Journal of Ecotourism

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The philosophical, ethical and theological

groundings of tourism – an exploratory inquiry

Erik Cohen

To cite this article: Erik Cohen (2018) The philosophical, ethical and theological
groundings of tourism – an exploratory inquiry, Journal of Ecotourism, 17:4, 359-382, DOI:
10.1080/14724049.2018.1522477

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14724049.2018.1522477

Published online: 19 Sep 2018.

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JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM
2018, VOL. 17, NO. 4, 359–382
https://doi.org/10.1080/14724049.2018.1522477

The philosophical, ethical and theological groundings of

tourism – an exploratory inquiry
Erik Cohen
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This inquiry poses the question whether and in what manner has Philosophy; ethics; theology;
the field of tourism achieved groundings in three of the principal existentialism; authenticity;
domains of contemporary Western culture: philosophy, ethics and spirituality; dark tourism
theology. The inquire found that (1) Some philosophical concepts
have entered the language of tourism research, while a promising
nexus emerged between existential phenomenology in
philosophy and the exploration of existential authenticity in
tourism. (2) The ethical aspects of the tourism industry have
recently gained increasing attention, but the exploration of more
profound ethical problems inherent in contemporary tourism as a
social phenomenon is still rarely undertaken. Tourism has not
been addressed by the theologies of most of the established
world religions; but the inquiry reveals elements of contrasting
incipient theologies inherent in some novel touristic
manifestations, such as spiritual tourism and dark tourism. The
inquiry concludes that the field of tourism has achieved some
groundings in the domain of ethics, but its groundings in major
philosophical streams are of limited scope, while those in the
theologies of major world religions (safe for Islam) are virtually
non-existent. The absence of adequate forums to discuss and
elucidate these topics hinders progress in their investigation.

1. Introduction
In contemporary neo-institutional theory, a ‘field’ is a social, organizational or cultural for-
mation on the meso-level of the social order (Bourdieu, 1977, 1986; Fligstein, 2015; Kluttz
& Fligstein, 2016; Wooten & Hoffman, 2016). Simply defined, ‘fields encompass the
relations among the totality of relevant individual and organizational actors in function-
ally differentiated parts of society, such as education, health, and politics, or … art and lit-
erature’ (Anheiler, Gerhards, & Romo, 1995, p. 860). According to field theory, ‘fields are
situated within other fields and affect one another across their boundaries’ (Fligstein, 2015,
p. 238).‘Tourism’ can be seen as a ‘field’ (or as a series of interrelated fields), as well as a
field of study (Benckendorff & Zehrer, 2013, pp. 121–122).
‘Fields’ in the contemporary, highly differentiated Western societies often enjoy a high degree
of autonomy (Swartz, 1997, p. 9), but they are not independent. The question thus arises of
the extent and manner in which particular fields are integrated or ‘grounded’ in the principal

CONTACT Erik Cohen erik.cohen@mail.huji.ac.il

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
360 E. COHEN

cultural domains on the social macro-level, from which they derive their ultimate meaning
and legitimation: the prevailing, but often competing, philosophical, ethical, theological
and aesthetic currents, theories or beliefs.

This article poses the question with regard to the field of tourism: whether and in what way
has this field achieved groundings in three of the principal domains of contemporary
Western culture: philosophy, ethics and theology (aesthetics are left out due to the
dearth of studies of tourism aesthetics), thus endowing this often denigrated activity
with a mantel of legitimacy.
These topics have already gained significant attention in two fields akin to tourism,
leisure and sport. The discussion of their philosophical groundings started already in
the 1970s (Murphy, 1974). Barrett (1989), in the first collection of papers devoted to
the philosophy of leisure (Winnifrith & Barrett, 1989) made a strong case for the philoso-
phical treatment of leisure; he remarks that ‘Leisure seems too trivial a subject to be treated
philosophically’, and asked ‘What possible problems could such activities, or absence of
activity generate?’ (p. 1). In response, Barrett made two points relevant to tourism as
well: he argued that the fact ‘that a subject may seem trivial does not make philosophizing
about it trivial,’ citing the case of laughter, humor and joking as examples for this argu-
ment. But he also claims that, in fact, leisure is a more serious matter than it might at
first appear, and proclaims that work is not an end in itself; rather, ‘leisure is the end,
the goal of human life’ (p. 1).
Philosophical and ethical aspects of sport also gained early attention. The first issue of
the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport was published in the same year as Murphy’s book,
1974. Another journal, devoted to those matters, Sports, Ethics and Philosophy was added
in 2007 (McNamee, 2007). Műller (2011, p. 202) stated in 2011 that ‘the spectrum of …
modes of thought that are used to analyze the world of sports is enormous,’ in sharp con-
trast to the as yet quite limited discussion of philosophical issues in the field of tourism,
where an absence of an appropriate forum to discuss philosophical issues hinders the
public deliberation of opinons and ideas harbored by engaged scholars in the field.
In the first decades of the twenty-first Century, philosophical and ethical aspects of
leisure and sports were treated by a growing number scholars (e.g. Cleret, McNamee, &
Page, 2015; McFee, 2013; McNamee, 2007; McNamee & Morgan, 2015; Reid, 2012;
Simon, Torres, & Hager, 2014; Spracklen, 2011, 2016; Tomlinson & Fleming, 2004).
Even the theological aspects of leisure attracted significant attention (deLisle, 2003;
Harvey, 2014; Kelly, 2015; Parry, Nesti, & Watson, 2011). Kelly (2015, n.p.), for
example, saw leisure ‘as a form of peace,’ and as such ‘a temporary prefiguration of peace-
ful rest in God,’ while Sulentic (2014, p. 761) saw in leisure, as ‘rest,’ a state of ‘receptivity
to religious or spiritual experience.’ Both authors thus perceived leisure as a crucial pre-
condition for profound religious experiences, unmatched, as yet, by any similar statements
about tourism.
In contrast to the relatively advanced discussion of those topics in the fields of leisure
and sports, in the field of tourism their consideration started relatively late and is still quite
limited. There exists no specific journal devoted to the philosophy, ethics or theology of
touristic phenomena; and there are few works dealing specifically with these topics.
This lacuna is partly due to the problematic position of tourism in modernity: while
modern intellectuals generally appreciated travel, they often saw tourism as an aberration
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 361

of it (e.g. Boorstin, 1964), not worthy of intellectual concern. Tourism ws often perceived
as somehow external or exogenous to society, an antinomian or ludic zone of permissive-
ness, and as such not in need of any philosophical, ethical or theological groundings.
It was only in the last decades of the twentieth Century, that tourism gradually moved
from a topic of intellectual criticism to a subject of serious social scientific analysis; in Jafar
Jafari’s terms, it was raised onto a ‘knowledge-based platform’ (Jafari, 1990, pp. 34–35).
But tourism became a topic of wider intellectual concerns only in the first decade of the
twenty-first Century, even as the social scientific perspective on tourism started to shift
from considering it as an extraordinary and extraneous activity, to recognition as an
important component of contemporary life (Edensor, 1998; Franklin & Crang, 2001).
This inquiry seeks to examine the extent to which tourism acquired philosophical,
ethical and theological groundings, as signs of its gradual integration into some of the fun-
damental Western cultural domains. As an indication of such groundings will be taken the
extent to which tourism gained acceptance as an avenue for the realization of principal
strivings of each domain (e.g. philosophical insight, moral perfection or religious salva-
tion) on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the extent to which particular manifes-
tations of tourism are analyzed, regulated or criticized by basic approaches or precepts
prevailing in each domain (e.g. particular philosophical concepts or ideas, ethical prin-
ciples or religious teachings). A similar inquiry into the groundings of tourism in the cul-
tural domains of non-Western, especially Asian societies, is called for, but is beyond the
objectives of this article.
This article is bsed on the author’s broad acquaintance with the tourism literature, and
a search for recent works, on the topics here discussed, on Google Scholar; but it is not
intended to be a systematic literature review.

