This book examines the authentication of authenticity in heritage tourism by using a resilient smart systems approach. It discusses the emerging trends in cultural tourism and outlines, in a detailed manner, their significance in negotiating authenticity in tourism experience. Authentication of authenticity is an evolving, less-researched field of inquiry in heritage tourism. This book advances research on this subject by exploring different authentication processes and scrutinizes their resilience in building transformative heritage tourism pathways. It offers a kaleidoscopic view of the manner authenticity has evolved over the last several decades by observing a broad spectrum of cultural expressions. The evolution and meaningfulness of negotiated authenticity is identified and discussed in the context of pre-, intra- and post-pandemic times. This book focuses on the moral and existentialist trajectories or authenticity and the notion of self-authentication. It proposes a smart resilient authentication model to delicately negotiate the objective and self-dimensions of authenticity in transformative times. Furthermore, by sharing examples of best practices, it offers unique insights on how authenticity is authenticated and mediated via digital platforms and artificial intelligence. This book offers novel perspectives on negotiated authenticity and its authentication in heritage tourism and will appeal to both practitioners and students/scholars in Heritage studies; Design and Innovation; Tourism Studies; Geography and Planning across North America, Europe, and East-Asian countries.

Authenticity and Authentication of Heritage presents an assimilation of chapters that critically address some of the key emerging areas associated with authenticity. It presents a variety of inspiring pieces of work that range from host-guest authentication and intangible heritage to knowledge transfer processes, authenticating heritage in fairy-tale settings, authenticity and anxiety in the smell of death and life, understanding the boundaries of authenticity, nostalgia, sustainability, marketing, destination competitiveness, examining affective connotations of authenticity, and their contribution towards optimizing hedonic and eudaimonic well-being during times of disruption. The contentious concept of authenticity continues to be valorised in heritage tourism. This scholarly initiative seeks to broaden the discursive parameters of authenticity and identify power mechanisms that shape the way authenticity is produced, marketed and consumed. This is an attempt to share contemporary views on how the contemporary notions of authenticity are derived, interpreted, applied, processed and legitimised in local and global contexts. Furthermore, the significant relationship between health and authenticity is explored. To put it simply, this pandemic has significantly halted the way people connect with their cultural resources and seek authenticity within their inner selves and the outside realms in the heritage tourism system. Heightened sense of global consciousness is a call to polish our authentic selves and elevate above inauthenticity or moral hypocrisy. So, is authenticity an evolving story or is it a story of floating immobility? Who can tell the story and who decides what elements to fossilise? How can existentialist authenticity and self authentication promote moral selving and well-being of the self and the society? Many questions like these have emerged in recent literature, and this book uses conceptual, empirical and theoretical explorations to identify and engage with such inquiries. The chapters in this book, except for the concluding chapter, were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Heritage Tourism.

With the rise of post-truth and fake news, a thorough examination of authenticity has never been so relevant. This book explores the geography of authenticity, investigating a wide variety of places used by tourists. Not only does it assess what might be described as the more traditional objects for examination – places such as the city, the countryside and the coast – it also includes chapters on art and place, hipster places, gentrification, heritage sites, film locations, photographed places and eventful places. Using a wide-angled lens on places reveals linkages and possibilities, enabling the book to skate across the surface of the geography of authenticity, locating the magically real heritage site, the poignant replica, the authenticated theme park, the unmasked carnival. In focusing on authentic and inauthentic places, this text provides a useful contribution to the understanding of how places are changing, how they are perceived, and how authenticity is embodied and performed within them. Authentic and Inauthentic Places in Tourism is an insightful study and an essential read for those involved in the study of geography, tourism, urban studies, culture and heritage.

‘Authenticity’ and authentication is at the heart of museums’ concerns in displays, objects, and interaction with visitors. These notions have formed a central element in early thought on culture and collecting. Nineteenth century-explorers, commissioned museum collectors and pioneering ethnographers attempted to lay bare the essences of cultures through collecting and studying objects from distant communities. Comparably, historical archaeology departed from the idea that cultures were discrete bounded entities, subject to divergence but precisely therefore also to be traced back and linked to, a more complete original form in de (even) deeper past. Much of what we work with today in ethnographic museum collections testifies to that conviction. Post-structural thinking brought about a far-reaching deconstruction of the authentic. It came to be recognized that both far-away communities and the deep past can only be discussed when seen as desires, constructions and inventions. Notwithstanding this undressing of the ways in which people portray their cultural surroundings and past, claims of authenticity and quests for authentication remain omnipresent. This book explores the authentic in contemporary ethnographic museums, as it persists in dialogues with stakeholders, and how museums portray themselves. How do we interact with questions of authenticity and authentication when we curate, study artefacts, collect, repatriate, and make (re)presentations? The contributing authors illustrate the divergent nature in which the authentic is brought into play, deconstructed and operationalized. Authenticity, the book argues, is an expression of a desire that is equally troubled as it is resilient.

This interdisciplinary book addresses the highly relevant debates about authenticity in North America, providing a contemporary re-examination of American culture, tourism and commodification of place. Blending social sciences and humanities research skills, it formulates an examination of the geography of authenticity in North America, and brings together studies of both rurality and urbanity across the country, exposing the many commonalities of these different landscapes. Relph stated that nostalgic places are inauthentic, yet within this work several chapters explore how festivals and visitor attractions, which cultivate place heritage appeal, are authenticated by tourists and communities, creating a shared sense of belonging. In a world of hyperreal simulacra, post-truth and fake news, this book bucks the trend by demonstrating that authenticity can be found everywhere: in a mouthful of food, in a few bars of a Beach Boys song, in a statue of a troll, in a diffuse magical atmosphere, in the weirdness of the ungentrified streets. Written by a range of leading experts, this book offers a contemporary view of American authenticity, tourism, identity and culture. It will be of great interest to upper-level students, researchers and academics in Tourism, Geography, History, Cultural Studies, American Studies and Film Studies.

Forges innovative connections between monastic archaeology and heritage studies, revealing new perspectives on sacred heritage, identity, medieval healing, magic and memory. This title is available as Open Access.