A University of Illinois travel expert has said that genealogical tourism is redefining leisure travel market.
U. of I. recreation, sport and tourism professor Carla Santos explains: "Genealogical tourism provides an irreplaceable dimension of material reality that's missing from our postmodern society."
According to co-author and U. of I. graduate student Grace Yan, going back to the old church where one's great grandparents used to worship in rural Ireland, or buying a loaf of bread from a grocery store in a Greek village where one's grandmother lived, create a significant space to imagine and feel life as a form of continuation.
The research also says genealogical tourism is popular because we live in a world where mediated, inauthentic experiences have become such inseparable part of our everyday lives that we're almost unaware of it.
Santos says: "Genealogical tourism capitalizes on this by allowing individuals to experience the sensuous charms of antiquity, and provides a way of experiencing something eternal and authentic that transcends the present."
In academic analyses of the 1980s and early 1990s, tourism was seen an escape from the reality of the workaday world. Today, scholars approach travel and tourism in a much more complex and nuanced fashion, the authors point out.
Santos says: "We believe that movement is due partly to the increasing sociological awareness of the post-industrial society that we currently live in.
"With tourism studies developing a more sophisticated interpretative paradigm, more meanings of tourism have been discussed in academia, including the hunt for exoticism and experiencing nostalgia."
