Spirituality and Tourism An Anthropologist's View

Abstract

For many years, tourism has been studied as a ritual. Few scholars have sought to make an in-depth inquiry into the spiritual aspects or dimensions of tourism. This stalemate is a result of our thinking of tourism as essentially to do with physical behaviour, even though tourism marketers and some scholars study motivations and, hence, mental aspects. This paper seeks to explore and define spirituality in terms of its relationship with tourism anthropologically, and concludes that tourism is a spiritual activity that has to do with human society and its values as a whole. The paper synthesizes various anthropological concepts of tourism and arrives at a new definition of the social process, as well as explains why the spiritual aspects of tourism are more enduring than the ritual, since tourism is a holistic process and not mechanical.

Keywords:

• cooperation
• social solidarity
• anthropology of tourism
• mobility
• capitalism
• economic health multiplier