2. Philosophy
In 1989, Comic [Čomić] complained that ‘the philosophical approach to tourism is vir-
tually non-existent’ (Comic, 1989, p. 6), and questions, such as the purpose and raison
d’etre of tourism are not asked (from a philosophical perspective). The issue of the inter-
face of tourism and philosophy has in fact been raised late in the development of tourism
studies, and gained significant attention only in the new millennium, when some students
of tourism started to deploy fundamental philosophical concepts to tourism studies, while
others sought to ground theoretical developments in tourism on philosophical
approaches. I shall deal separately with each of these developments.

2.1. Concepts
Phillimore and Goodson (2004a, p. 4) remarked in 2004, that ‘tourism scholars have gen-
erally been … hesitant in developing their understanding of the philosophical … process
that underpins knowledge production and practices.’ The endeavor to familiarize students
of tourism with those concepts led to such efforts as Phillimore and Goodson’s (2004b)
edited volume on ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies in tourism. In that
volume Hollinshead (2004) explicated the ontological assumptions to be considered
prior to the conduct of tourism research, and Tribe (2004) discussed the variety of epis-
temological issues involved in tourism studies.
362 E. COHEN

A major landmark of the growing attention to the topic was the collection of essays on
Philosophical Issues in Tourism edited by Tribe (2009), who in his introduction asserted
that the three perennial philosophical questions, truth, beauty and virtue, were underde-
veloped in tourism studies. The contributors to that volume raised a wide range of specific
issues in tourism, ranging from ontology and epistemology (Ayikoru, 2009) to ethics
(Butcher, 2009; Fennell, 2009) and aesthetics (Todd, 2009; Wheeller, 2009). But, in a
strict sense, there does not exist a ‘philosophy of tourism,’ similar to political philosophy
or philosophy of religion. However, McFee’s (2013) critical remark, that ‘a focus just on a
philosophy of sport is necessarily inappropriate … Rather, one’s understanding must be
informed by … the breadth of philosophy’ (p. 412), might be of relevance to the idea of
a ‘philosophy of tourism’ as well.
Social scientists began in the 2000s to deploy basic philosophical concepts, particularly
‘ontology’ and ‘epistemology,’ in their theoretical or methodological approaches. Botterill
(2001) was one of the pioneers of the examination of the epistemological approaches
deployed in tourism studies. Arguing that ‘the assumptions underlying social science
research in tourism are seldom made explicit,’ Botterill strove to open the epistemic ques-
tion in tourism, ‘as a means of developing the self-understanding of the grounds of knowl-
edge amongst members of the tourism research community’ (p. 199). In a more recent
work, Botterill and Platenkamp (2012, p. 2) declared their intention ‘to ground tourismar-
esearch and practices directly in the debates in philosophies, theories and methods of the
social sciences’, but, since their book was meant as an educational tool to acquaint students
with key concepts used in those fields for the preparation of their own empirical reaserch,
the authors did not engage in a broad discussion of tourism’s philosophical groundings.
Several approaches to tourism epistemology have been recently proposed. Pernecky
(2012) advocated a constructionist epistemology, while Belhassen and Caton (2009) pro-
posed a hermeneutic linguistic approach in tourism epistemology, framed in terms of a
radical, post-foundationalist perspective. Rather than a neo-positivist search for ‘truth,’
these authors claim that ‘scholarly work in tourism can be seen as an interpretation of
some reality that researchers are seeking to advance’ by ‘describing the world metaphorically
in a way that they feel explains something about its workings’ (p. 344). Finally, approaching
tourism from a radically critical standpoint, the advocates of ‘hopeful tourism’ (Pritchard,
Morgan, & Ateljevic, 2011) proposed ‘a new perspective in tourism enquiry which offers
an alternative, value-led approach to tourism knowledge production’ (p. 947), encompassing
‘a range of interpretative, critical and emancipatory approaches’ (p. 948).
Classical and modern philosophies related to ‘ontology’ as the study of the nature of
being and of (human) existence (Existenz), and to epistemology as the study of knowledge;
the relationship between the two fields was a major problem in those philosophies (e.g.
Kant). While ‘ontology’ has in recent years entered the tourism researchers’ lexicon, the
use of the concept often deviated from its older philosophical connotation. There is aten-
decy in the literature to collapse epistemolgy and ontology, expressed by one of the referees
of this article by the term ‘onto-epistemology’.
In the early 2000s, Franklin (2004) has introduced the concept of ‘ordering’ (as
deployed in Actor-Network Theory or ANT (Law, 1992)), as the basis of a new ontology
of tourism. According to this ontology, tourism is a ‘heterogenous assemblage’, an alterna-
tive conceptualization to the then current ontology of structuralist accounts in tourism
studies. Continuing along similar lines, Ren (2011) more recently offered a ‘radical
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 363

ontology’ in tourism studies, based on ANT’s ‘understanding of non-human entities as

