Darius Liutikas & Razaq Raj 
Religious Tourism and Globalization [EPUB ebook] 
The Search for Identity and Transformative Experience

Is it possible to identify the positive and negative effects of globalization on religious tourism or to estimate the transformation of the internal and external constructs of pilgrimage by these effects?

In order to address these questions, this book highlights the importance of the search for identity and transformative experience during religious tourism. It also looks at how, recently, globalization has played a part in the changes of the concept of personal and social identity and the transformative experience of pilgrimage.

The chapters, consisting of carefully selected case studies, analyse possible effects including the adoption of different new rituals, new pilgrims’ values, changes of tradition, acceptance of technologic innovations, development of new business models, and other environmental and sociocultural changes. The book provides:

· a conceptual framework for understanding the impacts of globalization;
· integrated cross-disciplinary approaches; and
· an insight into major religious travel practices in the age of identity challenges and worldwide transformations.

It will be suitable for researchers and students of religious tourism, pilgrimage, identity tourism, as well as related subjects such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, theology, history and cultural studies.

About the author

Alison T. Smith first stumbled upon the Camino de Santiago while hiking in the French Pyrenees in 1995. It was through the study of film, most notably Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way, that her scholarly exploration of pilgrimage got its start. Smith has published several articles and book chapters on pilgrimage, and she regularly presents her research at conferences. A former Associate Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the College of Charleston, Smith brings a feminist approach to her scholarship, and she promotes diversity and inclusivity in her pilgrimage practice. She has walked sections of the Camino de Santiago in France and Spain with colleagues, with students, and alone. Recently she served as a volunteer at the Ribadiso Pilgrim Welcome Center in Spain and walked the Kerry Camino with fellow pilgrimage scholars in Ireland.