Providing a platform for self-transformation: Existential authentication and the inward gaze

Netta Kahana

Annals of Tourism Research, 2024, vol. 108, issue C

Abstract: This study investigates tourism operators' on-site organizational practices and their role in facilitating tourists' self-transformation. Drawing on a participant observation in a volunteer tourism project, the study identifies two intertwined practices and places them within the framework of “authentication.” First, the organization constructs volunteering sites as authentic while encouraging volunteers to experience that authenticity. Then, against this backdrop, the organization instructs volunteers to gaze inward and connect to their true selves. Together, these practices demonstrate a deliberate existential authentication that involves a particular self-directed gaze, named here as the inward gaze. The study highlights the analytical utility of existential authentication and the inward gaze in understanding how tourism operators sustain a platform for self-transformation.

Keywords: Self-transformation; Authentication; Tourist gaze; Volunteer tourism; Ethnography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:108:y:2024:i:c:s0160738324000926

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2024.103815

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