Seeking self: leisure and tourism on common ground (original) (raw)
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REDEFINING THE SELF : IDENTITY THROUGH TOURISM
Identity Tourism With a rapidly evolving tourism scenario, the traveller’s motive to venture out has also undergone rapid change, ranging from varying motives for leisure to a need for the search for identity. One of the evident consequences of tourism is defying the monotony of routine life and seeking out an “authentic” experience. Wang (1999) indicates that tourists are not only searching for the “Other”, but are also on a quest for self-identity and that tourism is a vessel for self discovery. Bandyopadhyay (2008) has indicated that identity is essentially an individual notion. Regarding touristic experiences, “both remembering and forgetting also underlie a “subjective sense of identity” that is only inadequately reproduced in language. Transformation of Self We are, not what we are, but what we make of ourselves. It would not be true to say that the self is regarded as entirely empty of content, for there are psychological processes of self-formation, and psychological needs, which provide the parameters for the reorganized self. Otherwise, however, what the individual becomes is dependent on the reconstructive endeavors in which he or she engages. These are far more than just “getting to know oneself‟ better: self-understanding is subordinated to the more inclusive and fundamental aim of building/rebuilding a coherent and rewarding sense of identity. The involvement of such reflexivity with social and psychological research is striking, and a pervasive feature of the therapeutic outlook advocated (Giddens, 1991, p. 75). The idea of “personhood” in tourism studies, such as identity, subjectivity, and the self, are supplemented in this paper through an empirical approach to identity and tourism consumption patterns. Anthony Giddens' analysis of contemporary self-identity is adopted as a research strategy for analysing“travel biographies”. In-depth interviews with tourists will lead to an understanding of which tourism consumption is mobilized for self-identity. This paper will endeavour to ascertain positive and negative correlates between a tourist and his identity like tourist experience, distance travelled etc. Keywords: Tourism self, tourist self-identification, travel distance REFERENCES Boorstin, D. (1964). The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper. Cohen, E. (1979). A phenomenology of tourist experiences. Sociology, 13, 179-201. Galani-Moutafi, V. (2000). The self and the other: Traveler, ethnographer, tourist. Annals of Tourism Research, 27(1), 203-224.
Leisure Experience and Authenticity
2009
I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M a n a g e m e n t C a s e s 618 619 I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M a n a g e m e n t C a s e s
A Phenomenological Analysis of Tourist Identity: Three Theses and Propositions
There is a dearth of narrative research related to "tourist identity" in leisure and tourism studies. In this review paper, we identify this research gap upon performing a systematic review of articles in leisure and tourism studies published on the SCOPUS database in the last four decades (1979-2021). We furnish three theses based on the prevalent research gap and offer three propositions that foregrounds the questions of identity. We argue that leisure and tourism studies focus more on the collective and the ethnicto pit the collective Self against the collective Other, while discounting the personal and the phenomenological. We insist that leisure and tourism studies must engage with a wide range of traveling practices outside of the tourist experiences, and integrate more non-conventional sources (e.g. photography and narrative autoethnography) and non-Western approaches. Among other things, this will help dismantle the White logic prevalent in, and thus decolonize the field.
Thoughts about the Theoretical Approach of Recreation, Sport and Tourism
2016
Despite the fact that recreational activities – like many other activities evolv-ing in parallel with the social development of humans – are as old as mankind, recreation, as a topic for academic interpretation and research was justified only at a relatively late date in the history of sciences. Recreation, according to recent terminology used by researchers is the culture of how humans spend their free time; it relates to active recreation, the creation of well-being, the res- toration of people’s abilities to work, as well as the preservation and improve- ment of their good health. My study is aimed at elaborating on and rethinking the relationship between recreation, sport and tourism by the help of a desk research. As a result of the investigtion it can be state that recreation needs to be considered a complex phenomenon which is based on a variety of elements taken from various symbolical domains. At the same time it is also evident that recreational activities cannot be simpli...
Psychological nature of leisure and tourism experience
Annals of Tourism Research, 1987
This paper examines the leisure and tourist experience from three perspectives. While leisure researchers have identified the major ingredients of subjective definitions of leisure, little research has been done on tourism from the "definitional" perspective. From the "post-hoc satisfaction" standpoint, theory and research suggest that psychological benefits of leisure and tourist experience emanate from the interplay of two motivational forces: to escape from routine and stressful environments and to seek recreational opportunities. The "immediate conscious experience" approach is committed to the value of monitoring the actual, on-site, real-time nature of the experience itself. Although scholars have analyzed the anatomy of the leisure experience, immediate conscious tourist experiences have not been subjected to scientific analysis. Thus, it is not possible to conclude when and under what conditions tourist experience becomes leisure experience.
