Affect and performance in ancestral tourism : stories of everyday life, personal heritage, and the family

Heritage tourism scholars have used notions of performativity and affectto study the ways tourists actively construct and assign meaning to theirexperience of heritage. However, these concepts remain under-exploredin the context of personal heritage tourism. Personal heritage tourismreflects an interest to experience a heritage of personal affectiverelevance, acknowledging that perceptions of heritage are fluid andsubjective. I contribute insight into the conceptualization of personalheritage tourism by exploring the performances and affectiveentanglements that make genealogy meaningful in the present duringtravels to an ancestral homeland. Through a qualitative study ofSwedish-American ancestral tourists, I propose that processes ofmeaning making in ancestral tourism include enacting the family,partaking in everyday life, and connecting with mundane physicalelements of the past. These performances unfold at sites historical andcurrent in the ancestral homeland. Personal heritage tourism thus findsmeaning though affective entanglements with the past, but alsothrough social interactions and mundane activities based in a familiarpresent. These affective entanglements occur at different locations, notall directly connected to the personal past.