Pilgrimage and Sacred Places in Southeast Europe. M. Katic, T. Klarin & Mike McDonalds

Abstract

Though religious tourism has posed as one of the main attraction in tourism industry worldwide, nowadays a lack of a serious debate respecting to commonalities between tourism and pilgrimage still exists. To fulfill such a gap, this book, which is edited by Katic, Klarin and McDonald, presents the outcome of a previous event: Pilgrimage and Sacred Places in Central and Eastern Europe, place, politics and religious tourism. Understanding pilgrimage as an act of faith, which results in devotion, redemption and penitence, it is interesting to discuss to what extent the term “religious tourism” is acceptable. Of course, we start from the premise this type of tourism has religion as it primary criterion of attraction. Among the strengths of this book, we find a finely-ingrained debate respecting to the role of mobile factor, which is present in pilgrimage and tourism, to offer a homogenized product of consumption that at the bottom it is based on different goals. While the pilgrimage seeks for a redemption, which is caused by sickness, or pain, tourism signals to curiosity as its constituent element.

Keywords

• Pilgrimage
• Sacred
• Places