AUTHENTICITY AND ECOCULTURAL TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN KAZAKHSTAN: POTENTIAL AND CHALLENGES - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 46

Generally speaking, authenticity depends on the needs of society in
terms of tradition and origins, even if those are invented (Hobsbawm and
Ranger, 1983), on the cultural background and the interpretation of his-
tory (Bruner, 1994). The objects and events of a particular time period
may be appropriated to construct a story (or a myth) that conforms to the
economic, social and political interests in a particular domain (Bruner,
1994). The national flag of the Republic of Kazakhstan portrays a blue-sky
color with a picture of a golden sun with 32 rays in its center and a soaring
steppe eagle under them. The blue color of the flag suggests cultural and
ethnical unity of different nations and the indivisibility of the state while
the sun represents the source of life and energy. The steppe eagle or golden
eagle takes a special place in the nomads' view of the world and symbol-
izes liberty, independence, and self-accomplishment.
As Jamal and Hill (2002, p. 87) suggest, “authenticity is not a qual-
ity of objects themselves, but one that is ascribed to them, often by those
with the authority to do so.” Residents consume and renegotiate tourist
images to create a new form of authenticity for themselves. The tourists
themselves are also involved in this process, what Cohen (1988) describes
as the creation of 'emergent authenticity.'
THE POST-MODERN AUTHENTICITY OF CONSUMING
EXPERIENCE
Authors have also argued for a more existential approach to the question
of authenticity (Hughes, 1995; Wang, 1999) where the individuals create
a sense of truth within themselves. Cohen (1988) highlights the question
of how to generate a perception of authenticity taking into account new
expectations of consumers in terms of lived experience. If a certain au-
thenticity can be revealed from a consuming experience, the search for
postmodern authenticity is translated from a day-to-day search for experi-
ences (Cova and Cova, 2002) in a postmodern era in which the consumers
are looking for an authenticity that is lost. Wang suggests that “as a con-
trast to the everyday roles, the tourist is linked to the ideal of authenticity”
(Wang, 1999, p. 360). Whereas the object can be undoubtedly inauthentic,
the experience that results from the consuming can be in this case existen-
tially authentic and reveal a sense of truth within visitors. According to the
philosophy of existence, the idealistic view of authenticity states that hu-