The Secular And Pilgrimage

Being“the third pole of the earth" and the special place to experience the unique Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan culture,Tibet has been considered as a "mysterious"place and appealed to not only domestic but also international tourists.It has increasingly inspired the upsurge of Tibet tourism.Along with the fever of Tibet's tourism,the academic community of tourism is paying more and more attention to Tibetan tourism,and relevant academic research is also getting deeper.Throughout these studies,it can be roughly divided into two main directions:one is the normative research that provides direct countermeasures for tourism development practice,which focuses on exploring tourism product development,tourism resource evaluation and development,and tourist destinations' evaluation,as well as the strategic interpretation of spatial distribution of tourism industry development in Tibet at a relatively macro level.In contrast,the other one is about empirical studies related to theoretical exploration which has involved many aspects,and has reached a certain level in the depth of research,at the same time,this also shows the huge theoretical space of Tibet tourism research.For the research theme,it has already touched on the secular pilgrimage,the locality and identity construction of the fibetan drifters,the placeness identity construction of tourists and residents,the construction of“otherness,in the interaction between Han and Tibetan,and the experience of train travel during the journey,etc.However,after a comprehensive review of relevant research on Tibet tourism we can find that the following problems still exist:normartive research providing countermeasures is dominant,and there are few empirical studies related to theoretical exploration,which reflects the academic has been concerned of Tibet's tourism industry and tourism economic development,while less concerned about the empirical research involving theoretical innovation in the course of Tibet's tourism development for nearly 40 years;there are many discussions on macro-regional development,but few studies on micro-individual experience.From merely providing guidance for macro-industry development to interpretative research on micro-themes will be a direction for future Tibet tourism research;the background of research discipline is single and still lacks multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research,in addition to traditional urban planning,economics,and marketing disciplines involving resource development,economic development,and marketing,there is still a lack of deep psychology,anthropology,and behavioral research.Therefore,from the perspective of empirical research,this paper uses the ritual and pilgrimage theory of tourism anthropology to study the tourist experience in Tibet.On the one hand,it deepens the understanding of Tibet's tourism experience from the perspective of tourism anthropology rituals and pilgrimages.On the other hand,through the study of Tibet's tourism experience,the development of tourism anthropology rituals and pilgrimages theory is promoted.Therefore,issues related to rituals and pilgrimages in the Tibet tourism experience have become the research topic of this study.The specific issues to be studied are:the construction elements of Tibetan secular pilgrimage and its construction in the actual experience,the group division and group interaction in the Tibetan religious pilgrimage tourism experience,and the reversal genus and degree and the strengthening in the tourism reversal ritual,the new connotation of the rite of passage in tourism and its supporting dimensions and categories.Through two field investigations in Tibet,combined with the methods of participation observation,in-depth interviews,and questionnaire surveys,this article conducted in-depth interviews with more than 100 different travelers in different situations,collected more than 700 questionnaires for general tourists,and more than 300 questionnaires for Tibetan tourists.The theoretical construction was completed with quantitative description statistics and qualitative grounded theory analysis.The contents and conclusions of the overall study include:The first chapter,which based on the research status and existing problems of Tibet tourism experience,combines the perspectives of tourism anthropology ritual and pilgrimage to find the current research deficiencies,and then puts forward the research questions,research significance,research content and framework,research objects and methods,innovation of research and other basic issues.The second chapter is the literature review,which discussed from four parts.First,in the pilgrimage research section,from the introduction of the study of pilgrimage to the discussion of new direction of pilgrimage research,the secular pilgrimage and the study of Tibetan pilgrimage,found that compared with foreign countries,there are still large gaps in the theoretical perspective,ethnographic accumulation and methods of domestic pilgrimage research in Tibet,especially in the new direction of Tibetan pilgrimage research,the study of secular pilgrimage is still less.The study of the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism has gone through de-differentiation and re-differentiation.At present,there is still lack of empirical study on the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism in the Tibetan context.With