Abstract
This article scrutinizes souvenirs as highly significant, but underexplored material
objects of contemporary travel and tourism. It adopts a reflexive interpretive
approach to explore the relationship between materiality, tourism and constructions
of self-identity and examines how individuals reflexively use souvenirs as
touchstones of memory, (re)creating polysensual tourism experiences, self-aware of
their roles of ‘tourists’. It pays particular attention to the
ways in which souvenirs are objects mediating experiences in time and space and
argues for more experiential and reflexive study of the roles of materiality and
memory in the construction of tourist identities and performances. It concludes by
suggesting how further interpretive studies could offer unique insights into how the
absorption of souvenirs into the realm of the mundane and the domestic transforms
the home space, fusing tourism and contemporary everyday life.