Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Of course, issues of authenticity and gazes evolve in the present virtual and mobile world,
characterized by a time-space compression. As a consequence, multifold gazes emerge which
Urry and Larsen (2011: 23) interpret as a 'a shift from a solid, fi xed modernity to a more fl uid
and speeded-up liquid modernity'.
The tourism experience as transition between everyday life and holiday life
The second major theme in the experience literature focuses on tourists and their odysseys, or
tourism as a personal
passage
from an ordinary/profane workaday time to an extraordinary/
sacred touristic time. Based on the processual model in anthropology (i.e. all societies mark
the passage of time through rituals and special events), a holiday is seen as a kind of ritual of
renewal in the annual cycle. A holiday marks a seasonal, special and sacred break from the
mundane and profane everyday work; it is 'functionally and symbolically equivalent to other
institutions that humans use to embellish and add meaning to their lives' (Graburn 1989: 22).
Further, particular tourist experiences such as honeymoon trips or retirement cruises are
analogous to 'rites de passage' (van Gennep 1909) or intermittent pilgrimages (Turner and
Turner 1978; Smith 1992), which may be paralleled with the Muslim 'hajj' to Mecca (Graburn
and Moore 1994).
MacCannell (1976) proposes a number of stages involved in tourist rituals: naming the sight,
framing and elevation, enshrinement, mechanical reproduction as new sights name themselves
after the famous. Turner (1973, 1974) makes a distinction between three ritual stages, which were
adapted to tourism by other authors (Cohen 1988; Lett 1983; Shields 1990):
1 The social and spatial separation from the conventional social ties and usual place of
residence.
2 Liminality: the direct experience of the sacred (shrines) out of time, place, and con-
ventional social ties. This results in a kind of uplifting experience. This also gives room for
'liminoid situations' (Turner and Turner 1978) where everyday obligations are suspended
or even inverted leading to permissive and playful behaviour, and/or unconstrained social
togetherness.
3 Reintegration: 'the individual is reintegrated in the previous social group, usually at a higher
social status' (in Urry 1990: 10).
Tourism experience is portrayed as a quest for the inversion of the everyday: the upper middle-
class tourist seeks to be a 'peasant for a day' while the lower middle-class will seek to be a 'king/
queen for a day'. Moreover, in their passages (since tourists are touring), tourists are moving from
one experiential state to another, with greater or lesser consequences for them and their home
societies (Lett 1983; Nash 1996).
Drawing on Turner, Jafari (1987) uses a springboard metaphor to describe how a tourist
temporarily leaves his/her everyday life to jump into the holiday experience before falling back
into ordinary life. His conceptualization entails fi ve major steps:
1
corporation: represents the body's aspiration 'to leave the springboard behind' (1987: 151);
2
emancipation: the act of departure from the springboard platform;
3
animation: the tourist enjoying activities in the extraordinary world of tourism;
4
repatriation: the return to the reality of ordinary life;
5
incorporation: getting back to the body and context of ordinary life.