regard to the ritual research section,from the anthropological ritual study to the two major schools of ritual and tourism research,it can be found that the ritual provide a new perspective for tourism experience research,which makes people pay attention to the "sacredness" and"anti-reality" meaning of tourism,but related theoretical expansion and innovation are still lacking,including the interpretation of reversal rituals and the rite of passage.Next,the research status and existing problems of Tibet tourism experience are sorted out.Finally,it summarizes the status quo and the problem of hiking tourism experience involved in the follow-up rite of passage research and the identity behavior and the identity of marginal people in the tourism experience involved in the follow-up religious pilgrimage tourism.In short,this chapter clarified the existing problems and the subsequent research directions mainly through the systematic review of the pilgrimage,ritual,and Tibet tourism experience research.The third chapter focuses on the secular pilgrimage in the Tibetan tourism experience.Firstly,the sacred connotation of the secular pilgrimage was deconstructed,which included the natural experience and the natural purification field and religious immersion field created on the spot,the religious experience and the pure religious field formed on the scene,the leisure human experience and the pre-modern secular life field of the Tibetan life.Different from the traditional sacred deconstruction of Tibet's tourism experience,this study found the commercialization phenomenon in Tibet's secular pilgrimage experience and the tourism project that is not for tourism in the actual investigation,which is not completely consistent with the sacredness of people's expectations.This is because people tend to beautify their destination before the departure,so the destination will be psychologically colored,after visiting the destination,they will conduct the psychologically de-coloring to remove or correct the unrealistic ideas according to the actual experience.Specifically:the commercial secular field is formed by the profit-seeking behavior of Tibetans in natural tourism,which has constructed the co-existence of natural purification field and commercial secular field.The tourists'need of interpretation system and infrastructure has not been considered in religious tourism,which makes the religious tourism a tourism project that is not for tourism.The spread of modernization in the human experience has turned some Tibetans into "modern rational people" and their lifestyle have become modernized,which has gradually tarnished the "sacredness" of Tibet.Finally,based on the above discussion,it is concluded that the Tibetan tourism experience is a complex and diverse field experience with the co-existence of sacred and secular.The complete "Shangri-La" sacred imagination does not exist,but only exists in people's imagination.The fourth chapter focused on the reversal ritual in tourism.Firstly,Graburn's list of reversal behaviors is used to measure the behavior choices of tourists in tourism and life.It is found that the reversal of tourists' natural and social environment is the most obvious,and the reversal of personal habits is the least.Moreover,the degree of reversalof the natural environment is the highest,followed by the social environment,the psychological environment,and the personal habits are the lowest.This shows that the personal habits are strengthened over time and have a certain inertia or spillover effect.A tourist who is eager to get a complete spiritual release will find that the self is still subject to the usual thoughts,behaviors,and emotions,but can only be partially released.One is still subject to the influence of the self in life world in the tourism threshold.This phenomenon is called habituality in a non-habitual environment,or the reversal of reservation.In addition,due to the removal of restrictions on the surrounding social structure,such as system and identity,during the tourism,the personal habitual category and the psychological environment category are also partially strengthened.This shows that tourists pursue novelty and desires to be familiar at the same time.Tourism includes the sense of security in old habits and the sense of curiosity under new changes,whether it is reversal or intensification,it shows people's desire to be a true self in the destructive tourism threshold.Furthermore,the phenomenon of reversal in the tourism experience in Tibet was also divided.The fifth chapter studies the rite of passage in tourism.Through the analysis of the grounded theory to Tibetan hikers,it is found that the rite of passage can be divided into two forms:individual passage and interpersonal passage.Individual passing refers to the individual experienced the original living experience that makes people feel "living",the memory sting that brings people a deep impression,the unknown experience that makes people lost and rejuvenating,immersive experience that forgetting the surrounding environment and making the human beings and their circumstances a whole world,the on-the-spot mobility experience that brings emotional "roller-coaster" changes at different time points,and the "addiction" experience formed by a full and extremely enjoyable peak experience in the reversal hiking threshold.After the deep experience of mind and body,the individual's growth in body,will,emotion