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Western Travellers In The Land Of The Buddha Legitimising Travel Through The Religionification Of Tourism, François Thibeault
Western Travellers In The Land Of The Buddha Legitimising Travel Through The Religionification Of Tourism, François Thibeault
International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage
On the one hand, tourism has developed to such a point that it now shapes other social realities in global society. On the other hand, pilgrimage phenomena are thriving in the twenty-first century, as they become both more globalised and more particularised. This paper shows that drawing oppositions between pilgrimage and tourism assumes an exclusive, dichotomous view that is misleading. Instead, I insist on an understanding of the reciprocal influence between religion and tourism in which neither of the two spheres subjects itself to the other. The argument is based on the understandings and discourses of legitimation that Westerners travelling …
When Sacred Space Becomes A Heritage Place: Pilgrimage, Worship, And Tourism In Contemporary China, R J. Shepherd
When Sacred Space Becomes A Heritage Place: Pilgrimage, Worship, And Tourism In Contemporary China, R J. Shepherd
International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage
When promoted at sites that have traditionally been religious in character, heritage tourism evokes questions of intentionality, commodification, and authenticity. In particular, tourism at such sites is alleged to flatten out local practices, cause social problems, and commercialise the sacred. In short, local cultural practices are presumed to be transformed for the worse by tourism, a presumption which implies the existence of pristine pre-tourist cultures which can serve as baseline tools for measuring the impact of this touristic degradation. In this paper I address these concerns by examining tourism at a particular Chinese religious site, recently designated as a national …