Touring the consumption of the Other: Imaginaries of authenticity in the Himalayas and beyond

Abstract

Based on a mobile ethnography of tourism and pilgrimage in the Himalayan region, this article interprets performances and imaginaries of Western travellers as a meta-commentary on late modern life. Being typically critical of consumer culture, Himalayan travellers often demonstrated positive yet naive appraisal and nostalgia for places and people perceived as non-modern, natural and authentic. Such eco-utopian imaginaries are consistent with media representations of the region and the wider discourse of reflexive modernity. While Himalayan journeys are often inspired and oriented by a search for authenticity and the seduction of difference, such valued ideals are contested by the same late capitalist conditions that make encounters with the Other and global mobility possible. Tourist consumers thus seek to capture authentic objects of desire before they are destroyed, while paradoxically contributing to their destruction in the process. At the same time, it is shown how the quest for authenticity exposes travellers to the possibility of other, less consuming and more sustainable forms of life.