Paradox Of Authenticity Research Articles

As authentic as a Christian hipster: navigating authenticity within Emerging Christianity and Western culture

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the current pejorative understanding and usage of the term ‘Christian hipster’ within the context of Emerging Christianity through a case study of a Dutch emerging project: PopUp Kerk. The (Christian) hipster is approached as a linguistic ideal type within a broader Western cultural discourse, in both popular culture and literature on Emerging Christianity, regarding the paradox of authenticity. I argue that, in contemporary and academic ‘hipster bashing’, the Christian hipster becomes both the stereotypical embodiment and the scapegoat of a paradox inherent in a Western culture focused on authenticity. In the second part of the article, I introduce an ideal typology to conceptualize the type of authenticity sought in hipster Emerging Christianity. I argue that taking the Christian hipster seriously can provide insights into the way the Zeitgeist is influencing the ways in which Western evangelical Protestantism more broadly understands and seeks authenticity. Finally, the article explores what theological insights the Christian hipster may offer regarding (in)authenticity and faith.

Paradoxes of Authenticity in Liminal Consumption: The Case of Casablanca’s Rick’s Café

What makes a “ fake” seemingly “ authentic”? The case of Rick’s Café, known worldwide for the movie Casablanca, situates that question. Rick’s was a set constructed on a Hollywood sound stage. Another Rick’s was created materially in Casablanca decades later. Consumers are aware of this liminal condition. It is the reflexivity inherent in this awareness of performative inauthenticity that makes the case both appropriate and nuanced as an opportunity to explore paradoxes of authenticity embodied in a tourist place. The authenticity-fakery relationship is considered theoretically, not as a dualism ( either-or), but as a duality ( both-and). Empirically, the case is analyzed through an onsite investigation and a virtual ethnography. Four paradoxical dimensions of authenticity (liminal environment, liminal interpretation, liminal affectivity, and liminal recreation) are identified. Tourists, we submit, may experience several authenticities (i.e., objective, constructed, and existential) simultaneously and paradoxically, contributing to a reconceptualization of the tourist experience.

Fear of being replaced: The dark side of employee ambassadorship on social media

PurposeThis study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of the negative aspects of this phenomenon.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical material encompasses qualitative interviews with employees from 14 organizations and Foucault’s concept of disciplinary discursive power to analyze which and how discourses exert power over employee communication on social media and what role visibility plays in it.FindingsThis study indicates that employee ambassadors’ social media communication is governed by two discourses that create complex tensions, where ambassadors constantly must negotiate between self-branding requirements and an authenticity paradox. These tensions intensify through visibility on social media, where employees strategize and situationally silence their communication through self-monitoring and self-surveillance practices. Conclusively, the findings also outline the need for further critical research to offer a deeper understanding of power relations that influence the communication practices of organizational members.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media and highlights disciplinary power relations that go beyond organizational borders.Practical implicationsThe findings underscore that organizations need to address the critical aspects of self-initiated employee ambassadorship and act as facilitators to support employees in their navigation process.Originality/valueThis paper contributes a new critical power perspective on employee ambassadorship on social media.

The paradox of authenticity: The Korean Product Showroom of Mitsukoshi department store in colonial Seoul

AbstractMitsukoshi, a famed Japanese department store, opened a Korean Product Showroom in its Keijō (Seoul) branch in 1930. The Korean Product Showroom was the only space decorated in ‘Korean style’ within the Keijō Mitsukoshi building, which was designed in Neo-Renaissance style, much like its flagship store in Tokyo. This showroom offered Korean artefacts as luxury souvenirs aimed at Japanese tourists. The most popular items sold in the showroom were Koryŏ-style celadon ware and lacquerware inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which Mitsukoshi ordered from local workshops in Korea. Interestingly, the workshops were run by Japanese entrepreneurs and sometimes even employed Japanese artisans. This article examines the inauthentic authenticity of ‘Korean style’ and ‘Korean products’ that the Japanese produced and consumed in colonial Korea. It does not imply that only Koreans are entitled to represent Korean culture. There have been many studies asserting that Korean culture was destroyed and distorted from its ‘original’ forms by Japan’s cultural genocide during the colonial period. This article neither is interested in repeating such criticism nor focuses on recuperating genuine Koreanness. Rather, it explores why the Japanese desired ‘pure Korea’ and how that desire shaped ‘Korean style’ and ‘Korean products’ through Keijō Mitsukoshi’s Korean Product Showroom and its products.

