Title: Negotiating Authentic Objects and Authentic Selves: beyond the Deconstruction of Authenticity Negotiating Authentic Objects and Authentic Selves: beyond the Deconstruction of Authenticity Negotiating Authentic Selves and Authentic Objects – the Case of Hilton of Cadboll

Our understanding of authenticity in the material world is characterised by a problematic dichotomy between materialist and constructivist perspectives. Neither explains why people find the issue of authenticity so compelling, nor how it is experienced and negotiated in practice. There is strong evidence supporting the view that prevailing materialist approaches to authenticity are a product of the development of modernity in the West. The result has been an emphasis on entities and their origins and essences. However, when we look at how people experience and negotiate authenticity through objects, it is the networks of relationships between people, places and things which appear to be central, not the things in themselves. I argue that these inalienable relationships between objects, people and places underpin the ineffable, almost magical, power of authenticity, and explain why people employ it as a means to negotiate their place in a world characterised by displacement and fragmentation. I illustrate this by drawing on ethnographic research surrounding the Hilton of Cadboll crossslab.