Abstract
This paper explores Israeli backpackers' travel narratives, in which a profound self-change is recounted. These tourists are construed as narrators, whose identity stories, in which the powerful experience of self-change is constructed and communicated, are founded on, and rhetorically validated by the unique experiences of authenticity and adventure. The relation between the travel narrative, attesting to an external voyage toward an "authentic" destination, and the self-change narrative, attesting to an internal one, is examined in light of two major discourses in tourism: the semi-religious and the Romanticist. The paper addresses the sociocultural context, that of contemporary Israeli culture, against which the self-change narratives construct a collective notion of identity, and wherein they can be viewed as effective performances.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 78-102 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Annals of Tourism Research |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2004 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The present research was made possible by a research grant from the Israel Foundation Trustees, and by the generous M. Ginsberg Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Faculty of Social Sciences, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The author expresses his earnest thanks to the backpackers for sharing their narratives enthusiastically. The author is deeply grateful to Amia Lieblich, Brian Schiff, Carol Kidron, Tal Levine, and Orly Noy for their thorough, constructive, and insightful remarks on earlier drafts; and to Erik Cohen and Ken Gergen for many fruitful discussions, the ideas of which reverberate in the present paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented in 2002 before the Narrative Matters Conference, St. Thomas University, Canada, and before the Tourism Study Group, Jerusalem.
Funding
The present research was made possible by a research grant from the Israel Foundation Trustees, and by the generous M. Ginsberg Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Faculty of Social Sciences, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The author expresses his earnest thanks to the backpackers for sharing their narratives enthusiastically. The author is deeply grateful to Amia Lieblich, Brian Schiff, Carol Kidron, Tal Levine, and Orly Noy for their thorough, constructive, and insightful remarks on earlier drafts; and to Erik Cohen and Ken Gergen for many fruitful discussions, the ideas of which reverberate in the present paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented in 2002 before the Narrative Matters Conference, St. Thomas University, Canada, and before the Tourism Study Group, Jerusalem.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Faculty of Social Sciences | |
| Israel Foundation Trustees |
Keywords
- Authenticity
- Identity
- Israeli society
- Narrative
- Self-change