Souvenirs

The souvenir is a type of object that is kept as a reminder of a place, person, or event. As such, any object has the capacity to perform the role of a souvenir as long as it has a physical or imaginative connection with the past it represents. It emerged as a recognizable type of material culture in the British home during the seventeenth century, particularly during the expansion of the British Empire when the practice of collecting “exotic” objects for display in cabinets of curiosity became popular. Today souvenirs continue to form an integral part of the home and are central to tourism practices. Although there is a growing body of academic research analyzing the role souvenirs play in both contexts, their significance is often negatively perceived or overlooked as simply the “baggage” of tourism.

Nelson Graburn's 1979 study was one of the first major publications to pay serious attention to the production of tourist souvenirs, examining their role in commodifying culture in developing countries. This understanding of tourism consumption has been reinforced by John Urry's notion of the ubiquitous “tourist gaze,” which analyzes how places and people are converted into stereotyped representations that can be visually consumed. Both authors have played a significant role in establishing the academic significance of tourism research. Following their work, souvenirs have tended to be interpreted in a negative light for their degrading influence on “traditional” culture. Souvenirs have widely been deemed “inauthentic” when produced intentionally for the tourist market rather than local use. This is premised on the assumption that culture should remain unchanged by the influence of tourists and is therefore fixed in place.

The notion of culture as fixed and unchanging has been challenged throughout the social sciences, leading to work in tourism studies to develop a more sophisticated understanding of souvenirs and their relation to place. In particular, Ruth Phillips and Chris Steiner's edited collection explores the processes through which cultural identities are constructed, appropriated, and traded through souvenirs. They move away from interpreting how objects are produced and used by “local” people and question the processes of authentication at play in the production and consumption of souvenirs, acknowledging the fluidity of culture. Andrew Causey's extensive analysis of souvenir production in Sumatra also demonstrates how carvers are creative in the ways they choose to work with tourists' demands. He examines how wood carvings are designed, produced, and sold, highlighting the innovation required amid increasing competition and copying in the marketplace. While the design of objects in this context is dictated by tourists' desires, Causey depicts an industry where change is necessary and beneficial as carvers create new and unique versions of “traditional” forms.

In contrast to this body of work, the academic study of souvenir consumption within the home has focused on the significance of narrative remembering. Much of this work follows Susan Stewart's influential study that focuses on the souvenir as appearing “out of context” in the home. She describes how the souvenir maintains the trace of the past and requires the invention of a narrative to bridge the gap to its present. Stewart (1992, 136) suggests that “the souvenir is by definition always incomplete” because of its incongruous presence in the space of the home. This is key to an object's capacity to work as a souvenir, which inspires narrative remembering, substituting the object for a set of increasingly abstract referents. Stewart's analysis is useful for directing attention toward the significance and presence of the souvenir in the space of the home. A great deal of work adopts her phraseology and refers to the souvenir as directly equivalent to a memory, representation, or narrative. However, this conceptualizes the souvenir solely according to its metonymic function and removal [Page 1348]“from the present flow of the events” (Stewart 1992, 150). Such an approach assumes souvenirs simply are meaningful and neglects to consider how their meanings might change or develop over time.

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