This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 668–689, 2008 0160-7383/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures doi:10.1016/j.annals.2008.03.007 THE SEARCH FOR AUTHENTICITY IN THE PILGRIM EXPERIENCE Yaniv Belhassen Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Kellee Caton William P. Stewart University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Abstract: The present study enriches the theoretical debate on the concept of authenticity by examining its relevance to the experiences of pilgrims. Overall, the study argues that the recent conceptual shift in the tourism literature, which tends to view authenticity in a subjective sense, should be rethought due to its lack of consideration of ideological and spatial dimensions. Employing data from fieldwork on fundamentalist Christian pilgrimages, the study integrates previous approaches to authenticity through a conceptual framework referred to as theoplacity. Keywords: pilgrimage, authenticity, place, religion, theoplacity. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION The search for authenticity has become one of the key themes in the academic literature of tourism. MacCannell (1973), who initiated this discussion, emphasized the central role that tourist settings play in the search for authenticity. He noted that pilgrims’ desire to be in a place associated with religious meanings was comparable to the attrac- tion of tourists to places embedded with social, historical, or cultural significance. More recently, however, the term authenticity has under- gone a series of conceptual shifts from being viewed as objective and concrete to being envisioned in a more subjective and abstract way (Kim and Jamal 2007; Steiner and Reisinger 2006; Wang 1999). There is much merit in this conceptual shift, especially insofar as it highlights the individual and various manifestations of tourists’ lived experiences. However, the tendency to approach authenticity exclusively through a subjectivist lens is also problematic as it obscures the influence of real physical places, with shared, collectively authored meanings. This study seeks to reexamine the way authenticity is experienced by tourists and Yaniv Belhassen is an assistant professor in the program of Hotel & Tourism Management (Eliat campus, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel 84105. Email <[email protected]>). Kellee Caton earned her PhD in 2008 from the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. William Stewart is Professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 668 Author's personal copy Y. Belhassen et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 35 (2008) 668–689 669 to suggest a theoretical framework that bridges the conceptual gap be- tween the subjective nature of authenticity, as reflected in contempo- rary scholarship, and the need to contextualize it both within the toured landscape and within the broader nexus of socio-spatial rela- tions surrounding the journey—two important forces that exist outside of the tourist’s self, but which nevertheless mediate his or her experi- ences of authenticity. To be more specific, this study calls for an integrative analysis of authenticity that moves beyond the solely subjective to highlight the intersection of three central factors—place, belief, and action—as part of pilgrims’ lived experiences of authenticity. The relationship between these elements provides a conceptual framework, termed‘‘theoplacity,’’ which is illustrated through examples derived from recent fieldwork on fundamentalist Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. By examining the search for authentic experiences during the examined tours, the framework of theoplacity demonstrates that authenticity is shaped by religious belief underlying evangelical pilgrimage, the places visited and their meanings, and the activities undertaken by the pilgrims. As such, the suggested framework follows Uriely’s (2005) suggestion for a balanced theoretical approach to authenticity in the wake of the increasing role of subjectivity in conceptualizations of tourism. An Authentically Slippery Concept Handler and Saxton (1988), Bruner (1994), and Wang (1999) all recognize that the term ‘‘authenticity’’ has not been used consistently in the literature, suggesting that the various uses of the term can be found across studies and, at times, even within the same study (such heterogeneity is reflected for example in the following studies: Bruner 1989; Cohen 1988; Daniel 1996; Eco 1986; MacCannell 1973; Reisinger and Steiner 2006; Selwyn 1996). Through a genealogical meta-analysis, Wang (1999) maps out conceptual developments of the term over the last four decades, and concludes by suggesting a classification of the different theoretical approaches toward authenticity in tourism studies (see Table 1 from Wang 1999:359). Wang offers a larger organizing framework that posits objectivist, subjectivist, and postmodernist con- ceptualizations of authenticity as discreet from and oppositional to one another. In particular, he notes three different paradigmatic ap- proaches to the concept of authenticity—namely, objectivist, construc- tivist, and postmodernist—and suggests that these paradigms are reflected in three different types of authenticity—object, constructive, and existential. The objectivist approach assumes that authenticity emanates from the originality of a toured object such as a site or a specific attraction. Hypothetically, this originality can be measured with objective criteria that determine whether the object is authentic or not. Arguably, this approach can be affiliated with the broader academic stream of objec- tivism and, to some extent, with post-positivism and empiricism, all of which presuppose the existence of authenticity as a quality that can be Author's personal copy 670 Y. Belhassen et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 35 (2008) 668–689 Table 1. Wang’s Taxonomy of Three Types of Authenticity in Tourist Experiences Object-related Authenticity Activity-Related in Tourism Authenticity in Tourism Object authenticity refers to the Existential authenticity refers to a potential existential authenticity of originals. state of Being that is to be activated by tourism Correspondingly, authentic activities. Correspondingly, authentic experiences experiences in tourism are in tourism are to achieve this activated existential equated to an epistemological state of Being within the liminal process of tourism. experience (i.e., cognition) Existential authenticity can have nothing to do with of the authenticity of original. the authenticity of toured objects. Constructive authenticity refers to the objects by tourist or tourism producers in terms of their imagery, expectations, preferences, beliefs, powers, etc. There are various versions of authenticities regarding the same objects. Correspondingly, authentic experiences in tourism and the authenticity of toured objects are constitutive of one another. In this sense, the authenticity of toured object is in fact symbolic authenticity. measured. However, as Wang notes, this approach, as reflected in the writings of Boorstin (1964) and MacCannell (1976), does not specify how or by whom these criteria are established. In other words, this ap- proach generates the problem of authentication, eloquently posed by Bruner and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett as the question of ‘‘Who has the power to determine what will count as authentic?’’ (1994:459). The constructivist approach takes a different tack. This approach is affiliated with the larger academic school of constructivism, which emphasizes symbolic meanings created through the process of socio- public discourses. Constructivists do not put as much stress on the orig- inality of toured objects, and they reject the objectivist assumption of the binary nature of authenticity. Instead, they emphasize the pluralis- tic nature of the meaning-making process through which authenticity is established or recognized and assume that authenticity is projected onto an object by the influence of social discourses. Likewise, construc- tivists emphasize the heterogeneous ways that tourists perceive authen- ticity, which can be related to their personal interpretations of the definition of authenticity. Thus, within the constructivist approach, authenticity is viewed as a projection of the tourist’s home culture, rather than as a reflection of an inherent quality of the toured object. In this way the constructivist approach opens ground for consideration of claims that bind authenticity with relations of power. Finally, Author's personal copy Y. Belhassen et al. / Annals of Tourism Research 35 (2008) 668–689 671 constructivists view authenticity as a dynamic concept,