The Postmodern Turn Of Tourism Authenticity Research

Since be introduced into the tourism studies, authenticity has become a hot topic in the study of tourism sociology. And tourism authenticity has been a disputable subject sine half a century ago. This article systematically reviews the relevant literature on tourism authenticity domestically and overseas, and analyzes the research object,theoretical position, theoretical origin and research status of tourism authenticity.Seen from its development history, tourism has gone through pre-modern travel,modern tourism and postmodern tourism. During the pre-modern travel period, people became travelers with their adventurous and truth-seeking spirit; during the modern tourism period, people began to go sightseeing under the protection of organized tourism, and became mass tourists; then people began to reflect on the modern tourism and became postmodern tourists who stress entertainment, consumption,mediumlization, ecology and "alternative". Thus, the article points out that the research object of tourism authenticity has experienced the postmodern turn.Studies on tourism authenticity theories have gone through objective authenticity,constructive authenticity, hyper-reality, existential authenticity and interactive authenticity. From the epistemological point of view, the development of tourism authenticity theories has two paths: one is from the focus on object authenticity to the decomposition of object authenticity and the focus on the subject authenticity and inter-subject authenticity; the other is from the focus on one-way authenticity to two-way interactive authenticity. According to the role change of the intellectuals from modern "legislators" to postmodern "interpreters" in Bauman’s discussion, the position of tourism authenticity researcher has been changed from "legislators" to "interpreters".Based on the analysis above and the postmodern turn of social theories, the article points out that the position of tourism authenticity theories has gone through the postmodern turn.On the one hand, the article discusses the theoretical origin of authenticity tourism and comes to the following conclusions: the objective authenticity is derived from the critical theory, and constructive authenticity from social constructivism, hyper-reality from Simulacrum, existential authenticity from the philosophy of existentialism and the concept of community, interactive authenticity from field work, which has indicated the diversification of the research paradigm of tourism authenticity theories; on the other hand the Annals of Tourism Research are studied as individual cases for the conclusion of the multi existence of the theoretical studies of tourism authenticity. Pluralistic discourse analysis is a prominent postmodern feature. From the above, the article comes to the conclusion that the tourism authenticity studies have postmodern features.