Copysites: tourist attractions in the age of their architectural reproducibility

ABSTRACT

In this article we focus on those tangible assets that have been copied and imitated for reasons that are linked to tourism. What we call copysites are the replicas of places, buildings and sites that attract visitors interested in cultural heritage (tangible and intangible) and leisure activities, such as, entertainment, shopping, gastronomy etc. We analyse characteristic cases and acknowledge that the creation of copysites has different backgrounds: commercial interests, artistic and aesthetic motives, entertainment reasons, the joy to reproduce forms of success, preservation of the original sites, among others. We focus on who is content with visiting copies of monuments, sculptures, cities or ‘fakelore’ performances. On the basis of our examples we explain how far the principle of visiting replicated sites can be a success formula and why it seems so important for many tourists to see, check-in and tick-off activities and destinations, even if they are ‘almost authentic’.

KEYWORDS:

• Copysite
• commodification
• authenticity
• fakelore
• duplitecture
• Hallstatt
• anthropology of tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Bauer Bernhard is Head of Strategy at the newly established Azerbaijan Tourist Board based in Baku and is responsible for the strategic directions regarding the development of sustainable and regional tourism in Azerbaijan. He has authored several articles relating to investigations of the cultural tourism industry and his doctoral dissertation (2014, University of Vienna) follows this up with an in depth analysis of the cultural economy and the sustainable commodification of cultural heritage in New Orleans, USA. Since 2008 Bernhard has been implementing projects in the sector of tourism development from the Caribbean to East Africa, he regularly conducts teaching for university students, training courses for project stakeholders as well as seminars and workshops for public institutions. This includes tutoring about e-commerce at the Inter-American Institute for Economic and Social Development. In 2015 Bernhard and his wife have finished their first scientific documentary film about social policies and inequalities in Brazil.

Canestrini Duccio, Adjunct professor of Sociology and Anthropology of tourism at the University Campus of Lucca, degree course of Scienze del turismo (Pisa University, Italy). For 10 years Duccio headed the Anthropology of tourism area at the Master of Tourism Management of the Trentino School of Management (Faculty of Economy, University of Trento, Italy). For another decade he also worked as a professional journalist and anthropology editor for the Italian geographical magazine Airone. Through this experience Duccio has been travelling extensively to all the continents. After the 2004 tsunami he participated as a consultant in a Governmental project of reconstruction and community based tourism development in Sri Lanka. He is member of the International Scientific Council for Island Development (Paris) and of the Italian Anthropologists Association (Associazione Italiana per le Scienze Etnoantropologiche, Rome). Duccio produces radio shows, conference “spectacles” and documentary films, he is also the author of several books, the latest work with the title “Antropop. La tribù globale” was published by Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, in 2014.

Notes

1. Sheldrake's arguments appear to come directly from Smith (1977) Hosts and Guests, particularly the chapters by Greenwood ‘Culture by the pound’ and by Graburn ‘Tourism: The Sacred Journey’ (1977).

2. The title of this article is influenced by the paper entitled ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’ by Benjamin (1936). It is an essay of cultural criticism which proposes that the aura of a work of art is devalued by mechanical reproduction.

3. Source: Statistik Austria 2018.