actors’ (p. 861) and Mol’s (2002) notion of ‘multiple realities.’ Quoting Mol’s (1999, p.
74) claim that ‘the reality we live in is one performed in a variety of practices,’ Ren con-
cluded that ‘we are not only confronted with different realities created through practices
and objects, but also with the option … to choose between them’ (p. 879). van der Duim,
Ren, and Jóhannesson (2013, p. 13), similarly building upon Mol’s (1999) view of ontol-
ogy, posit that ‘no real, singular, independent, objective reality exists,’ but only different
versions of reality produced by various methods, thus radically collapsing the ontological
and the epistemological dimensions of reality. These researchers believe that the option of
choice between alternative versions of reality opens the possibility of ‘ontological politics’
(Jóhannesson, Ren, & van der Duim, 2015; Mol, 1999), with actors, differentially posi-
tioned in a network, choosing different versions of reality (e.g. Carolan, 2004; see also
van der Duim, Ren, & Jóhannesson, 2017).
Related to the preceding approach is the recent attempt by Lamers, van der Duim, and
Spaargaren (2017) to base ‘practice theory’ (see Schatzki, Cetina, & von Savigny, 2001) in
tourism studies on what the authors call a ‘flat ontology,’ which ‘entails that practice the-
ories accept no stratification of social reality, [that implies] that no distinction is made into
different social levels or realms … Everything happens on the same “plenum”’ (p. 57). It
follows that ‘practices’ are the only social reality. How practices, such as scientific or
even philosophical ones, which reflect on other ‘practices,’ remain on the same level
with the latter, remains an open question.
In contrast to the approaches to ontology in tourism studies, which depart from the
concept of ‘ordering,’ Veijola, Molz, Pyyhtinen, Höckert, and Grit (2014) use the meta-
phor of ‘untidiness’ in an effort to ‘disrupt the ontological presumptions of tourism and
its theories, which tend to emphasize Western notions of managerial order in … moder-
nist development projects in the so-called Global South’ (p. 3). The authors seek to
configure ‘alternative ontologies of tourism to the ones that take reality to exist through
clear-cut and self-subsistent beings, subjects and categories’ (p.4). However, they ‘treat
ontology not as an already-set arrangement of the basic furniture of the world, but in
an anti-foundational way that asks how reality is constructed and articulated in practice’
(p. 7), and assert that ‘because we do not believe that there is only an ontology which
would apply to each and any specific case, we subscribe to ontological pluralism’ (p. 7),
thus fully discarding [or subverting] the ‘classical’ philosophical perception of ontology
as the study of an independent reality, and making it subject to human construction.
Basing themselves on their own ealier work, Tribe and Liburd (2016) have recenctly
sought to ‘critically evaluate and reconceptualize the epistemology and ontology of
tourism by developing a comprehensive model of the tourism knowledge system’ (p. 1).
The model is based on a sweeping integration of approaches to knowledge in a broad
range of fields. But the principal contribution of their work seems to be to the sociological
understanding of the process of knowledge production in the field of tourism, rather than
of its philosophical groundings.

2.2. Linkages
Cohen (1988) has noted that existential philosophical anthropology posits that moderns
are in quest of authenticity, a motive on which MacCannell’s (1973, 1976) influential
364 E. COHEN

thesis on ‘staged authenticity’ was based. More recently, Steiner and Reisinger’s (2006)
attempted to ground the concept of ‘existential authenticity’ (Cohen, 1979; Wang,
1999), central to the contemporary discussion of the tourist experience, explicitly on
the philosophy of the leading German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger.
According to these authors, that concept ‘is not [just] a product of tourism research,’
but rather constituted ‘part of a long philosophical tradition concerned with what it
means to be human, what it means to be happy, and what it means to be oneself’
(Steiner & Reisinger, 2006, p. 300). The authors believe that Heidegger’s own concept
of ‘existential authenticity’ holds ‘considerable promise as a conceptual framework for
exploring the idea of [existential] authenticity for tourists and host’ (p. 300). They point
out that, though the tourism literature on existential authenticity shares some themes
with the philosophical and psychological discussions of authenticity, existential anxiety
[Angst], a crucial theme in existentialist philosophy, is mostly absent from that literature
(p. 300). According to Heidegger, ‘the meaninglessness of existence creates anxiety and
people need the courage to face it’ (p. 300). Since ‘Reality itself is meaningless … people
must make meaning by how they live their lives in order to experience authentic existence’
(p. 300). However, ‘people are prone to ignore their own unique possibilities and adopt the
common possibilities they share with others … these are the basis for conformity which
Heidegger calls inauthenticity, [which] means they are not fully themselves’ (p. 306).
Steiner and Reisinger (2006) suggest that ‘The loss of individual identity that comes
from inauthenticity might be behind the number of scholars who see tourist activity as
a quest for new and significant experiences outside of routine life,’ and conclude that
‘tourism may be a remedy from the unpleasant loss of identity that comes with inauthen-
ticity’ (p. 306), i.e. a route to face existential anxiety and be authentic.
Steiner and Reisinger (2006) state that Heidegger ‘used the term “authenticity” to indi-
cate that someone is being themselves existentially.’ But he has emphasized that the ‘exis-
tential self is transient,’ and hence changes from moment to moment; therefore ‘one can
only be authentic in different situations.’ It follows that there are no ‘authentic and
inauthentic tourists’ (Steiner and Reisinger, 2006, p. 303): existential authenticity is an
ephemeral experience. This insight is reflected in some studies of profound experiences
in tourism, particularly in Cary’s (2004) concept of the spontaneous ‘tourist moment,’
that, Cary claims, ‘is a serendipitous moment … which conditions a spontaneous instance
of self-discovery and communal belonging,’ akin to Maslow’s (1959, 1964) notion of a
‘peak experience’ or Csikszentmihalyi’s (2000) notion of ‘flow’. But Cary stresses that
this moment ‘simultaneously produces and erases the tourist-as-subject, for at the very
instant one is aware of and represents oneself as a “tourist,” one goes beyond “being a
tourist”’ (p. 6).
Brown (2013), drawing on Heidegger and Sartre, similarly argued that tourism serves as
a catalyst for existential authenticity. However,Shepherd (2015) recently took issue with
authors, who based their argument that ‘tourism is a vehicle for cultivating or encounter-
ing one’s self or an antidote to alienation at home’ on Heidegger’s or Sartre’s philosophy,
and argued that this constitutes ‘a misreading of existentialist philosophers’ (Shepherd,
2015, p. 62). In contrast, Shepherd claimed that ‘according to Heidegger, personal auth-
enticity can only be experienced within a community, where one is literarily at home
(and hence not on the road)’ (Shepherd, 2015, p. 66), and pointed out that Heidegger
had ‘emphasized the rootedness of authentic being, precisely the opposite of travel’
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 365

(Shepherd, 2015, p. 64). Shepherd indicated that in the existential authenticity theory in
tourism, based on the work of Heidegger, there has been no discussion ‘of Heidegger’s
‘personal skepticism about travel as a means of achieving a fuller sense of being
[Dasein]’ (Shepherd, 2015, p. 63). However, Shepherd agrees that there is a need to
have ‘a firm grasp of the philosophical foundations’ of the concept of existential authen-
ticity (p. 69); therefore his critique is not aimed at the concept, ‘but rather [at] the rel-
evance of Heidegger and his work in the field’ (p. 69).
However, despite this proviso, Shepherd’s critique is of relevance not just for the study
of the literal sources of the concept of authenticity in tourism, but for its theoretical impli-
cations: he criticizes the assumption of the alienation of moderns from home, promulgated
by MacCannell (1973, 1976) and subsequently adopted by various researchers (Shepherd,
2015, pp. 61–62), which has served as a basic premise of current theorizing on existential
authenticity, and states that
The turn to existentialism as a means of rescuing authenticity is not a new intervention but a
(re)turn to a familiar trope, the separation and celebration of travelers (who are assumed to
seek such existential experiences) from tourists (who presumably do not)

and in fact ‘echoes MacCannell’s emphasis on everyday alienation’ (p. 62).