Reconfiguring authenticity: Eurythmics and the aesthetics of new pop

This article looks at how the British pop culture of the 1980s changed the way authenticity was conceptualized in popular music. I will argue that ‘new pop’ and the televisual aesthetic of MTV challenged the division between British and American codes of authenticity. This distinction is marked by the use of the term rock in America, to describe popular music of generalizable importance, of which authenticity is the key talisman. By contrast, in the United Kingdom, pop is less of a pejorative term, and the preference for authentic modes of address is tempered by the playful sensibility of the carnivalesque. As a barometer of this, I will be focusing on the work of the British duo Eurythmics, whose creative output spanned the decade, and for whom MTV was pivotal in breaking the American market. In particular, I will suggest that the band’s propensity to bend genre as well as gender, positioned North American ‘rock’ as a contingent discourse: a free-floating signifier around which competing notions of authenticity coalesce. In this direction, the terms rock and pop can also be read against discourses linked to both sexuality and national identity. Indeed, the Britishness of Eurythmics and the camp sensibility of their music videos are central to how rock authenticity is re-positioned as a more plural construct. Emblematic of this paradox of authenticity is both the duality of Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox’s identity as Eurythmics and the diversity of their musical output. Encoded in this are some very specific strategies for listening that draw upon the legacy of British Art schools in the 1950s and the Independent Group. Revisiting this legacy is pivotal therefore in understanding how 1980s pop music culture reverberates in the twenty-first century. The pertinence of the work is underscored by the induction of Eurythmics into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

Authenticity-Based Connections as Organizational Constraints and the Paradox of Authenticity in the Market for Cuban Cigars

We explore the organizational consequences that different authenticity claims carry for products and the firms that produce them. To do so, we build on the notion of an authenticity paradox—the idea that seeking to capture demand that is created by perceived authenticity can undermine the very authenticity that generated the demand in the first place. Using an experimental approach, we argue and show that provenance-based claims of authenticity (e.g., location of origin) constrain a firm spaciotemporally, limiting their ability to expand production in ways that might be economically rational but would undermine this authenticity claim. We further show there is no penalty (or there is a reduced penalty) when the claim is not explicitly spaciotemporal, and is instead based on an association to an iconic individual broadly connected to that place. We show how these types of connections help firms respond to the authenticity paradox by allowing them more freedom to expand production to meet the increased demand without undermining the original claims to authenticity. As a result, this paper’s key contribution is in moving beyond explaining how perceived authenticity benefits organizations and instead, explores how different claims to authenticity can constrain a firm’s ability to capture the value that it has created from authenticity. History: This paper has been accepted for the Organization Science Special Issue on Experiments in Organizational Theory. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1574 .

The Online Authenticity Paradox: What Being "Authentic" on Social Media Means, and Barriers to Achieving It

People often strive to present themselves authentically on social media, but this may not be possible for everyone. To understand how people view online authenticity, how it relates to social media sharing behaviors, and whether it is achievable, we interviewed 28 social media users who had recently experienced major life transitions. We found that to many participants, online authenticity required presenting a consistent, positive, and "true" self across online and offline contexts. Though most stated that they considered online authenticity achievable, their social media self-disclosure behaviors around life transitions revealed what we call the online authenticity paradox: people strive to achieve online authenticity, yet because doing so requires sharing negative experiences on social media, online authenticity is often unreachable, or is possible only at great personal cost - especially for those with marginalized identities and difficult life experiences.

