Dissertation
Imagined places and immersive spaces: negotiating place, history, and identity in the twenty-first century tiki bar
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Jun 2022
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00001134
Abstract
The subject of this study is American tiki culture, the cultural space centered around immersive, often Polynesian-themed, drinking and dining establishments known as tiki bars. Through semistructured interviews and ethnographic study, this research considers how both enthusiasts and hospitality industry professionals negotiate the meaning of the scene's symbols and practices with respect to their present values and self-identifications. Interviews, which are analyzed using a grounded theory approach and coded with emergent themes, are used to look at the active process of world-building and to understand how participants define the scene and their positioning within it. Deleuze and Guattari's concept of deterritorialization and reterritorialization and Appadurai's dimensions of global cultural flow are used to make sense of competing and coexisting strands of thought with respect to categories of gender, race, and cultural ownership. Findings are presented through the framework of four overlapping and interrelated core themes: history, mapping, time, and space. The findings offer insight into the construction of ethical worlds in subcultural scenes and the variable ways of interpreting the applicability of constructs such as cultural appropriation to one's own practices. The geographically indeterminate symbols of the tiki scene complicate place-based assertions of authenticity and, in so doing, ask us to view authenticity and value as rooted in adherence to an ideological mindset rather than from historical or geographical origin points. Similarly, objects and practices within tiki can be seen as subject to the processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, and this can help explain and complicate the existing label of cultural appropriation. Keywords: authenticity, value, cultural identity, scene, cultural appropriation
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Details
- Title
- Imagined places and immersive spaces
- Creators
- Anya Sergeyevna Kurennaya
- Contributors
- Brent Adam Luvaas (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- x, 307 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts and Sciences; Communication, Culture, and Media; Communication; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991018527101304721