On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage And Tourism in Late Modernity

This volume consists of a collection of twelve empirical studies that address theoretical and practical issues relating to pilgrimage and tourism activities in late modernity. As a contribution to the Religion and Social Order series sponsored by the Association for the Sociology of Religion, these studies are particularly directed to assessing both the role of religion in the pilgrimage/tourism nexus and the ways in which religious expressions have changed as a result of the technological and social changes of late modernity that affect human behavior in a more general sense. The chapters address neo-pagan pilgrimage tours to ancient pagan temples, travels to spiritual healers, the development of historical sites by American religious movements of nineteenth-century origin, labyrinths, pilgrimages that emphasize walking a journey rather than visiting buildings, virtual pilgrimage, the Roman Jubilee of 2000, Kyôto’s Gion Festival, and similar topics.

William H. Swatos, Jr., is completing his first decade as Executive Officer of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, prior to which he served for six years as editor of Sociology of Religion, the ASR’s official journal. He is also executive officer of the Religious Research Association, senior fellow of the Center for Religious Inquiry Across the Disciplines at Baylor University, managing editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, and an adjunct member of the faculty at Augustana College (Illinois). He received his B.A. with honors from Transylvania University, his M.Div. summa cum laude from the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky, with honors in social theory. He is author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of over twenty books including the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society (AltaMira 1998). His most recent book is The Protestant Ethic Turns 100 (Paradigm 2005), co-edited with Lutz Kaelber. His current research in pilgrimage and tourism studies focuses on the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, Paris.