pp. 259–276). London: Routledge.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Dean MacCannell

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  1. Dean MacCannell
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Correspondence to Dean MacCannell.

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MacCannell, D. Why it Never Really was About Authenticity . Soc 45, 334–337 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-008-9110-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-008-9110-8

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