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| A STUDY OF STAGELIZATION OF ETHNIC MINORITY CULTURAL SYMBOLS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF AUTHENTICITY |
| LIWen-yong, ZHANG Han-peng |
| School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China |
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Abstract This paper, applying Erik Cohen's model of subject-object dynamic authenticity and staged authenticity, analyzes minority tourism cultural symbols in terms of the representation and contents. All such cultural symbols and their rules are part of an encoding system of tourist cultural information. The former is a rule predefined for the dichotomy of signifiers and the signified, and the latter is one predefined to connect different symbols. These two rules jointly contribute to the construction of meanings of cultural symbols. This paper outlines four types of ethnic minority cultural symbols, i.e. significative, symbolic, metaphoric, and instructive, based on dichotomy of signifiers and the signified, and authenticity as against staged authenticity. Significative symbols undergo no change in either their encoding or coding method; and their representation and content tend to be identical. Metaphoric symbols undergo change in their encoding method but not in their coding one, and their representation and content are not identical. Symbolic symbols undergo change in their coding method but not in their encoding one, and their representation and content are not identical. Instructive symbols undergo change in both their encoding and coding methods, and their representation and content tend to be identical. By utilizing cultural symbols of different types, cultural externalization and targetization can be realized, and tourists can be guided to attain authentic experience of ethnic minority culture. As the cult of authenticity pervades modern life, tourism researchers are recently sensitized to the social demand for the production, structure and representation of authentic tourism cultural products, and to the scholarly community's call for deeper understanding and theoretical relevance. We provide insight as to the distinction between authentic and staged destination, and analyze the influence paths of each other from the view of anthropogeography. It is expected that such classification of cultural symbols can contribute to the development of the theory of authenticity.
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Received: 26 May 2011
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2012, Vol. 27 
