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Travelling To The Inner Self: Tourism, Buddhism And Sustainability In The Alpine Area, Tatjana Thimm

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper examines the interdependencies of tourism, Buddhism and sustainability combining in-depth-interviews with Buddhism experts and non-participant observation in a mixed-method approach. The area under investigation is the Alpine region of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, since it is home to Asian and Western forms of Buddhism tourism alike. Results show that Buddhism tourism as a value-based activity on the one hand is not commercial, but since demand is rising, on the other hand tendencies towards more commercial forms can be observed. As a modest form of activity Buddhism tourism does not shape the landscape of the Alpine area and by …

Perspectives On The Improvement Of Uzbekistan As A Destination For Multi-Confessional Self-Organised Pilgrims, Bakhtiyor Negmatovich Navruz-Zoda, Nutfillo Ibragimov, Akmal Rakhmanov

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

By accenting the tourism industry as one of the most valuable sectors for prosperity and appreciating its potential in new social-economic reforms, the administration of the Republic of Uzbekistan has been making visible steps for its development. Particularly religious tourism and pilgrimage are noted as offering opportunities for modernisation in a global world. Carrying a major geographical role in the connection of main trade routes between East and West, the country became the crossroad of civilisation and religious diffusions. Consequently, with new religious tourism and pilgrimage flows: following the earliest dominating beliefs of Zoroastrianism, and its New Age followers; being …

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

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 …

Xuanzang And Bodhidharma: Pilgrimage And Peace-Building In Buddhist China And India, Ian S. Mcintosh

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In the study of pilgrimage and peace-building, case studies deemed to be influential in initiating positive change in the world are in the spotlight. A novel example in which people with different ethnicities, cultures and walks of life have come together with a common purpose is associated with the spread of Buddhism from India to China beginning in the early centuries of the Common Era. Unlike other instances of the expansion of a world religion beyond its homeland, the spread of Buddhism along the maritime and overland ‘silk roads’ was not linked to domination or conquest. Rather, it was linked …

Buddhism In The United States: An Ethnographic Study, Jaeyeon Choe, John Mcnally

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper focuses on Buddhism in America, an neglected area of inquiry in anthropological study. There is a need for modern ethnographic studies to shed light on historical issues, paradigms for comparative inquiry, and thus, explore the impact of Buddhism on modern American society (Glazier, 1997). The enormous growth of Buddhism in the last quarter century (Smith, 2002) makes this an especially pertinent topic in American anthropology. We utilize Glazier’s model to add Buddhism as a topic in the area of modernity studies.

This is a preliminary study of the nature of Buddhism in America. We conducted participant observation with …