Existential feelings at heterotopic destinations: An etnographic research at Olympos

Tourism is a concept produced by spaces and people and based on the relationships between them. Vacations, travels and trips involving slices of time when people are distant from their everyday lives are some phenomena that should be understood within human sociology and psychology and be approached with different perspectives. Understanding the spatial practices of destinations is also very important because they have different practices than the places where people live. One of the spatial theories related to places that have different practices is Foucault's (1986) notion of heterotopias. Indeed, all tourism places have features that can be located within the context of heterotopia. Because heterotopias which have alternate orderings for marginal people and an opening-closing system that makes them both accessible and isolated, are real places unlike utopias, and are able to juxtapose in one place several incompatible spaces. In this sense, understanding the concept of heterotopia and its evaluation on the tourist-resident-employee axis provides a different perspective to the understanding of destinations. Feelings, specifically existential feelings (Ratcliffe, 2008) are significant issues that have not been dealt with much in tourism discipline. Although emotions and affect have been researched, the notion of authenticity has generally been discussed in tourism studies which have adopted an existential approach. Understanding existential feelings in the context of tourism psychology will also contribute to the research on tourist behavior. The importance of the relationship between places and feelings lies on the fact that places co-exist with people namely tourists, employees, locals and residents. In this regard, the purpose of this dissertation is to explore and reveal existential feelings experienced by residents, visitors and employees in heterotopic destinations. For this aim, Olympos town located in Antalya province is discussed as a heterotopia and the existential feelings of people who either dwell and visit or work there are studied. A qualitative approach is adopted in this study; ethnographic methods are used to collect study data. Field study at Olympos lasted for twenty days during which data were collected with participant observation and in-depth interview techniques. A netnographic research was also added in order to provide the validity and reliability of the data collected during field study. The reviews on online travel review sites, online travel blogs and online forums about Olympos were evaluated. Heterotopic features of Olympos and existential feelings experienced by participants were revealed in line with themes found during and after data analysis. According to the study results, it is found that Olympos have features that fit all six principles set by Foucault (1986). As a liminal space, Olympos presents itself as an escape route for people; creates a stage like a theater by bringing different spaces together in one place; makes itself isolated by creating an alternate ordering with its contradictions, conflicts, codes and rules and separates itself from other sea-sand-sun and cultural or historical destinations; as a result with its hippie soul emerged in the 1990s by backpackers, with its unique lifestyle promoted with freedom or liberation and ease attracting visitors and residents, it offers a unique heterotopic experience. The existential feelings felt by the participants in this heterotopic space within such a complicated and liminal experience are discussed in line with nature-body, space-body and interpersonal relations. Nature and space should not be considered as specific objects of these feelings, because these themes are determined for better understanding of bodily feelings. The existential feelings experienced by the participants related to nature and space are found as follows; feeling like a part of nature, belonging to nature, feeling peaceful or in peace, feeling healed; awe and wonder, feeling like being in a different time, feeling of eternity, imagination and feeling like rediscovering the world, mortality and feeling like being home. The feelings experienced through interpersonal relations are examined under the themes of feeling integrated or being communed, soul sex, the feeling of communitas and love. As a result, all these feelings cause the participants to feel existential freedom or to feel liberated; to develop self-reflection and self-awareness; to feel some temporary or permanent changes in their thoughts and behaviors and to feel an authentic sense of self even in liminal moments. This dissertation is expected to contribute with its distinct perspective to tourism discipline.