The Online Authenticity Paradox: What Being “Authentic” on Social Media Means, and Barriers to Achieving It

The Online Authenticity Paradox: What Being “Authentic” on Social Media Means, and Barriers to Achieving It

Authenticity Paradox: an Examination on Local Gastronomy

Local gastronomy offers authenticity, an important element of tourist experience. However, some tourists cannot experience gastronomic products in their exact authentic forms. This issue causes from tourists' typology, importance level of gastronomy, and quest for authenticity. For serving widely variated tourists, producers of the local gastronomic products make changes in the essence of products. Current study aims to investigate changing process of gastronomic products’ authenticity which are served in the context of tourism, and to develop an understanding on causes and costs of deterioration. Methodologically, existing literature had evaluated with conceptual inferences. As the findings propose, the changes start with touristic exploration which is followed by tourism-related deterioration. After deterioration, if process of recovery conducted, turning back to the exact form of authenticity does not seem possible. The alternative forms of authenticity are most likely to occur. Additionally, mistaken perspectives like considering recovery preventions as short-term actions can lead the deterioration again, like a loop. Raising awareness for prevent this loop is this study's critical proposition to destinations. Opening new horizons for the phenomenon of authenticity and overthrowing the idea that see tourists as the sole reason for deterioration are the contributions to the literature. The changes that lead deterioration are responsibility of locals, too.

The Paradox of Authenticity: Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia

The Paradox of Authenticity: Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia

The Authenticity Paradox: Why the Returns to Authenticity on Audience Appeal Decrease in Popularity and Iconicity

A great deal of research has argued for authenticity as a key firm-level attribute and source of competitive advantage. But we know very little about the boundary conditions related to organizational authenticity. In order to address this, we develop a theory of the social construction of authenticity, how it affects the appeal of a producer’s offerings, and how the market success of these offerings affects the returns to authenticity. We propose that there are two mechanisms, in addition to authenticity, that can drive audience appeal: popularity and iconicity. But increases in both popularity and iconicity also challenge some of the underlying tenets of what the audience considers authentic, namely, intrinsic motivation and the pursuit of social, rather than economic, value. The authenticity paradox, then, is that even as the appeal of authentic offerings increases, their popularity and iconicity diminish the returns to authenticity. We find support for these ideas in the context of the U.S. market for craft beer and discuss the implications of our theory for authenticity research and for the broader market and social dynamics in craft industries.

Share a little of that human touch: The marketable ordinariness of security and emergency agencies’ social media efforts

Today, communication specialists working for public security and rescue services increasingly use superficially personalized content, or apply ‘a human touch’, to promote their organizations in social media. To theoretically capture and understand such processes, the concept of marketable ordinariness is proposed. This refers to how the communication relates to everyday conceptions – through feelings, humor, cool vehicles or pet animals – and is made marketable, suggesting there is a promotional logic at work. Drawing on appraisal analysis of interviews with communication specialists, the article examines this strategy’s discursive elements, including the semiosis of simplicity, emotion, promotion, storytelling and quantitative success, pointing critically to the ways they aid marketization – the process whereby promotional culture encompasses increasingly more sectors and areas of life. It then discusses a number of implications. First, the public sector employees’ alignment with both informational and promotional values and communication may give rise to an authenticity paradox, leaving everyone else wondering when each standard applies. Second, a stronger promotional identity implies compromised professionalism, favoring certain abilities and choices and underutilizing communication efforts that (a) do not pursue big publicity and (b) involve any issue suspected to be challenging for the organization and mainstream culture.

The Truth within the Text: Paradoxes of Authenticity in Romanian Literature of the 1980s

The Truth within the Text: Paradoxes of Authenticity in Romanian Literature of the 1980s

The Paradox of Authenticity: Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia. By Joseph Grim Feinberg. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018. xviii, 234 pp. Notes. Bibliograpy. Index. Photographs. Tables. Map. $69.95, hard bound.

