The Perceptual Change of Reality in Tourist Places: Authenticity in Modern and Post-Modern Tourism Experiences

Abstract

The sustainability of cultural identity of society and cultural accumulation of space is possible by protecting them from the destructive effects of time and various external factors and by ensuring that they reach to the future with their authentic characters. Since the 1980s, the representation of past and culture to the global market with various policies has further strengthened the debate on authenticity that started in the 1960s in the context of tourism. The aim of the present study was to scrutinize the main works on authenticity in tourism experiences in the modern and post-modern periods by revealing the changing and evolving roles of the concepts of authenticity that has been shaped since the 1930s. In this context, the first part of the present study shows the development of the authenticity concept in international doctrinal documents on conservation. The second part discusses the works by Boorstin (1961), MacCannell (1976), and Cohen (1979), who are considered the theoretical beginning of the authenticity studies in the modern tourism literature. The third part examines the studies by Urry (1990, 1995) and Wang (1999), which are important studies in the post-modern tourism literature. The obtained information based on the research is summarized in the review section. The main implications are discussed in the conclusion part. The present study, which takes a critical approach based on tourism sociology, aims to develop different perspectives on the transformation of authentic urban place into a touristic space structured by the market economy that produces objects for the tourist gaze with constructed false realities.