To travel is not just to move around spaces; it’s also to bring home elements from that trip. Many times, those elements take form of souvenirs. Why do we buy that sort of stuff? This entry has a clearly hypothetic character, to point out some explanations on why do travelers and tourists own these objects. Just in case, I’ll set this straight: because of its hypothetic character, its intention is to be debated and not to be take as taxative affirmations.

The experience hypothesis: we buy souvenirs not for what they mean, but for the degree of connection it has with our travel experiences. That is, the souvenir is worthy as long as it allows us to recapture certain fragments of our travel, in the same way certain songs are important not only for its composition value but because of the things they evoke in us. This way, we could hypothesize that the souvenir only makes sense when we move.

The subordination hypothesis: if we acquire souvenirs, these standarized objects sold massively to hundreds or thousands of visitors, it’s because the tourism industry has managed to colonize our imagination and has imposed on us that our memories should make sense only in relation to those merchantilized objects. In the same way the industry manages to make us consume certain products not in function of its usefulness but in relation to what they mean, the souvenir is a form to “signify the travel” in benefit of the tourism industry needs.

The ironic hypothesis: even when we know these objects are ridiculous, massified and, in itself, lacking of value -and questionably associated to our travel experience-, the buying of souvenirs is an exercise of irony and distance from the meanings associated to the destination and the movement. It’s a little what has been discussed in many texts about posmodernism and quotidian life, where objects acquire value not for its intrinsic meaning or for its use value, but because of the way we can aestheticize them in relation to what we do everyday.

As I said in the first paragraph, this entry starts from a series of hypothesis about why do we buy souvenirs, even when I don’t side with any of the three. Any other hypothesis to add to the list? The picture is from a typical souvenir from Mar del Plata, one of the most touristic areas of Argentina. It’s a sea wolves figurine, which changes color according to the humidity in the environment. It’s a souvenir with a long history, one that has been sold for decades in that city.