Diaspora, Authenticity and the Imagined Past: ancestral tourism in Scotland

Event Date: 23 November 2016

Speakers: Dr Derek Bryce, Dr Matthew Alexander, Dr Samantha Murdy

Time: 2pm

Location: Cathedral Wing, CW 507b. Tea, coffee and cakes will be provided from 1.30pm.

Please confirm your attendance with Christina MacLean (christina.maclean@strath.ac.uk).

Abstract

This seminar is intended to highlight the diversity of theoretical and empirical contributions, and therefore avenues for publication, that may emerge from a single research project when handled strategically. It outlines one of four papers that has emerged from our very productive project on ancestral tourism in Scotland. Two have already been published on the specific nature of this form of heritage supply (Alexander, Bryce & Murdy, 2016) and on its impact on modes of service delivery (Murdy, Alexander & Bryce, 2016). A further two are in review: one on the shape of demand in the ancestral tourism market (Murdy, Bryce & Alexander, in review) and another under second review, after a minor revisions decision, on how ancestral tourism might help extend our understanding of the nature and value of ‘authenticity’ in heritage production and consumption (Bryce, Alexander & Murdy, in review). This seminar will focus on the latter of these papers.     

Ancestral tourism in Scotland, a sector of the heritage tourism market sensitive to consumer personalisation, has particular propensities towards process-driven co-created experiences within existing categories of object-based and existential notions of authenticity alongside an emergent category of the ‘authentically imagined past’. The latter of these modes reveals a complex interplay between professionally endorsed validation of the empirical veracity of objects, documents and places and the deeply held, authentically imagined, narratives of ‘home’ built up in the Diaspora over centuries, driving new processes towards authenticity in tourism. We conducted 31 re-enactment interviews across 27 sites throughout Scotland with curators, archivists, and volunteers to explore these notions of authenticity within the ancestral tourism context.      

Published: 20 March 2018