However, while I agree with the implication of Shepherd’s argument that moderns
could experience existential authenticity at home, and, like Heidegger, do not feel a
need to travel, I suspect that Heidegger’s harking for a rooted Dasein, experienced
‘within a community’s “destiny”’ (Shepherd, 2015) was a romantic fall-back to a Volks-
gemmeinschaft, which he imagined to have existed in the past (and at least for some
time believed that it will be resurrected by National Socialism), and hence constitutes a
temporal equivalent to spatial travel away from the alienation of the present.
Travel, and more specifically, tourism, has been often associated with personal trans-
formation in the early tourism literature (e.g. Bruner, 1991; Leed, 1991). The preceding
discussion of existential authenticity is closely related to the recently burgeoning literature
on ‘transformative travel’ (Kirilova, Lehto, & Cai, 2016; Lean, 2012; Lean, Staiff, & Water-
ton, 2014; Reisinger, 2013, 2015; Robledo & Batle, 2015; Saunders, Laing, & Weiler, 2013).
In a broad sense, transformative travel refers to the role of travel as an agent of personal (or
social) transformation (Lean et al., 2014), which in some instances leads to far-going
changes in an individual’s lifeways. Personal transformation has been defined as ‘a
dynamic, uniquely individualized process of expanding consciousness whereby individ-
uals become critically aware of old and new self-views and choose to integrate these
views into a new self-definition’ (Holland-Wade, 1998, p. 713). Reisinger (2015), in her
introduction to a volume of papers on transformational tourism, describes the process
of transformation as starting with a ‘disorienting dilemma … that disrupts the order of
one’s life’. As accustomed ‘ways of thinking and logic do not work any longer’, the indi-
vidual engages upon a ‘process of personal growth and transformation’, develops ‘new
ways of thinking and views his or her experiences in a new context’ (p. 7), and eventually
reaches ‘new levels of consciousness’ and forms ‘a new self definition’ (p. 7). Reisinger goes
as far as to claim that ‘at the final stage of personal transformation the individual achieves
absolute consciousness’ and experiences a sense of transcendence (p. 7). It is questionable,
however, whether the achievement of an ‘absolute consciousness,’ a concept akin to
366 E. COHEN

Buddhist ‘enlightenment,’ sought by adepts by practicing extensive meditation, could be

attainable in the course of a relatively brief tourist trip.
A recent study of existential transformation in tourism (Kirilova et al., 2016) further
amplified the link between personal transformation and existential philosophy. The
authors stress the significance of existential anxiety or Angst, as discussed by existentialist
philosophers, as a trigger of the transformation process, and make an important distinc-
tion: ‘Tourism experiences can facilitate short-lived existential authenticity (Wang, 1999),
yet to uncover the nature of a truly transformative tourist experience, a nuanced under-
standing of existential anxiety is needed’ (p. 4). Existential transformation in tourism is
thus predicated on an individual’s confronting existential anxiety to achieve ‘the lifestyle
and the state of being that are authentic to one’s true values’ (p. 4).
The exploration of the philosophical groundings of tourism is still at an early stage.
However, while the introduction of philosophical concepts into tourist studies is still of
limited extent, a widening and promising nexus is emerging between existential phenom-
enology in philosophy and the exploration of existential authenticity in tourism studies,
which facilitates an ever more profound understanding of the philosophical significance
of peak (Maslow, 1959, 1964) or ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) experiences in tourism.
It is worth noting a recent study, which applied an existential phenomenological
approach to a specific issue: tourists’ surprise in extraordinary food experiences
(Goolaup, Solér, & Nunkoo, 2017). This attempt raises an interesting possibility: the
deployment of existential phenomenology as a theoretical framework or methodological
device to the study of specific empirical issues in tourism research, beyond the current pre-
occupation with such core topics, as existential authenticity and transcendence.

3. Ethics
3.1. Issues
Ethically, tourism is a controversial topic. Castañeda (2012, p. 47) notes that at its early
development stage tourism was seen as ‘either intrinsically “good” or intrinsically
“bad.”’ Tourism has also been frequently criticized from some major ideological perspec-
tives, as a form of imperialism (Nash, 1977) or post-colonialism (Echtner & Prasad, P.,
2003; Hall & Tucker, 2004; Turner & Ash, 1976), and implicitly condemned in terms of
such totalizing approaches. However, a detailed ethical examination of tourism was
slow in coming. In 2005, Macbeth (2005, p. 962) complained that tourism studies have
ignored ethics, though it is necessary ‘to interrogate the morality of the positions taken
in tourism planning, development and management,’ and called for an ‘ethics platform’
in tourism. Lovelock and Lovelock (2013) stated that even five years ago (i.e. by 2008)
they seldom heard the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘tourism’ used together. As late as 2012, Caton
(2012, p. 1096) noted that there was an unfortunate paucity of studies of ethical issues
in tourism, though several works on the ethics of tourism and tourism development
had already appeared in the course the 2000s (Fennell, 2006; Holden, 2003; Smith &
Duffy, 2003).
One possible reason for the relatively late recognition of the relevance and importance
of ethical issues in tourism might well be some Western attitudes toward the practice,
which have prevailed in the past: on the one hand, its perception as an unserious
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 367

