Sociology of Mobilities / “Traveling Cultures”Styles, what we buy, and collect, where and how we travel serve as “codes of distinction.” We have the ability to master the signs of many and complex styles and periods and to read/construct codes of distinction into our local subcultures.There is a search to articulate (give meaning to) one’s cultural tastes. Travel is one of the ways that modern humans “articulate their cultural taste.”Travel • Characteristic of modernity • Offers an escape from the confinement of existing social roles and obligations; liminality • Offers travelers new roles to play; discovery; effects change in a person • Fun; intensifies experience; heightens imagination • Contrasted with work • Clear boundaries between beginning and end • Equips traveler temporarily with unaccustomed powerJonathan Culler, “The Semiotics of Tourism” • Travel is a social construction; in different time periods, it fulfills various cultural needs: culinary; scholastic; eyewitness accounts; exoticism/back regions; authenticity; danger/excitement.The tourist is interested in everything as a sign of itself. “All over the world the unsung armies of semioticians, the tourists, are fanning out in search of signs of Frenchness, typical Italian behavior, exemplary Oriental scenes, traditional English pubs” (Culler, p. 155).To be a tourist is to dislike other tourists. (Dean MacCannell). To be a tourist is to want to be less touristy (Culler, paraphrased, p. 158). Tourists can always find someone more touristy than themselves to sneer at. . . (Culler, p. 11).The tourist is interested in everything as a sign of itself. “All over the world the unsung armies of semiotics, the tourists, are fanning out in search of signs of Frenchness, typical Italian behavior, exemplary Oriental scenes, traditional English pubs.” (Jonathan Culler, Framing the Sign, p. 155.)“The tourist seldom likes the authentic product of a foreign culture. . . The American tourist in Japan looks less for what is Japanese than for what is ‘Japanesey.’” (Daniel Boorstin) Narratives /discourses of tourismWhat is authenticity? “How is authenticity constructed? What is the process by which any item of culture or practice achieves an aura of being authentic? What are the processes of production of authenticity?” (Edward Bruner).“we valorize innovation and then yearn for more stable worlds, whether these reside in our own past, in other cultures or in a conflation of the two. . . ‘our’ feelings of tender yearning are neither as natural nor as pan-human, and therefore not necessarily as innocent as one might imagine.” (Renato Rosaldo, “Imperialist Nostalgia,” Representations 26, Spring 1989, pp. 107-122.) •“My concern thus resides with a particular kind of nostalgia, often found under imperialism, where people mourn the passing of what they themselves have destroyed. . . . someone deliberately alters a form of life and then regrets that things have not remained as they were prior to his or her intervention. . . . people destroy their environment and then worship nature” (Renato Rosaldo).In travel, quests for authenticity, the primitive, “back regions”, the unusual, the spectacular. Fulfillment of these lend distinction, cultural capital. Juxtaposed with the primitive/ “the other,” “the undeveloped,” etc., the snowboarder is empowered, his/her wealth, race, are thus highlighted symbolically as superior, free, intelligent,