Wilderness state of mind: expanding authenticity

Vidon, Elizabeth S.; Rickly, Jillian M.; Knudsen, Daniel C.

Abstract

This paper challenges the overuse of existential authenticity as a categorical umbrella encapsulating touristic experience and contributes new insights to the way postmodern authenticity is defined in tourism research. To date, studies associated with postmodern authenticity have focused on the inauthentic and themed, with scholars contending that it speaks more to the consumptive, the superficial, and the trivial than to the substantive and meaningful. By working through a case study focused on nature tourists in pursuit of authentic wilderness experiences, this paper illustrates the ways postmodern authenticity encompasses much more than cynical authenticity, for while the American wilderness may be a hyperreal, and even hypernatural, simulacrum, nature tourists nevertheless report deep, meaningful, and " authentic " engagements with wilderness.

Citation

Vidon, E. S., Rickly, J. M., & Knudsen, D. C. (2018). Wilderness state of mind: expanding authenticity. Annals of Tourism Research, 73, 62-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2018.09.006

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 11, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Sep 20, 2018
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Nov 6, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 21, 2020
• Journal: Annals of Tourism Research
• Print ISSN: 0160-7383
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 73
• Pages: 62-70
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2018.09.006
• Keywords: Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management; Development
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1231625
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738318300975?via%3Dihub
• Contract Date: Nov 6, 2018