(Gibson, 2008, p. 407), superficial activity (e.g. Boorstin, 1964), a ‘limited province of
meaning’ (Schuetz, 1945) which, resembling play (Cohen, 1985), is not part of ordinary
life with its conventional ethics; and on the other hand, its perception as a zone of permis-
siveness and indulgence, which ought not to be judged by the same ethical criteria as
deployed in daily life. Indeed, the issue of ethics in tourism has a paradoxical aspect:
the fun and enjoyment, which endows a vacation with its charm, might be antithetical
to the moral prescriptions regulating ordinary life (S. Cohen, Higham, & Reis, 2013;
Lett, 1983). Akrasia, the conscious transgression of ethical precepts (Fennell, 2015a),
seems to be intrinsic to many modes of touristic enjoyment. Over-eating (Brown,
1996), binge drinking (Tutenges & Hesse, 2008), or slackening of sexual or dietary restric-
tions during vacations are common occurrences. An orthodox Jew ostentatiously eating
pork during a visit to Thailand, represents an iconic example of a willful transgression
of Jewish religious precepts (author’s observation).
Anoher possible reason for the relative disregard for ethics in tourism studies, is that
tourism ‘has largely been discoursively constructed through a lense of neoliberal market-
ization as an “industry” … .aimed to produce return-on-investment for capital, pleasure
for tourists and “development” for communities,’ while paying less attention to the
‘rich human encounter – a practice through which different individuals … from
different cultures and life-spaces viscerally collide’ (Caton, 2015, p. 1), thus deflecting
research from ethical issues inherent in that encounter.
As critics increasingly pointed to the problematic consequences of rapidly expanding mass
tourism during the last decades of the twentieth Century, tourism practitioners and students
of tourism realized that tourism is a ‘serious fun’ (Mouffakir & Burns, 2012), and that even
frivolous touristic activities could have serious ethical consequences. As the ethics of tourism
became a topic of growing theoretical discussion and practical concern in tourism, various
ethically-oriented versions of tourism emerged, such as ecotourism, sustainable, responsible,
alternative, green, soft and just tourism (Lovelock & Lovelock, 2013; Malone, McCabe, &
Smith, 2014),. ‘Sustainable tourism,’ the version of greatest practical impact, to which a
leading journal is devoted, prioritizes sustainability as a principal long-term ethical value
for the mainstream tourist industry, rather than advocating an alternative form of
tourism, as do most of the other versions. It has therefore been criticized by Lovelock and
Lovelock (2013, p. 3) as ‘a neoliberal sop to the real problems faced by tourism.’ Hence,
these authors argue, ‘a broader ethics approach to tourism would go beyond the “three
pillars” (environmental, economic, socio-cultural) of sustainability’ (p. 3).
Starting in the early 2010s, a series of books devoted to the ethics of tourism saw light
(e.g. Braun, 2013; Butcher, 2003; Fennell, 2016; Lovelock & Lovelock, 2013; MacCannell,
2011; Mostafanezhad & Hannam, 2014; Weeden & Boluk, 2014). A steady flow of publi-
cations examined the ethics of specific sub-fields of tourism, such as tourism and animals
(Fennell, 2012c, 2015b), ecotourism (Fennell, 2013c), heritage tourism (Atkinson, 2015;
Díaz-Andreu, 2013; Ireland & Schofield, 2015), medical tourism (Cohen, 2014b; McCor-
mack & Riggs, 2015), international surrogacy (Humbyrd, 2009; Twine, 2015) and body-
parts (or organ) tourism (Goodwin, 2006).
Three particular ethical issues raised in the recent literature on tourism ethics are
worthy of special attention: hedonism, justice, and compassion in touristic situations.
As Malone et al. (2014, p. 241) emphasize, ‘tourism is essentially a pleasure seeking [i.e.
hedonistic] activity.’ However, these authors claim that ‘the link between hedonic
368 E. COHEN

emotions and ethical consumption practice is largely unexplored’ (p. 242). They affirm
that ‘hedonism and ethical tourism can be seen as paradoxical or even antithetical’
(p. 243) and see ‘ethical tourism … as an act of compromise in the face of conflicting
hedonic, social and environmental concerns’ (p.243). Their own study demonstrated
‘the integral role emotion plays in [touristic] consumption practices as a source of
hedonic value and … in motivating and enforcing ethical choices’ (p. 252). They conclude
that, since individuals ‘derive pleasure not only from deliberate moral choices … but also
how the experiences make them feel … hedonistic and rational motivations for ethical
choices have become intertwined’ (p. 252). These findings go a long way to erase the
popular binary representation of tourism as a zone of hedonistic akrasia, contrasting
the ethical conduct of mundane life.
Drawing upon Rawls (2009 [1971]) and other philosophical approaches to justice,
several authors related to issues of fairness, equity and justice in tourism (e.g. Higgins-Des-
biolles, 2008; Jamal & Camargo, 2014; Mihalič & Fennell, 2015), an issue that became
increasingly acute with globalization and the penetration of tourism into the less devel-
oped regions of the world. Two points of particular concern raised by these authors are
disadvantages suffered by local groups, such as the poor, minorities and indigenous popu-
lations in the development of tourist destinations in those regions (Jamal & Camargo,
2014), and unequal access to travel (Mihalič & Fennell, 2015), indicated by the steepness
of the global mobilities hierarchy (Cresswell, 2010, p. 26). Proposals intended to remedy
present situation range from specific operational suggestions (e.g. Mihalič & Fennell,
2015), and broader proposals for an ethics of justice and care (Jamal & Camargo,
2014), to a vision of ‘alternative tourisms [as] catalysts for more just and sustainable
forms of globalization’, which would help ‘to chart a path to a more just global order’
(Higgins-Desbiolles, 2008, p. 345).
‘Compassion’ is an emergent theme in tourism ethics (Weaver & Jin, 2016), due pri-
marily to the growing popularity of voluntarism as a niche specialty in contemporary
tourism. Mostafanezhad (2014) perceives the expansion of volunteer tourism as one con-
sequence of the ascent of neoliberalism, which ‘reframes questions of structural inequality
as questions of individual morality’ (p. 4); hence, ‘care and responsibility have become part
and parcel of the personalization of development politics where private characteristics (e.g.
responsibility, ethics, morality, empathy) have replaced public and political responses’
(p. 7). But the author argues that the accomplishments of volunteer tourism, motivated
by popular humanitarianism [as a generalized mode of compassion] are tenuous,
‘because the problems volunteer tourism seeks to address are the outcome, rather than
the cause of underdevelopment’ and of structural inequalities’ (p. 4). Paradoxically, the
eagerness of volunteer tourists to help the poor, needy and unfortunate in less developed
countries, has encouraged a neoliberal commodification of sites of suffering, such as the
orphanages in Cambodia (Guiney, 2018; Reas, 2013), turning children into a ‘tourist com-
modity’, in order to exploit the unaware visitors’ compassion, and extricate enhanced
donations from them.

3.2. Assessments
Any assessment of the ethics of tourists and tourism establishments is complicated by the
sheer variety of contemporary ethical theories. Thus, Lovelock and Lovelock (2013, pp.
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 369

