Volunteer tourism, dis-identification, and the construction of “authentic” travel experience

“Gazing” and “performing”: Travel photography and online self-presentation

“…First, it is crucial to acknowledge that participants’ visual narrative directly contradicted some of the sentiments they had expressed during the interviews. As I have detailed elsewhere, participants strongly dis-identified with “tourists” and the presumed “inauthenticity” of geographically accessible, materially comfortable, and emotionally superficial travel experiences (see Schwarz, 2021). In other words, participants differentiated their excursion from mass tourism and its trappings when speaking to a researcher, yet presented it as a holiday among a social media audience.…”

“I Post, therefore I Become #cosmopolitan”: The materiality of online representations of study abroad in China

“…As a large part of the global population is now connected to social media, it has become an integral part of the way people interact with others, build communities, and fabricate identities (Ibrahim, ). Correspondingly, Goffman's () dramaturgical perspective on social interaction and presentation of the self has been increasingly popular, and much research draws on his theory of self‐presentation as a framework to investigate how social media users endeavour to strategically construct their profiles and identities online in a favourable way (Bareket‐Bojmel, Moran, & Shahar, ; Birnbaum, ; Chua & Chang, ; Schwarz, ). Particularly, Birnbaum's () 8‐month ethnographic observation of 30 American undergraduate students' Facebook profiles exemplifies this approach in the context of higher education.…”

“…Therefore, when analysing the data, I focused on the material and curatorial elements of social media postings: which photographs participants post online, how those are ordered, and how they carry embedded meanings and symbols. By doing so, I attempt to provide “a powerful critique of the role of objects in symbolic systems and social structures” (Buchli, , p. 10–11) and how such taken‐for‐granted social structures inevitably come to frame everyday experiences (Giddens, 2009; Schwarz, ).…”

“…Perhaps more importantly, what is paradoxical is that while transnational students’ motivations to study in China are supposedly about encountering difference and immersing in the local their experiences are nevertheless carried out in the company of similar others and the extended familiarity of home. On this note, within the tourism literature, a number of scholars highlighted the notion of enclaves, the social and information support structure established when (predominantly Western‐situated) travellers are situated in a group setting with similar others (see Cohen, ; Schwarz, ). These studies point out that enclaves are facilitated by a “homogenous background…common knowledge, [and] common interests and forms of communication” (Binder, , p.98‐99), and provide young travellers “a sense of togetherness or communality” (Cohen, , p.108) and “a cultural home away from home” (Westerhausen, , p.69).…”

“…Mowforth and Munt () aptly describe this form of cultural capital through mobility as “an important informal qualification, with the number and range of stamps in a passport acting, so to speak, as a professional certificate; a record of achievement and experience” and ultimately, “an important attribute in many new professions” (p.126). In this way, overseas experiences act not only as a strategic endeavour to undergo a profound personal transformation, but also as a source of prestige (Schwarz, ; Prazeres, .…”