Authenticity

Authenticity is an important concept in the study of consumer culture, especially with regard to tourism, culinary culture, and popular culture (esp. music) studies. The concept of authenticity refers to at least three ideas: factuality, originality, and sincerity. These three denotations are quite distinct from one another, and as a result of such polysemy, the use of the term authenticity in the social scientific literature can be rather eclectic at best and unscrupulous at worst. This entry briefly examines these three denotations. First, authenticity can be understand to be synonymous with factuality, that is, with substantive truth. Therefore, when a fact, a claim, or an event is believed to be authentic, there ought to exist convincing evidence that this is the case. Second, authenticity is associated with originality. An art piece, for [Page 75]example, is either authentic or inauthentic in terms of its professed origin or authorship. Third, authenticity can refer to personal behavior. One can be authentic by being truthful to others, and thus demonstrate sincerity. One can also be authentic by being coherent to oneself, and thus demonstrate consistency, integrity, and personal authenticity. In spite of this rather simple categorization, discerning whether it is one case of authenticity or another that one is dealing with can be troublesome. Moreover, verifying whether something or someone is actually authentic or inauthentic can be even more difficult. For these reasons, the concept of authenticity has suffered from an excess of ideologizing, speculation, divisive debate, and paucity of systematic empirical research.

To get a better grasp of the concept, value, and ideal of authenticity, this discussion must be situated in a precise historical and geographic context. In Western societies and cultures, authenticity cannot be separated from questions of reality and truth writ large. Thus, perspectives on authenticity are generally split along the classical philosophical schism between realism and essentialism on one side, and nominalism and constructionism on the other. According to the former, something or someone is either authentic or not on the basis of objectively verifiable evidence and/or on the basis of essential properties of that something itself. The court system, for example, relies on realist definitions of authenticity (and truth and sincerity). According to the latter perspective instead, authenticity and inauthenticity are but ideas that people construct while interacting with one another, and authenticity is but a claim, a judgment, an ideal, or an experience that inevitably falls along a continuum between absolute (and unachievable) authenticity and absolute inauthenticity. Much of the interpretive cultural sciences and humanities, these days, are dominated by proponents of the latter approach. This entry now examines authenticity through an example drawn from the realm of consumption.

In their book titled Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, James Gilmore and Joseph Pine argue that contemporary societies are being commodified and virtualized, with everyday life becoming saturated with “toxic levels of inauthenticity” (2007, 43). Their numerous examples have an underlying theme rooted in technology and consumerism: namely, contemporary shifts in mediated reality are pushing consumer populations to yearn for authenticity. Gilmore and Pine's critique betrays a rather simplistic essentialist and realist understanding of authenticity. Their vision pits the authentic against replicas, pretense, and posing. Their definition of authenticity shares with the popular understanding of this concept a key problem: that of reification. Authenticity, according to them, is an inherent quality of an object, person, claim, or event that is neither negotiable nor achievable. Authenticity cannot be stripped away, nor can it be appropriated. In short, something or someone is either authentic or is not, regardless of judgment. Simplistic understandings like this open up more questions than they offer answers.

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