22–29) list eight theories of ethics, classifying them into three principal groups (Intuition-
ism, Utilitarianism and Deontology), while David Fennell discusses the more limited sub-
field of animal ethics in tourism in terms of five theories: animal rights (Fennell, 2012a),
utilitarianism (Fennell, 2012b), ecocentrism (Fennell, 2013a), animal welfare (Fennell,
2013b), and ecofeminism (Yudina & Fennell, 2013) (see summary in Fennell, 2015b,
pp. 28–29). Each of these theories leads to different prescriptions regarding the ethically
correct conduct towards animals and the natural environment in tourism.
Since tourism commonly involves encounters between different cultures, the issue of
ethics in tourism is further complicated by the problem of cultural relativism, namely
‘the doctrine that holds that (at least some) [cultural] variations are exempt from legiti-
mate criticism by outsiders, a doctrine that is strongly supported by notions of cultural
autonomy and self-determination’ (Donnelly, 1984, p. 400). Some customs, such as the
breaking of young elephants in Thailand (Cohen, 2015), cockfighting in the Philippines
(Lansang, 1966) or bullfighting in Spain (Cohen, 2014a; Mitchell, 1991), pose an ethical
dilemma: they might be repugnant to visiting (Western) tourists, as an infraction of
animal welfare or rights, but are, or have been up till recently, deeply ingrained in local
cultures and perceived, justified and defended as ‘tradition’. This raises a fundamental
ethical dilemma and political problem: should such local traditions (which frequently
became commmercialzed and constitute an important source of income) be suppressed
in the name of universal animal ethics, or be legally protected, despite international
pressure, as for example bullfighting in contemporary Spain (e.g. Brandes, 2009).
Like other areas of contemporary business, the last decades saw a proliferation of codes
of ethical conduct for tourists, service providers, firms and communities involved in the
tourism industry (Fennell & Malloy, 2007). On the global level, the ethics of tourism
have been encoded in the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO)
Global Code of Ethics for Tourism (UNWTO, 1999), which proclaims the universal
right to tourism as a corollary of the universal right to rest and leisure, enshrined in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Castañeda, 2012). But the Code was criticized
as being essentially a ‘neo-liberal manifesto,’ because its ‘privileging of the individual
right of the tourist to visit, discover and sightsee’ (p. 49) over ‘all forms of ownership’,
allegedly provides a carte-blanche for an ‘unfettered tourism development’ (p. 50). The
Code was also criticized for its anthropocentrism, which made it disregard the issue of
animal ethics and welfare, though animals play an important role in the tourism industry
(Fennell, 2014). The Code thus paradoxically seems to raise, rather than resolve, funda-
mental ethical problems inherent in the massive expansion of contemporary tourism.
On the basis of Heidegger’s (1968) distinction between calculative and meditative
thinking, applied by Fennell and Malloy (2007) to tourism ethics, the literature on the
ethics of tourism can be roughly divided by whether it takes for granted the prevailing
neo-liberal framework of tourism development, enshrined in the 1999 Code, and only
seeks to rise its ethical standards, or whether it submits that framework itself to a funda-
mental ethical critique. The former is well illustrated by the work of Knani (2014), who has
reviewed the various concrete, empirical ethical problems facing the hospitality industry,
such as the ethics of front-line employee behavior, the ethical orientation of managers of
hospitality enterprises, and the extent to which ethical perceptions and judgments are fos-
tered in hospitality studies. But Knani (2014) writes from a calculative, instrumentalist
standpoint, common in business studies, which stresses the importance of ethics in
370 E. COHEN

hospitality as a means to achieve organizational goals, such as the pursuit of profit, but
takes those goals for granted (Caton, 2012).
While the studies reviewed by Knani (2014) might help to improve the conduct of the
staff and the management of tourist establishments, it is the ethics of contemporary neo-
liberal politics of tourism development, especially in the emergent world regions, with its
rapid commercialization of nature and local cultures, which are subject of a fundamental
critique by Caton (2012). Caton takes note of the emergence of a ‘moral turn’ in the
tourism literature, expressed initially by a ‘philosophical analysis of frequently highly pro-
blematic impacts of [different] niche practices’ (p. 1913). But beyond those concerns, she
raises questions regarding the ethics of ‘the deeper basic features that characterize the act
of tourism and our behavior as participants in this act,’ and relates to ethical issues, which
are ‘innate to the [tourist] enterprise itself’, thus exemplifying a meditative mode of think-
ing about contemporary tourism ethics.
Taking a non-foundationalist philosophical position, Caton embraces an ‘ethics
without ontology’ proposed by pragmatist thinkers, such as James (1978) and Rorty
(1999), and explores the ethical difficulties involved in the contrasting goals of individual
fulfilment and social responsibility in contemporary tourism. Importantly, Caton (2012,
pp. 1921–1922) argues that the philosophical exploration of tourism has wider impli-
cations, since ‘[t]ourism is an ideal metaphorical context for the messy collision of Self
and Other in life more generally’ and that hence ‘we can use it as an exemplary context
for thinking through questions about our relationships to ourselves and others.’ This pos-
ition seeks not only to ground tourism in the contemporary philosophy of ethics, but
makes tourism ethics an emblem for dealing with fundamental ethical problems facing
contemporary Western society.
The exploration of the ethical aspects of various tourism practices has gained consider-
able attention in recent years. But the more profound ethical problems inherent in con-
temporary tourism as a cultural project, such as the conflict between hedonistic
enjoyment and ethical precepts, or between spontaneity and commercialization, deriving
from the ambiguous position of tourism as located both within and separate from
mundane society, remain as yet insufficiently explored.

4. Theology
4.1. Established world religions
Theology, in the broad sense of the study of religious faith, practice and experience, seems
at first glance to be remote from a field like tourism, devoted to enjoyable wordly experi-
ences. However, several reasons for an exploration of the relationship between theology
and tourism can be invoked: Tourism is enmeshed with religious pilgrimages (Cohen,
1998; MacCannell, 1973; Olsen & Timothy, 2006; Singh, 2006); some major established
world religions have in recent times taken a growing interest in tourism; some authors
have discovered religious themes in secular tourist practices (Graburn, 1977; Sharpley &
Sundaram, 2005, pp. 161–162); and the quest for spiritual experiences has become an
increasingly important motive of contemporary, post-modern tourists. It should also be
noticed that transformative tourist experiences, discussed above, resemble religious
experiences (Heintzman, 2013).
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 371

Despite that, students of tourism and religion have not paid much attention to the theo-
logical interpretation of travel and tourism. Olsen and Timothy (2006), in the introduction
to their edited volume (Timothy & Olsen, 2006), did not relate explicitly to theological
issues. Olsen (2011), in a more recent paper, offered five research themes for the study
of religious leaders’ views of tourism, but their theological views are not among them;
nor did other major publications on the interface of the established world religions with
travel or tourism refer to theology. The phrase ‘theology of tourism’ is explicitly men-
tioned in only a few sources (e.g. Grimshaw, 2013; Singh, 2006), but even those did not
elaborate it.
Some major established world religions, such as Catholicism and Buddhism, have
metaphorically represented human life as a journey (Hall, 2006; Vukonić, 2006). Rieger
(2011) is one of the few contemporary Christian theologians, who devoted a book to
the theme of travel, expressing his belief that travel had a deep religious significance
and can serve as a metaphor of the Christian life. However, tourism, as a specific mode
of travel, seems not to have attracted much attention on part of Christian theologians.
Vukonić (2006, pp. 337–340) sought to formulate a theological basis for tourism, which
is allegedly implicit in the teachings of the Catholic Church; but he relies mainly on biblical
quotations, rather than on specific Catholic theologians.
In wake of Vatican II, the Catholic Church issued a ‘General directory for the pastoral
ministry to tourism’ (Sacred Congregation for the Clergy n.d.), which has recognizes the
importance of tourism and of its pastoral challenges in the contemporary world; but it
does not relate to its potential spiritual significance.
Islam stands out among the established world religions in its declared positive attitude
to travel (Timothy & Iverson, 2006). Jafari and Scott (2014) point out that the Qur’an
expressly encourages Muslims to travel, in order to contemplate God’s creation.
Timothy and Iverson (2006, p. 186) assert that ‘Some Muslims consider themselves
closer to God when they travel and believe their prayers are more effective while traveling
than when offered at home.’ But Din (1989, p. 542) notes that ‘although the doctrine of
Islam encourages travel and hospitable behavior, it has little influence on the mode of
tourism development in Muslim countries.’ Though Jafari and Scott (2014) point to
‘Islamic tourism’ as an alternative to hedonistic conceptualizations of tourism, they too
lack significant examples of the religion’s influence on actual tourism development pro-
jects in Muslim countries.
In contrast, Judaism, despite its nomadic origins, did not encourage travel for its own
sake, but merely to places which are related to the Jewish past, such as the Holy Land/
Israel, and historical sites of remembrance in the Jewish diaspora (Cohen Ioannides &
Ioannides, 2006).
No world religion has proposed an explicit ‘theology of tourism’ (Cohen, 1998);
however, those religions had a major indirect impact upon modern tourism by way of
their sacred geographies, and the beliefs they have fostered about the religious significance
of sacred places, which often became the goals of pilgrimages (Collins-Kreiner, 2010;
Morinis, 1992; Turner, 1973; Turner & Turner, 2011). In the past, pilgrimages were the
principal form of non-essential travel, and often had, in addition to the devotional, a rec-
reational component. Tourism itself was conceptualized as a kind of secular pilgrimage
(MacCannell, 1973). However, in contrast to secularization theory, secular tourism did
not supersede religious pilgrimages in modern times, which – predictions
372 E. COHEN

