Performing genealogy through travel narratives

Abstract

Tourism scholars have yet to consider ancestral tourism as a stepping-stone in genealogical identity formation. Amateur genealogists use information available to them about their ancestors and the past to form stories of the self in the present. Through a study of the travel narratives of Swedish-American ancestral tourists, I link the concept of genealogical identities with theories of performance, impression management and narrative identity to explore this phenomenon. The findings reveal how ancestral tourists bring into existence their genealogical identities through the performative narration of their ancestral travels. Authenticity in these experiences emerges through the presentation of a coherent story of the self that gives off desired impressions of kinship and ethnicity, subsequently legitimizing a genealogical identity.

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