Tourism, pilgrimage and the sacred: At home or away

Abstract

I have been asked to comment on how I see the development of anthropological research on tourism in the last fifty years or so, from the point of view of its socio-historical contextualization and my personal experiences. I have been very fortunate in my academic career to have been introduced to a large number of the key topics. I have written at some length elsewhere on both my personal path which led me into the subject (Graburn, 2006a, 2006b), on the nature of tourism (Graburn, 1977a, 1977b, chap. 1; 1983a, 2017, chap. 7), the anthropology of tourism (Graburn, 1983a, 1983b; Leite & Graburn, 2008; Graburn & Leite, 2019), and the relation of anthropology to other disciplines and multidisciplinarity in tourism studies (Graburn & Jafari, 1991; Graburn & Gravari-Barbas, 2016). I will therefore only focus at length on the newer topics of my research involvement as being not only contemporary but leading into the future. These topics still focus on the core concerns of our field: what is tourism, what is its relation to pilgrimage and (non-tourist) life itself? If tourism involves departure and return, what is the nature of “away” and “home” in an increasingly interconnected and digitally represented world?