notwithstanding – grew in scope not only in the emergent regions of the world, but also in
the modern West (Lois Gonzales, 2013; Olsen & Timothy, 2006, p. 3), and often served as
a legitimating reason for travels, which included significant secular touristic components
(Olsen & Timothy, 2006, p. 8). Furthermore, the semantic field of ‘pilgrimage’ was in
modern times expanded to comprise non-religious travel motivations marked by a
desire for sublime or profound spiritual experiences.

4.2. Spirituallity
While no theology of tourism has been evolved by established world religions, elements of
a ‘theology’ can be found in some novel, post-moodern, varieties of tourism, flourishing
outside their framework. I shall deal here with the contrasting ‘theologies’ implicit in
‘spiritual tourism’ on the one hand, and in thana tourism on the other.
Brown (1999, p. 1) commented that ‘spirituality’ has become ‘an all-purpose word, but
one that describes what is felt to be missing rather than specifying what is hoped to be
found,’ and argued that ‘The spiritual search … has become a dominant feature of late
twentieth century life: a symptom of collective uncertainty’ (cited in Sharpley & Sun-
daram, 2005, p. 162).
‘Spiritual search’ in the widest sense can be conceived as ‘a striving for the transcen-
dence of the modern totality’ (MacCannell, 1973, p. 13). It is manifold, diffuse, non-doc-
trinal and personal, and devoid of explicit theological doctrines (Norman, 2011, 2012;
Sharpley, 2009; Timothy & Conover, 2006). But the search resembles religious strivings,
and features some particular traits, which can be seen as constituting an implicit and
diffuse ‘theology’. Thus, one frequent mode of the quest for spirituality is the contempla-
tion of nature, or ‘geo-piety’ (Knowles, 1992; Singh, 2006, p. 375; Tuan, 1976; Wright,
1966), expressing ‘the attachment and reverence to particular places’ (Knowles, 1992, p.
6). Experienced particularly in travel to striking, remote and as yet ‘untouched’ regions
of the world, such as the Indian Himalayas (Singh, 2005), geo-piety is one expression of
the feeling of ‘sublimity’ (Crowther, 1991, p. 7), a feeling that has been explicitly linked
to religion (Sharpley & Sundaram, 2005, p. 164), and seems to be akin to a religious experi-
ence of contact with the divine.
An article in Time Magazine (1972), entitled ‘The greening of the astronauts,’ pointed
out already in 1972 that the first astronauts returning from space reported spiritual experi-
ences and deep feelings, especially for the Earth, which they have observed from the per-
spective of outer space. White (1998) later on coined the term ‘overview effect’ to account
for the extraordinary experiences of the astronauts, resulting from viewing the Earth from
orbit (Cohen, 2017b). I suggest that the ‘overview effect’ is a mode of geo-piety writ large:
rather than linked to a particular place it embraces the entire planet Earth.
Researchers have discussed many of the multifarious contemporary strains of the quest
for ‘spirituality’ and related spiritual believes and practices under the rubric of ‘New Age’
(e.g. D’Andrea, 2009; Pernecky & Poulston, 2015; Timothy & Conover, 2006). The prin-
cipal common denominators of these strains is a quest for one’s personal truth, self-iden-
tity, self-discovery or self-transformation, to be realized in occult realms beyond mundane
reality, and outside the framework of formal religion.
New Agers eclectically select and combine their beliefs and practices from a hetero-
geneous variety of sources, such as neo-paganism, Native American and other indigenous
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 373

cultures, shamanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hindu yoga and many others, even as they
eschew monotheistic traditional religions and their theological teachings (Sharpley & Sun-
daram, 2005; Timothy & Conover, 2006). Since the New Agers’ spirituality is ‘place
specific’ (Timothy & Conover, 2006, p. 139), they are ‘passionate travelers [who] devote
much of their effort and income to visiting places associated with spiritual growth’
(p. 139). Their belief in ‘earth powers, nature spirits, extra-terrestrial visitations, and
self-spiritual enhancement’ (p. 139) are often associated with certain sacred sites. Since
occult powers or energy are believed to be inherent in such sites, they became known
as ‘power places’ (Hooper, 1994; quoted in Timothy & Conover, 2006, p. 144). A ‘prolifer-
ation of … guidebooks and websites lead people to sacred sites where earth’s energy grids
abound’ (p. 143).
Since they search for something missing (Brown, 1999, p. 1), and since they adhere to
an eclectic range of beliefs and practices, New Agers visit a great variety of diverse sites,
mostly associated with ancient, pre-Christian or native religions, such as the pyramids
of Egypt, Machu Picchu, English neolithic ruins (Timothy & Conover, 2006, p. 144),
Indian ashrams (Sharpley & Sundaram, 2005), or even a guesthouse in northern
Norway offering Sami spirituality (Fonneland, 2012). But the quest for spirituality also
engendered new sites or events, like the festival of the Burning Man, at the center of
which is the ‘purification through fire’ (Kozinets, 2002, p. 20), a ritual devoid of any
specific doctrinal connotations.
I submit that, despite its heterogeneity and eclecticism, spiritual tourism, and particu-
larly New Age journeys, manifests an inherent, incipient ‘theology’, which asserts that
there is a dimension to reality, lost in contemporary modernity, which can be recovered
in un-spoilt nature or in the ancient or (surviving) indigenous cultures; visits to such
sites are believed to lead to the (temporary) achievement of a ‘soteriological’ goal, differ-
ently conceived as enlightenment, spiritual growth, or self-realization. But, owing to the
highly individualized and diverse nature of the New Agers’ quest, this incipient ‘theology’
does not lead to any doctrinal postulates, prescribed ritual practices or escatological
teachings.

