摘要：In recent years, the topic of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage has emerged as a distinct area of academic investigation. While the origins of tourism and travel are lost in the mists of time it is accepted by many scholars that recreational travel is inherently linked (albeit in a complicated way) to religious and faith based travel. Emerging from Smith's 1977 seminal work Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, and the work of authors such as Turner and Turner (1978) and Cohen (1979), the study of religious travel has never been far from the centre of academic discourse – in areas such as religious studies, anthropology and sociology. However it took a little longer to become a mainstream topic in the emerging tourism literature. This evolution can be seen by contrasting two volumes of Annals of Tourism Research. In 1983 (Vol. 10:1) a number of papers in an edited volume by Nelson H.H Graburn touched tangentially on the topic. The 1992 volume (Vol. 19:1) edited by Valene Smith, however, contains a very influential set of papers by the likes of Eade, Cohen, Rinschede, Nolan & Nolan, Vukoni., Jackowski & Smith and Hudman & Jackson. These papers have paved the way for much of what has been subsequently published in academic tourism literature.