Sport and Tourism in Contemporary Society
2019
One of the main Urry's lessons is that the tourist experience, with the advent of postmodernism, have started to contribute more to the formation of the identity of people, thanks to the proliferation of information channels and means of transport that have made possible, in fact, a series of practices and dynamics until a few years ago unimaginable (Urry, 2000; Urry & Sheller, 2004, 2006). Today tourism is set up as a cultural experience that is characterized as a time when people, objects, symbols, images and cultures meet, merge and mutually condition. Motivate the tourist experience and the desire of people to travel are "attractive elements", i.e. the resources-natural and cultural-that are present in the destinations, able to feed the imagination of tourists, creating in the social actors the expectations of what they may have direct experience once they reach their destination. In The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1976), MacCannell has developed a tourist attraction semiotic theory, explaining how objects, monuments, but also rites and ceremonies can assume the status of "attractor" following a value of attribution process. This mechanism is engaged both by the tourist industry and by tourists themselves, when they recognize in one or more elements a quality that makes tourism worthwhile. The pluralization of tourist paths that characterizes the contemporary and the reasons underlying the various forms of mobility has been accompanied and supported by a multiplication of the attractive elements (Urry, 1995; Rifkin, 2000). Starting from specific personal curiosity and identity needs, every natural and cultural element becomes a potential tourist attraction. The so-called "long tail" of preferences (Anderson, 2006) today expands even more, characterized by a set of niche of tourism. Those that are traditionally called tourist attractions are in fact socially constructed, through the activation of sponsorship recognitions and global mechanisms, propagated by the actors, public and private, in charge of promoting tourism. In this scenario fits the tourism associated with major sporting events, which in recent years has attracted a huge global interest (Pigeassou, 1997; Romiti, 2011; Cannizzaro, 2011). More and more people, in the role of tourists, use their free time devoted to the holidays, moving to new destinations, motivated by the intention to be witnesses on the spot of this kind of events in different sports (Standeven & De Knop, 1999). It is a steadily growing trend that is becoming increasingly important in the tourism industry, surpassing other more traditional journey types, such as beach, cultural or rural tourism. It is useful to note that there is a large segment of the population that
The purpose of this article is to gather together a number of conceptuai or theoretical points drawn from the wider social anthropological discourse on the nature of experience. It advances understandings of the anthropology of experience through the medium of tourism. In turn it also illuminates understandings of the nature of tourism experiences. The article is largely a theoretical piece that is illustrated with details drawn from an ethnographic study of two charter tourism resorts-Palmanova and Magaluf-in Mallorca. Therefore, in an attempt to elucidate more carefully what experience means, it draws on the discussions of 'experience' in the wider anthropological literature, most notably the existential anthropology of Michaei Jacltson and The Anthropology of Experience (Turner and Bruner 1986), and makes links to the writings of Pierre Bourdieu on the concepts of'habitus' and 'field', bringing them to bear on the subject of tourism.
2000
1.1 Apart from the ordinary 1.2 Cohen's'modes of tourist experience' 1.3 Research questions 2 Experiences and typologies 2.1 Phenomenology and tourist experiences 2.2 Provinces of meaning and switching worlds 2.3 The language of experience and out-there-ness 2.4 Rethinking Cohen's modes 2.5 Of types and typologies 3 Research approach 3.1 Casestudies 3.2 Development of the instrument 3.3 Statistical classification of experiences 3.4 Grouping technique 4 Experiences in different settings 4.1 Veluwezoom National Park 4.2 ANWB Auto Routes 4.3 Veluwe Travel Pass 4.4 Euregion Meuse-Rhine 4.5 SNP Nature Travels 4.6 Costa Rica National Parks 4.7 NTKC Dutch Nature Camping Club 4.8 Comparative conclusions 5 Towards a typology of experiences 5.1 Meaning of the factors of experience 5.2 A typology of experiences for different contexts and leisure activities 5.3 A market segmentation of tourists and recreationists 5.4 Reliability and validity of the instrument