Performing the “post-secular” in Santiago de Compostela

Mats Nilsson and Mekonnen Tesfahuney

Annals of Tourism Research, 2016, vol. 57, issue C, 18-30

Abstract: Current debates on and theorizations of (post)secularism lack sustained discussions of the role of pilgrimage tourism, spiritual journeys and sacred places. This article is a theoretically informed and empirically based study that explores contemporary pilgrimage tourism as an arena where ‘post-secular’ praxis and discourse fuse. It identifies the multiple ways in which the ‘post-secular’ is performed through pilgrimage tourism, viz. construction of identities, journeys of becoming and performativity as instances of mobile place making. Contemporary pilgrimage tourism to Santiago de Compostela is polyvalent. Pilgrimages cannot be read off as unambiguously religious, secular or post-secular. Pilgrimage tourism spaces are open-ended such that place identity and meaning are being continuously reworked.

Keywords: Post-secular; Place; Performativity; Santiago de Compostela; Pilgrimage; Polyvalent mobilities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160738315001607
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:57:y:2016:i:c:p:18-30

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2015.11.001

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Tourism Research is currently edited by John Tribe

More articles in Annals of Tourism Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().