2010) “Genealogical Tourism: A Phenomenological Examination

Seeking to contribute to ongoing investigations of diverse contexts of tourism consumption, the current investigation explores the meanings genealogical tourists attribute to their lived experiences and contextualizes those findings within larger social approaches to the human dynamics that drive contemporary tourism. Taking an interpretive turn, it proposes genealogical tourism as reflecting contemporary tourists ’ call for diversity of leisure interests and opportunities as well as their desire for a full range of varying intimacies, intensities, and complexities in their tourism lived experiences. In particular, it reveals tourism as a reflexive response to a sense of loss that underpins modern society, assisting in reaffirming both a generational sense of the self and a self-recognition that one has one’s own perspective on the world. Keywords genealogy; meaning; phenomenology Genealogy tourism is proposed to be one of the fastest grow-ing subsegments of the heritage market. Indeed, the British Tourist Authority as well as the Scottish and the Welsh Tour-ist Boards have all highlighted genealogy tourism as an important stimulus for inbound international travel (Evan