4.3. Thana tourism

The case of thana tourism is interesting, because, it offers in the contemporary Western
world what could be seen as an implicit secular (pessimistic) ‘theology’ of death: the ulti-
mate cessation of the ontological existence of the individual (Stone & Sharpley, 2008). In
contrast to the promise of spiritual experiences in New Age tourism, dark or thana tourism
seems to be offering few uplifting experiences to visitors of sites of suffering, death and
mourning. But Stone and Sharpley (2008) claim that the confrontation with death at
the darkest thana tourism sites can provide visitors an ‘opportunity to construct their
own contemplations of mortality’ (p. 587), and come to terms with the fear of their inevi-
table demise. Such visits might thus help them ‘to address issues of personal meaningful-
ness … and continuity of ontological security’ (p. 590). But this ‘theology’ supports a
fatalistic or stoic acceptance of one’s death, and is devoid of either a soteriological or an
escatological message of hope.
However, while this ‘theological’ position might constitute the intellectual kernel of
(Western) thanatourism, the sub-field includes a wide range of excursions to sites, in
374 E. COHEN

which the death of others (rather than one’s own death) is bevailed or commemorated (e.g.
Hayward & Tran, 2014; Sofield, 2009; Yoneyama, 1999), or in which the spirits of the dead
are sustained (e.g. Ladwig, 2011) or suppplicated (e.g. Cohen, 2017a).
This presentation leads to a paradoxical conclusion: While major established religions
did not offer an explicit theology of tourism, there are elements of incipient, inherent, non-
conventional ‘theologies without theos’ (Greek: ‘God’) in some predominantly post-
modern forms of tourism, such as spiritual tourism, and to some extent, thana tourism,
both of which are not associated with any formal religion.

5. Conclusions
This inquiry indicates that the field of tourism is still poorly grounded in the principal
domains of Western culture, and that only in the case of tourism ethics some significant
advance has been achieved, while the philosophical and theological groundings of tourism
are still of limited scope. Tourism has not yet gained wide acceptance as a potential avenue
for the realization of principal strivings in each of these domains (e.g. philosophical
insight, moral perfection or religious salvation) even as tourism, or any of its particular
manifestations, were relatively rarely subjected to criticism, guidance or regulation in
light of the basic principles prevailing in each domain (e.g. by particular philosophical
systems, ethical precepts or religious teachings). The inquiry indicated that, though a
massive, global phenomenon, in comparison to the kindred fields of leisure and sports,
tourism has as yet attracted little attention on part of philosophers, ethicists or theologians;
hence, most of the attempted groundings in each domain, were made by tourism research-
ers. This disparity might well be due to the late recognition of tourism as a significant
social and cultural phenomenon, rather than a frivolous pastime.
This inquiry has nevertheless identified two principal trends towards a philosophical
grounding of tourism: on the one hand, the growing adoption of philosophical concepts,
especially ‘epistemology’ and ‘ontology’ in the vocabulary of tourist researchers; and on the
other hand, the emerging attemps tp ground some focal issues in tourism studies on phi-
losophical foundations: a promising nexus is emerging between some major trends in con-
temporary philosophy, particularly existential phenomenology and the exploration of
‘existential authenticity’ and ‘personal transformation,’ in tourism studies. However, the
significance of other contemporary streams in philosophy, such a posthumanism and
transhumanism (Ferrando, 2013; Roden, 2015) for tourism studies has as yet been
hardly touched.
The ethical grounding of tourism is much more advanced than the philosophical. As in
the field of sports, the concern with ethics in tourism initially emerged due to practical
ethical issues raised by the rapid expansion of the tourist industry, and eventuated in
the introduction of a (controversial) global Code. Attempts were made to ground
tourism on a broad range of contemporary ethical theories, and to examine some major
ethical issues, such as hedonism, justice and compassion in tourism, as well as tourist-
animal relations, in light of those theories. But some fundamental ethical dilemmas
inherent in the rapid expansion of tourism in the contemporary world have as yet been
little touched by tourism theoreticians or researchers; however, ongoing practical efforts
to face those dilemmas have engendered a variety of ‘alternative tourisms,’ such as
hopeful tourism or pro-poor tourism, striving towards a more acceptable, though not
 JOURNAL OF ECOTOURISM 375

necessarily ethically perfect, mode of tourism. Such initiatives come from small groups of
concered individuals rather than from governments or the tourist industry. Indeed, in
contrast to powerful global sports organizations, the major players in the tourism industry
showed raltively little concern with the ethical implications of tourism development, par-
ticularly in the emergent regions of the world.
The major established world religions have not proposed an explicit theological
approach to tourism or accorded tourism an autonomous theological standing. Unlike
leisure, tourism has not been endowed with soteriological significance. However, our
inquiry revealed elements of contrasting incipient theologies inherent in some novel tour-
istic manifestations, such as spirituality, which play a ‘soteriological’ role resembling that
offered by theology in established religions, though they constitute ‘theologies without
Theos.’
This inquiry indicates, that much of the literature on the philosophical, ethical and
theological issues in tourism is either purely theoretical, or based on speculations about
the motivations and experiences of tourists, without much empirical support. Systematic
studies of the kind recetnly undertaken, for example, by Rickly-Boyd (2012), Malone et al.
(2014) or Kirilova et al. (2016), are still rare. The treatment of these major issues would be
significantly advanced if they were comparatively investigated with respect to different
class, national, ethnic and religious backgrounds of tourists, and to their specific motiv-
ations, modes of travel and practices. Particularly interesting in this respect would be a
comparison between tourists from Western countries, where tourism has increasingly
become part of ordinary life, and tourists from the emergent regions of the world,
where tourism is still a non-ordinary practice, and hence possibly elicits a higher degree
of reflectivity than it does in the contemporary West. Such a comparison, however,
would be meaningful only after a fundamental examination of the standing of tourism
in the principal domains of the cultures of the emergent regions.
As far as contemporary Western tourism is concerned, the basic issues in each domain
discussed here are controversial and subject to multiple, often competing approaches. An
effort to strengthen the groundings of tourism in any of those domains should hence desist
from striving to formulate a distinctive ‘philosophy of tourism,’ a definite ‘tourism ethics,’
or a comprehensive ‘theology of tourism.’ Rather, the discourse of tourism should con-
tinue to embrace the whole range of approaches and theories found in those domains.
However, such a comprehensive discourse is at present handicapped by an absence of
appropriate forums, which would bring together the involved researchers or their work.
Tourism conferences rarely, if at all, feature sessions devoted to the standing of tourism
in any of those domains; special issues of tourism journals have been rarely devoted to
those topics (but see Tourism Studies 2017). And, in contrast to the fields of leisure and
sports, there is no journal devoted to either the philosophy nor to the ethics or theologies
in the field of tourism. The creation of such a forum would constitute a major step in
focusing attention to the range of significant topics involved in the grounding of
tourism in the three cultural domains discussed in this article.

Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Nir Avieli, Scott A. Cohen, David Fennel and Keith Holinshead for their com-
ments on an earlier draft of this article.
376 E. COHEN

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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