As described in previous blogs, to some types of tourists, the authenticity of places, people and activities they visit or more important than to others.[2] Question is: how authentic are those sites they visit?
Dean MacCannel speaks of the ' mystification' of places by the local people.[3]. They create a enhanced and therefore false sense of reality of their visitors. They make everything a bit more like the tourists expect it to be. So all the Bedouin men in Petra dress up like they're Captain Jack Sparrow: a scarf on the head and using kohl pencil to get those 'dreamy steamy desert eyes'. The same happened on Lake Titicaca where the locals pretended to live in a traditional way on the Floating Reed Islands. The sightseers want and feel like they are experiencing the life as it is lived, even though they are only watching a mere play, a ' staged authenticity'.
And who can blame the locals for staging such a more-authentic-than-life-situation? No tourist will come if they see the Mursi women sitting in Adidas around a Philips TV. Those 'authentic' experiences are the only means for a sustainable tourism industry.
We stayed in a lovely Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum the other night. The moonlit desert was very authentic. The WiFi connection was not.
1.Turton, David. "Lip‐plates and ‘the people who take photographs’: uneasy encounters between Mursi and tourists in southern Ethiopia." Anthropology today 20.3 (2004): 3-8.
2. McCabe, Scott. "‘Who is a tourist?’A critical review." Tourist studies 5.1 (2005): 85-106.
3. MacCannell, Dean. "Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist settings." American journal of Sociology (1973): 589-603.
Haha so true, who would have guessed a desert can have WiFi
BeantwoordenVerwijderenYou expect a Bedouin to remain primitive for the tourist? Of course they evolve, just like you did in Holland. Because he has wifi doesn't mean he's not a Bedouin anymore, just not the Bedouin YOU expect.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenDear Henk, Thank you for your reaction! My point exactly! It's 2015, almost all of the globe has a Wifi connection or at least an IKEA. How wrong is it to expect and asume that other people still live their traditional life, as if time has stood still? Of course not! But that is what we want to see as a tourist. We want to see the Bedouin in camps in the desert without wifi ;-). We want the 'real deal' the most 'authentic' experience. And that is one of the stranger things about tourism. What you want is what you get. So we as tourists get a 'authentic' camel ride and a campsite. It's just very staged, the people provide what you ask for by staging the experience. Beccause, trust me, you really do not want to use a camel for main type of transportation. At least, not longer for twenty minutes. My bum (sorry about that) still hurts from the experience!
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