A T-Shirt from New York, a Coral from Mauritius: A Functional Typology of Tourist Souvenirs

This chapter offers a deeper understanding of the symbols and meanings attached to tourists’ special possessions as well as of the functions they fulfill in contemporary consumption. Nineteen informants have been interviewed and observed at home in a naturalistic interpretive perspective. Interview transcripts, field notes, and pictorial material were analyzed and interpreted through the grounded theory approach. This results in a new typology of symbolic souvenirs including touristic trinkets, destination stereotypes, paper mementoes, and picked-up objects. Such a typology relates to four major functions souvenirs may fulfill in terms of meanings and identity construction, that is, categorization, self-expression, connectedness, and self-creation.