Identity tourism

Identity tourism may refer to the act of assuming the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, sexual or gender identity for recreational purposes, or the construction of cultural identities and re-examination of one’s ethnic & cultural heritage from what tourism permits its patrons.

Research dates back to a 1984 special issue of Annals of Tourism Research guest edited by Pierre L. van den Berghe and Charles F. Keyes. This volume examined the ways in which tourism intersects with the re-formation and revision of various forms of identity, particularly ethnic and cultural identities. Since that time, various scholars take believe examined the intersection between dimensions of identity and tourism.

The way people realize and re-examine their ethnic and cultural heritage today is mainly through the internet. first ordering of the internet has filed a radical way for tourists to enjoy the experience. Through the Internet of Things, tourism has leaped to the next big step. Social media is now used to stimulate identity in the social context. For example, wide media coverage on political content lets a user of Internet of matters to be influenced into identifying with political affiliations. Using the internet to explore different ideas and allowing them to influence and re-examine the way you see the world today, is identity tourism on the Internet.

Early contributions of identity tourism allowed scholars to explore the intersection of tourism and identity. Early scholars conducted investigations regarding the influence of the locations of tourism and how the culture shown influenced the visitors. The concept creates the history of identity tourism. However, this traditional theory of tourism has evolved to include the influence of the internet on identity tourism. The internet allows people from various backgrounds to showcase their culture and experiences to everyone. People who access this information and their perceptions changed or influenced experience identity tourism. The influence of the internet on identity tourism can be viewed as the innovative identity tourism.

History

An important early contribution to the study of identity tourism was Lanfant, Allcock and Bruner's 1995 edited volume International Tourism, Identity and Change. As with the Keyes and van den Berghe special case of Annals of Tourism Research, this volume moved the field away from studying the impact of tourism on identity to investigating the intersection of tourism and identity in more dynamic ways, among other matters looking at how "local" and "tourist" identities are mutually-constructed. Likewise, Michel Picard and Robert Wood's who edited volume Tourism, Ethnicity and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies 1997, University of Hawaii Press, examined the ways in which tourism intersections with ethnic, cultural, regional and national identities, as living as with the political agendas of Pacific island and Southeast Asian states. Abrams, Waldren and Mcleod's 1997 volume Tourists and Tourism: Identifying with People and Places also offered case studies examining issues surrounding the construction of identity in the context of tourism. Among other things, the chapters in their volume investigated tourists' views of themselves and others in the course of their travels, the relationship of travelers to resident populations, and the ways in which tourists' quests for authenticity are entangled with their own sensibilities approximately their own identities.

Case studies of tourism and identity include Edward Bruner's 2001 article "The Masai and the Lion King: Authenticity, Nationalism and Globalization in African Tourism", which examines how various Kenyan tourist sites entail displays of specific identities "Masai" "Colonialist" etc. and how tourists' engagements with these identity displays are varied, nuanced and complex, articulating with their own narratives, sensibilities about African heritage and quests. Kathleen M. Adams' 2006 work on tourism, identity and the arts in Toraja, Indonesia illustrates how tourism is drawn upon by different members of the community to elaborate different dimensions of identity. In "Art as Politics: Re-crafting tourism, identities and energy in Tana Toraja, Indonesia", Adams documents how tourism challenges older elite identities in the community, reconfiguring artistic and ritual symbols once associated with elites as broader symbols of Toraja ethnic chain identity. Amanda Stronza's 2008 work on tourism and identity in the Amazon has illustrated how tourism appears to be causing new differentiation of identities within the community she researched see "Through a New Mirror: Reflections on Tourism and Identity in the Amazon". A 2011 edited volume by Burns and Novelli also offers a number of case studies on the topic of tourism and social identities.

Alyssa Cymene Howe studied how identity tourism interacted in the San Francisco queer space in the 90s. She found that tourism created, for both tourists and residents of San Francisco, a sense of house identity. The determining of the "Queer Homeland" of San Francisco owes factor of its identity to tourism as a practice itself.