Spiritual Tourism: Travel and Religious Practice in Western Society

by Alex Norman

Overview

This book investigates spiritual tourism - tourism characterised by an intentional search for spiritual benefit - from a contemporary religious studies perspective. Using field research gathered from spiritual tourism locations in Asia and Europe, and utilizing contemporary scholarship on practices concerned with meaning and identity, it explores the phenomena of journeys that are taken for self transformation, tracing the history of transformative ideas in Western cultures of travel, and including the modes in which the travel experience has been communicated. Spiritual Tourism provides an important opportunity to comment on the role of tourism in contemporary conceptions of spirituality and spiritual practice in Western society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472514615
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/23/2013
Series:	Continuum Advances in Religious Studies
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Alex Norman is Lecturer, Tutor and Researcher at the Department of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney, Australia. He is also Co-editor of the jourbanal Literature and Aesthetics.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Part I: Finding Spiritual Tourism in the Field
2. India: The Spiritual Marketplace
3. The Camino de Santiago: The Spiritual Workplace
Part II: Theories of Travel and Spirituality
4. Tourism in Popular Culture and History
5. Theories of Leisured Travel
6. Contemporary Spirituality
Part III: Understanding Spiritual Tourism in Context
7. India in the Mind of the Spiritual Tourist
8. The Camino de Santiago in the Mind of the Spiritual Tourist
9. Reading Spiritual Tourism
Conclusions
Appendices
Glossary
Bibliography
Index