When people in First World countries think of tourists in the vast expanses of the Third World today, they typically think of pampered westerners, filling up the luxury hotels and imposing their Orientalist gazes on the teeming masses. As David Gladstone shows us in this fascinating and provocative book, such preconceptions are wrong. Coupling incisive and colorful ethnographic accounts of tourism in India and Mexico with sharp analysis, Gladstone demonstrates the amazing complexity of this industry, which now comprises close to ten percent of the world economy. As he also shows, the vast majority of tourists in the Third World are indigenous people with few resources-often making pilgrimages to religious shrines. From Pilgrimage to Package Tour is a fresh and entirely original account that stands tourism studies on its head and proves that this industry is far more complicated than it initially appears.

Pilgrimage is one of the oldest extant and most basic forms of population mobility known to human society, and its political, social, cultural, and economic implications have always been, and continue to be substantial. In recent decades, a new focus on pilgrimage has emerged through the lens of tourism, which explores the political, cultural, behavioral, economic, and geographical impacts. Therefore, the identification of challenges in transformation and emerging ways and means of managing pilgrimage and related destinations is critical in an era of crises and disastrous situations. Management and Practices of Pilgrimage Tourism and Hospitality identifies, understands, and recognizes the changing facts and facets of pilgrimage tourism around the world. It develops and promotes pilgrimage tourism for community integration, faith-sharing, perseverance, tolerance, and pace for secular and sustainable futures. This book further identifies any new issues, scopes, challenges, and entrepreneurial opportunities for pilgrimage tourism as are found to be relevant and important for future pilgrimages with larger intensity and frequency. Covering topics such as behavioral challenges, community empowerment, and pilgrimage economy, this book is an essential resource for entrepreneurs, professionals, researchers, academicians, policymakers, students of higher education, sociologists, and more.

For millennia people have travelled to religious sites for worship, initiatory and leisure purposes. Today there are hundreds, if not thousands, of religious pilgrimage routes and trails around the world that are used by pilgrims as well as tourists. Indeed, many religious pilgrimage routes and trails are today used as themes by tourism marketers in an effort to promote regional economic development. An important resource for those interested in religious tourism and pilgrimage, this book is also an invaluable collection for academics and policy-makers within heritage tourism and regional development.

Pilgrimages can be analysed as acts of conflict - such as the Crusades - or also as platforms for relationship building and rapprochement between religions. With a set of contributions from leading experts in the field, this book explores the concept of pilgrimage in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Some specific examples of pilgrimages that helped to strengthen links between different religions or civilisations are explored, ranging from Europe to Asia and from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Even though every pilgrimage that is investigated here has helped to link different worlds, the case studies show that this relationship rarely led to a better in inter-understanding. Nowadays, peaceful coexistence seems to be its greatest achievement.

Incisive and interdisciplinary, this Research Agenda broaches topics that have been under-researched within religious tourism, including: place attachment and marketing; memory and modification of sacred landscapes for tourism needs; the darker sides of religious tourism; multi-stakeholder governance; mission-trips; and allied forms of tourism.

The Oxford History of Hinduism: Modern Hinduism focuses on developments resulting from movements within the tradition as well as contact between India and the outside world through both colonialism and globalization. Divided into three parts, part one considers the historical background to modern conceptualizations of Hinduism. Moving away from the reforms of the 19th and early 20th century, part two includes five chapters each presenting key developments and changes in religious practice in modern Hinduism. Part three moves to issues of politics, ethics, and law. This section maps and explains the powerful legal and political contexts created by the modern state—first the colonial government and then the Indian Republic—which have shaped Hinduism in new ways. The last two chapters look at Hinduism outside India focusing on Hinduism in Nepal and the modern Hindu diaspora.