On the Road to Being There

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.