Travelers tend to fetishize an impossible notion of authenticity

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“Once globalization and development have homogenized and sanitized the world – quite often for the best – it will no longer be possible for even the most self-indulgent and romantic among us to maintain the illusion that what we are doing is anything other than not-particularly-glorified tourism. If all the classic elements of backpacker stories have gradually become clichés, we might as well pause to acknowledge that they were surprisingly fun clichés while they lasted. And if we now insist that all these clichés fetishize a certain impossible notion of authenticity, while coming dangerously close to essentializing foreign countries as premodern, we should also pause to confess that we enjoyed them anyway.”

–Nicholas Danforth, World travel can be all about timing, San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 2012

Original article can be found here: Travelers tend to fetishize an impossible notion of authenticity