Constructions Of Self And Other In Yoga Travel And Tourism

This volume considers the phenomenon of yoga travel as an instance of a broader genre of ‘spiritual travel’ involving journeys to places ‘elsewhere’, which are imagined to offer the possibility of profound personal transformation. These imaginings are tied up in a continued exoticization of the East, but they are not limited to that. Contributors identify various themes such as authenticity, suffering, space, material markers, and the idea of the ‘spiritual’, tracing how these ideas manifest in conceptions and fetishizations of ‘elsewhere.’ To deepen its analysis of this phenomenon, the book incorporates a wide range of disciplines including architecture, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, women’s studies, religious studies, and history. While the book’s primary focus is yoga and yoga travel, contributors offer up an array of other case studies. Chapters delve into the complex questions of agency and authenticity that accompany the concept of ‘spiritual travel’ and ideas of ‘elsewhere.’

Tourism consumers are increasingly demanding and seek to base their travel decision-making process on relevant and credible tourism information. In recent years, user-generated content on social media, the opinion of travel bloggers, and entertainment programs in the media have influenced the public's travel purchasing behavior and acted as a driving force for the development of tourism products, such as film tourism. It also has played a role in the evolution and development of marketing, giving rise to new applications, as in the case of digital and influence marketing. On the other hand, tourism organizations and destination management organizations face major challenges in communicating the attributes of a tourism product, since this cannot be experienced before consumption. Thus, they need to know how and in which means or platforms of communication they can inform potential consumers. Impact of New Media in Tourism provides theoretical and practical contributions in tourism and communication including current research on the influence of new media and the active role of consumers in tourism. With a focus on decision making and increasing the visibility of products and destinations, the book provides support for tourism agencies and organizations around the world. Covering themes that include digital marketing, social media, and online branding, this book is essential for professionals, academicians, researchers, and students working or studying in the field of tourism and hospitality management, marketing, advertising, and media and communications.

Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots is an ethnography about local wageworkers in the Indian branches of a transnational yoga institution and about yoga practitioners and spiritual tourists who visualize peace through yoga. Practitioners’ aspirations for peace situate them at the heart of an international movement that has captured the imagination of cosmopolitans the world over, with its purported benefits to mind, body, and spirit. Yoga is thought to offer health, vitality, and relief from depression through control of body and breath. Yet, the vision of peace in this institution is a partial vision that obscures the important but seemingly peripheral others of its self-conception. Through in-depth ethnographic analysis, this book explores the processes through which global spiritual movements can have peace front and center in their vision and yet condone and perpetuate cycles of injustice and social inequality that form the critical and problematic foundations of our global economy. The book privileges the experiences and hardships faced by Indian wageworkers—most of them women —but it also offers a sympathetic portrayal of international yoga practitioners and of the complex patterns of work and worship central to a global mission. For more information, check out A conversation with Laura E. Klepinger, author of Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots

Eastspirit analyses ‘Eastern’ concepts, practices and traditions in their new ‘Western’ and global contexts as well as in their transformed expressions and reappropriations ‘back in the East’ within the framework of mutual interaction and circulation, regionally and globally.

Cultural Sustainability, Tourism and Development considers how tourism provides a lens to examine issues of cultural sustainability and change. It discusses how cultural and natural assets, artistic interventions, place identity, policy strategies, and community well-being are intertwined in (re)articulations of place and local dynamics that occur in tourist locations. With a primary focus on culture in sustainable development, the book clarifies connections between culture as a core dimension of local sustainability and cultural dimensions of sustainable tourism. It highlights the roles and place of cultural expression, artistic activity, and heritage resources in local or regional sustainable development contexts. Chapters critically examine the dimensions of tourism-invoked dynamics of change and the cultural impacts of tourism-related activities. The book concludes with proposals for new culture-informed and creativity-based approaches, mediations, and relations to encourage a better balance between visitors and residents’ quality of life and the broader sustainability of the area. Interdisciplinary and international in scope, contributions reflect on communities and rural areas located in Brazil, Canada, Croatia, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and the United States. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of cultural development and policy, heritage studies, cultural tourism and sustainable tourism, cultural geography, and regional development.

Inspired by the neoliberal paradigm that transposes religious behaviors into a religious marketplace framed by consumerist and capitalist models, this volume draws on ethnographic fieldwork to discuss the assemblage between the well-being trope and the rise of new spiritualities, as well as their deep permeation within mainstream culture. Building on previous literature that addresses the relationship between spirituality, healing and well-being, this text discusses the religious roots of mind-body practices. The contributions offer a critical perspective on the scope, limits and impacts of the current celebration of spiritualities. Part I provides theoretical insights for thinking about ways in which the prevalent ethics of well-being reframes subjectivities within the margins of neoliberal order. Part II demonstrates how spiritual economies are promoted, shaped and regulated by institutional forces such as States, law and the labor market. In part III, contributors describe in detail how spiritual economies unfold in specific cultural and social settings. The text appeals to students and researchers working on the spirituality and sociology of religion.

Built into a huge cliff in central France, the town of Rocamadour is a visual marvel and a place of contradictions. Pilgrims come to venerate its ancient Black Madonna but are outnumbered by secular tourists. Weibel provides an intimate look at the transformation of Rocamadour from a significant religious center to a tourist attraction; the efforts by clergy to restore Rocamadour’s spiritual character; the supernatural reinterpretations of the shrine by non-Catholics; and the desperate decision by the Diocese to participate in tourism itself, with disastrous results. For more information, check out A Conversation with Deana L. Weibel: A Sacred Vertigo: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Rocamadour, France or this podcast episode on Meaningful Journeys. Deana L. Weibel appears on The Camino Podcast to discuss A Sacred Vertigo: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Rocamadour, France. Watch here.

In the context of the rise of reactionary politics across the globe, this book seeks new ways of developing solidarity across religious, political and economic differences. Drawing on an increasingly influential Christian theological movement, postliberalism, it claims that the dominance of liberal, secular rationality has blinded people to the fundamental role of transcendence and myth in developing solidarity. The result is either atrophy, or a retrenching in divisive myths of faith, race, nation or economic status. Liberalism is now a dominant force across the globe. But its resonance in the Anglo-Saxon West, from which it originates and has been most fully realized, is relatively underexplored. The book thus follows two simultaneous lines of enquiry. Firstly, a genealogical study of social scientific and policy iterations of the relationship between belief and solidarity in the Anglo-Saxon West, placing postliberal theory into dialogue with the sociology and anthropology of religion, politics and economics. Secondly, it draws from original ethnographic research with groups in London, UK, that seek to develop solidarity in the face of deep-seated difference. By bringing a new way of framing these contentious debates about contemporary society, this research offers tools for more productive conversations around religious and political topics, in particular concluding with a clear policy proposal. It is, therefore, a useful resource for both academics of theology and religious studies, political philosophy, sociology and anthropology; and for politicians, policy makers and practitioners hoping to develop solidarity in the modern world.