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of the transition rite, the stage where social
structure partly loses its significance, has inspired
many anthropologists studying tourism.
See also: ludic; play; sacred journey
References
Graburn, N.H.H. �1989) `Tourism: the sacred
journey', in V. Smith �ed.), Hosts and Guests:The
Anthropology of Tourism, 2nd edn, Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 21±36.
Further reading
Gennep, A. van �1960) The Rites of Passage, Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
Turner, V. and Turner, E. �1978) Image and Pilgrimage
in Christian Culture, New York: Columbia
University Press.
ritual
TOM SELANNIEMI, FINLAND
Consideration of the relationships between tourism
and ritual has been as central to the anthropology
of tourism as the study of ritual has been to
anthropology itself. In sociocultural anthropology,
rituals are normally understood as stylised performances
with a communally understood symbolic
architecture. Such performances may, as rites of
passage, mark life crises such as birth, marriage
and death, signalling the transition of persons as
they move from one social status to another, and
may involve families or collections of families.
Alternatively, rituals may involve larger social
collectivities: whole villages in the case of feasts
commemorating patron saints, representatives of
entire religious communities in the case of
pilgrimages, nations and international diasporas
in the case of such festivals as Passover or
Christmas. Although, by prescribing particular
patterns and regimes of fasting, feasting, movement,
decoration and so on, most rituals make use
of the human body, their purpose is precisely to
enable participants to transcend the physical world
of individual bodies and to shift their focus to a
ritual 511
level of engagement and identification with wider
social, spiritual and moral structures.
In studies of tourism, these ideas have been used
in at least the following four ways. First, the origins
of tourism have been traced to traditional ritual
occasions, including totemic events �see myth) and
pilgrimage. Second, attention has been drawn to
the structural similarities of ritual and tourism as a
whole. Third, the ritualistic aspects of particular
types of tourist behaviour have been identified.
Fourth, and on a slightly different level, the place of
local ritual events as factors in attracting tourists to
particular destinations has been examined.
Several writers have drawn attention to the
similarities between the structure and function of
traditional totemic ritual and those of tourism.
McCannell �1976), for example, has argued that
tourism sites are subject to the same kind of
veneration and `sacralisation' as traditional totemic
sites. Following this view, the similarities between
contemporary tourism and traditional pilgrimage
have been emphasised. Both involve the making of
journeys to sacred or quasi-sacred places. Furthermore,
both tourists and pilgrims temporarily place
themselves on the margins of everyday society,
adopt particular codes of behaviour, and �as is
known of pilgrims from The Canterbury Tales) use the
journey to meet old friends, make new ones, tell
stories and reflect on wider social issues and
cultural values.
Following Van Gennep's �1960) classic text, the
idea of tourism itself as a rite of passage has been
explored by several writers in tourism studies. A
tourist passes through rites of separation, which
may involve crossing a frontier, transition, staying
for a period away from home in unfamiliar
surroundings, and of �re)incorporation, involving
crossing back into and picking up the threads of life
at home but in a changed state. Awareness of such
structural formations directs attention to another
characteristic feature of tourism, elegantly symbolised
by Lucy's Florentine adventures in E.M.
Forster's A Room with a View, namely the saliency of
transgression, or the temporary crossing by individual
travellers of the boundaries and prohibitions
of the everyday. This in turn has pointed to
intriguing semiological lines of enquiry which have
set out from the central symbolic role in tourism of
coasts, mountain passes, rift valleys, rivers and