Sagar Singh

Spirituality and tourism an anthropologist´s view

Abstract For many years, tourism has been studied as a ritual. Few scholars have sought to make an in-depth inquiry into the spiritual aspects or dimensions of tourism. This stalemate is a result of our thinking of tourism as essentially to do with physical behaviour, even though tourism marketers and some scholars study motivations and, hence, mental aspects. This paper seeks to explore and define spirituality in terms of its relationship with tourism anthropologically, and concludes that tourism is a spiritual activity that has to do with human society and its values as a whole. The paper synthesizes various anthropological concepts of tourism and arrives at a new definition of the social process, as well as explains why the spiritual aspects of tourism are more enduring than the ritual, since tourism is a holistic process and not mechanical.

Is There Such a Thing as 'Mass Tourism'?

This department has been specifically created to include findings of special significance and problem areas of subtle nuances in tourism research. Insightful contributions presenting the state-of-the-art, preferably from the developing societies, will be appreciated. It will also encourage scholars and authors to think against the grain, probing the consistency of theoretical notions and research trends whose heuristic value is all too often taken for granted. For details, contact Editor-in-Chief, Tourism Recreation Research, A-965/6 Indira Nagar, Lucknow, India, e-mail: tvsingh@sancharnet.in

What's wrong with carrying capacity for tourism?

This department has been specifically created to include findings of special significance and problem areas of subtle nuances in tourism research Insightful contributions presenting the state-of-the-art, preferably from the developing societies, will be appreciated. It will also encourage scholars and authors to think against the grain, probing the consistency of theoretical notions and research trends whose heuristic value is all too often taken for granted. For details, contact Editor-in-Chief, Tourism Recreation Research, A-965/6 Indira Nagar, Lucknow, India, e-mail. tvsingh@sancharnet.in

Conceptualizing Leisure, Recreation and Tourism from an Anthropological Perspective

Leisure and recreation are some things that we all experience, whether rich or poor, civilized or not. But how should leisure, recreation, and tourism be conceptualized? This paper will explore the concept of leisure and recreation in different societies, specifically comparing the experience of tribal ones with that of the latter-day leisure societies, and discuss why an accent on leisure and recreation is required to fully understand where we stand in this globalizing world. From this emerges a comparison of leisure and recreation in simple and complex societies that is less frequently taught in academic departments of tourism. Teaching leisure and tourism from an anthropological perspective should, therefore, be a critical issue for the 21st Century. The paper concludes that the concepts of leisure and tourism need to be taught with a greater accent on the ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘how’, rather than on the ‘why’, to be able to build a viable theory in this area of social science.

Biodiversity And Ecotourism with Special Reference to India

Even before the Rio Summit in 1992 and the signing of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the importance of the interrelationship between tourism and biological diversity (biodiversity, in short) had been realized. Sustainable tourism was defined by the Globe 1990 conference on environment and industry as ‘the management of tourism resources in such a way that fulfils economic, social and aesthetic needs while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life-support systems’ (Inskeep 1991: 31, emphasis supplied). Subsequently, this definition was adopted by the World Tourism Organization (1997). Yet, to date, little work has been done in this area to prove or disprove whether the relationship between tourism and conservation of biodiversity is indeed a symbiotic one. Relatively recent works such as the one by Font and Tribe (2000) have explored the link between forest conservation and tourism, but not a single author in the book contributed to explicitly tackling the relationship between biodiversity per se and tourism or recreation. In other books and journals, too, no author has succeeded in empirical measurement of the relationship between tourism and biodiversity, although some good attempts have been made (e.g., Walpole and Leader-Williams 2002; Gossling 2001; Ceballos-Lascurain 2001). This note is an attempt to place this theme on the larger mental map of tourism scholars, in general, and to initiate a discussion on this topic in relation to the Indian tourism scene, in particular.

Mobile money for promoting conservation and community-based tourism and ecotourism in underdeveloped regions

ABSTRACT Mobile phone money can develop tourism in a new way, such as through e-traveller’s cheques and e-credit cards, to bring about as cashless an economy as possible. While this will facilitate tourism, it will also help the poor to gain more from marginal savings, and promote funding of environment-friendly technology that is at the same time tourist-friendly, such as community reverse osmosis water filtration plants that will provide cheaper and cleaner water than bottled one in remote and underdeveloped regions. Similarly, mobile money-facilitated tourism can help eliminate use of polythene bags in environmentally sensitive regions such as the Indian Himalayas. Such synergies can be explored by further studies of e-money-driven tourism.

Car sharing for sustainable tourism

ABSTRACT Car sharing can pave the way for sustainable tourism. This note develops a method of making car sharing in metropolitan cities digital and easy, with the ease of mobile money payment and, above all, makes it an entirely safe proposition, especially for women. To this end, the note displays and explains a suite of algorithms written in programming English that would make such a venture feasible. The crux of the argument in this note is that car sharing and pooling, if popularised in metropolitan cities like Delhi, can lessen traffic congestion, curb pollution, reduce taxi use, and overall lead to development of sustainable private transport and tourism that benefits people rather than companies; added to this, revenue generated from it can lead to further investment in better public transport, leading to general sustainability.

The Dilemma of 'Good' Teaching in Tourism

Abstract There has been a lot of debate on ‘good’ teaching and core curricula in tourism, but few inquiries into the relationship between teaching, scholarship, and research in this subject from the viewpoint of both the ‘student’ and the ‘teacher’. This is partly due to lack of understanding of inter-disciplinarity and multi-disciplinarity required to be a good teacher, and absence of holism that is the sine qua non of tourism studies. These limitations are also a result of the fact that, in this age of specialization and super- specialization, broad as well as in-depth study of the parent disciplines is difficult and often not undertaken, but culminates in a limited understanding of the emerging discipline of tourism studies, which is expanding its frontiers rapidly and requires both specialization and generalization.

Whither Indian Tourism? A Reflection

©2004 Tourism Recreation Research Where does Indian tourism stand today? What efforts are being made to ensure that tourism higher education in India meets the needs of the tourism industry? To answer these and related questions (considering tourism in the broadest sense to include both the phenomenon and the academic subject), the Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management (IITTM), Gwalior, India organized a national seminar on ‘Emerging Trends in Tourism’ on 9–10 February 2004. The event attracted over 40 participants from all over India hailing from places as far apart as Kerala in the South to Jammu in the North, and Gujarat in the West to Orissa and West Bengal in the East.