The Paradox of Authenticity: Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia. By Joseph Grim Feinberg. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018. xviii, 234 pp. Notes. Bibliograpy. Index. Photographs. Tables. Map. $69.95, hard bound. - Volume 78 Issue 3

Joseph Grim Feinberg, The paradox of authenticity: Folklore performance in post-communist Slovakia

Joseph Grim Feinberg, The paradox of authenticity: Folklore performance in post-communist Slovakia

Developing a common standard for authentic restaurants

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the paradox of authenticity versus standardisation. It examines the features that constitute restaurant authenticity and determines whether these can be standardised within an alliance of top restaurants to reap the benefits of commonalities among the restaurants. We determine the features of authenticity by examining the literature, by interviewing owners and managers of alliance restaurants and by means of a consumer survey. The results show several discrepancies. Combining these three data sources allowed us to distinguish between essential and peripheral features of authenticity. This distinction can help to define a standard for restaurant authenticity, specifying minimum levels for essential features of authenticity.

Book Review: The Paradox of Authenticity. By Eric E. Hall

Book Review: The Paradox of Authenticity. By Eric E. Hall

Market practices in countercultural market emergence

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing marketing literature that investigates markets as “configurations”, i.e. networks of market actors engaged in market-shaping practices and performances. As this pioneering work has been largely focused on established mainstream markets and industries driven by large multi-national companies, the present article extends practice-based market theorizing to countercultural market emergence and also to unconventional market practices shaping it.Design/methodology/approach– Insights are drawn from a four-year multi-sited ethnographic study of a rapidly expanding electronic music scene that serves as an illustrative example of emergent countercultural market.Findings– In contrast to mainstream consumer or industrial markets, the authors identify a distinctive dynamic underlying market emergence. Countercultural markets as well as their appeal and longevity largely depend on an inherent authenticity paradox that focal market actors need to sustain and negotiate through ongoing market-shaping and market-restricting practices.Practical implications– From a practitioner perspective, the authors discuss the implications for market actors wishing to build on countercultural authenticity. They highlight the fragility of countercultural markets and point out practices sustaining them, and also possibilities and challenges in tapping into them.Originality/value– The study contributes by theorizing the tensions that energize and drive countercultural market emergence. In particular, the authors address the important role of market-restricting practices in facilitating countercultural appeal that has not received explicit attention in prior marketing literature.

The Authentic Coaching Model: A Grounded Theory of Coaching

The purpose of this research was to: (a) describe the coaching process using language that is meaningful for practicing coaches; (b) explain how different coaches maneuver through the process of coaching; and (c) probe the paradoxical nature of the coaching process. Data gathered over a 6-month period with eight high school team sport coaches in the United States representing six different sport contexts, revealed three foundational paradoxes. Based on the results, coaching is best viewed as the convergence of three paradoxical forces: the paradox of authenticity, the paradox of purpose, and the pendulum paradox. The paper closes with the suggested definition of sports coaching: Coaching is the process of utilizing an intentional philosophic approach to simultaneously teach, motivate, and organize an athlete to attain higher levels of success over time.

“I am the Buddha, the Buddha is Me”: Concentration Meditation and Esoteric Modern Buddhism in Burma/Myanmar

In postcolonial Burma, two trends within lay Buddhism — largely in tension with one another — developed into large-scale movements. They focused upon different meditation practices, insight meditation and concentration meditation, with the latter also including esoteric lore. An impetus largely shared by the movements was to define an “authentic” Buddhism to serve as the primary vehicle of the quest for individual, local, and national identity. While insight meditation was generally considered Buddhist meditationpar excellence, concentration meditation was ascribed a more dubious Buddhist identity. Given this ambiguity, it could be considered rather paradoxical that concentration meditation could be viewed as a source of “authentic” Buddhism.The aim of this article is to investigate the issue of identity and the paradox of authenticity by examining the concentration meditation practices of one large esoteric congregation and tentatively comparing its practices with those of the insight meditation movement. It will be argued that the movements represented two varieties of so-called modern Buddhism (rationalist modern Buddhism and esoteric modern Buddhism) drawing on different Buddhist imaginaries and representing two main trends that are largely diametrically opposed to one another. They therefore represent two ways of constructing an individual, local, and national identity.