and cognition are finally achieved.The peak experience of the individual passing is expressed as the extreme flow experience when one is deeply involved in the hiking.Interpersonal passing refers to the mutual help in the crisis state,the explicit or implicit incentives in the state of distress,the natural exposure under the condition of lack of energy,and the intrapersonal communication of the familiarity or strangeness in the reversal human communication threshold.After the various adversity testing,the interpersonal relationship become consolidated or weakened.The peak experience in interpersonal passing is the communitas experience,which is expressed as the equality,the intimacy of partners,the sense of cooperation and the resonating empathy experience achieved by role-playing.In short,personal passage and interpersonal passage is the pattern of manifestation of the rite of passage.The reversal threshold is the field characteristics of the rite of passage.Personal growth and interpersonal growth is the final achievement of the rite of passage.The sixth chapter,focused on the phenomenon of marginal men and their marginal experience in religious pilgrimage tourism fields in Tibet.Based on previous study achievements,this chapter further takes the identity theory as its basic framework,regards the religious sites in Tibet as a pilgrimage tourism space that can be shared by religious believers and tourists.And explores the group differentiation and communication tension of "tourist group" and "pilgrim group" due to the role of group identity and self-identification when confronted with external consistency challenges in Tibetan religious tourism.Through speculative and empirical research,this chapter's theoretical exploration is focused on the following aspects:firstly,to further classify tourist group and pilgrim group into four theoretical subgroups including leisure and pleasure tourists,pan-religious tourists,expedient pilgrims and ascetic pilgrims,and analyses their aims,depth of experience and characters.Secondly,by conceptualizing"marginal man" in the religious tourism field,this chapter identifies the intersection or transition group among the four subgroups as "marginal group",and divide this marginal group into two subgroups,"pilgrim-like" tourist group and "tourist-like" pilgrim group,according to their difference of behavioral goals and experience characteristics,at the same time,explore the guiding role,"marginal man" might play in group interaction due to their maverick behavioral characteristics.Finally,"pure religious field","religious-touristic field","touristic-religious field" and "secular touristic field" are proposed through situation observations,and a dynamic evolution model of marginal man and marginal experience is constructed according to the transformation of the leading or marginal status of tourists and pilgrims in different fields.The seventh chapter summarizes and prospects the research.Firstly,the conclusion of this paper is further summarized and refined to make the categories and propositions clearer.Secondly,the limitations of this study are pointed out,and the future tourism experience in Tibet and the rituals and pilgrimages research in tourism are prospected.The innovations of this research include:First,deconstructing the secular pilgrimage tour in Tibet's tourism experience,and combining the commercialization phenomenon in the actual experience of Tibet tourism with the profit-seeking behavior of Tibetans,proposing that the Tibet tourism experience is not a complete "sacred"experience,but a sacred and secular co-existence experience.This has deepened people's perception of Tibet's tourism experience to a certain extent and promoted the study of secular pilgrimages in Tibetan tourism.Secondly,it studies the group experience and inter-group interaction experience of pilgrims and tourists in Tibetan religious tourism,and proposes a new category of marginal people in Tibetan religious tourism,summarizes the dynamic evolution model of marginal man and their marginal experience,which has inspired a new identity perspective to look at the religious tourism experience in Tibet,and provided some new inspiration for the follow-up study on religious tourism in Tibet.Thirdly,it carried out a new refinement of the reversal ritual and the passing ritual in the tourism ritual theory,analyzed the different reversal dimensions in the tourism reversal ritual,and proposed the concept of reinforcement in tourism,refined the rite of passage into personal passage and interpersonal passage,and summed up the corresponding support categories,which promoted the in-depth understanding of the reversal ritual and the passing ritual in tourism.Fourth,some new categories,propositions and models have been proposed,such as:psychological coloring,psychological de-coloring,co-existence of the sacred and the secular,tourism project not for tourism,habituality in a non-habitual environment,the model of dynamic evolution and the marginal experience of marginal man,etc.,which can promote the new understanding of tourism experience of Tibet and ritual phenomena in tourism.At the same time,the relevant research conclusions can also provide a theoretical basis for the supply-side reform of the tourism experience at the practical level,and provide decision-making reference for the tourism-related management departments of Tibet to formulate tourism development strategies.