TOURISM AS A SACRED JOURNEY

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper sets out to explore the idea that tourism in modern societies can be interpreted as posessing certain quasi-religious characteristics. The general interest and utility of this approach is acknowledged; but the particular notion of religion which has come to be employed in the literature is challenged. The work of Dean MacCannell and Donald Horne is taken as representative of the way in which the religious metaphor is used in the study of tourism. This is one-sided, in that it treats tourism as a species of "civil religion" in the manner suggested by Robert Bellah, celebrating institutionalised public values. To this is contrasted another use of the religious metaphor, namely, that of "implicit religion". This is interpreted as a privatised form of religion. The claim is advanced that, by fastening onto this rather neglected and poorly developed concept in the sociology of religion, we are able to draw attention to an important dimension of the phenomenon of tourism which has hitherto been inadequately considered. Just as "implicit religion" is a privatised form of religion, there may well be privatised forms of tourist experience. Through this engagement with the question of privatisation we are led to regard tourism within a theoretical framework which links it with the wider study of general processes which are characteristic of modern culture.