Overview

The first study to examine the intersection between imaginative geographies and mystical tourism, this book presents a detailed discussion of how tourism is linked to mystical experiences, consumer products, and wellness resorts. The many forms of colonialism have enabled governments, colonial agents, settlers, writers, and artists to reorder the world as a new space that mystifies invasion, occupation, and reterritorialization as it reestablishes a new binary of what is natural and what is unnatural. Colonial Geographies, Tourist Imaginaries, and Mystical Landscapes provides an account of this colonial practice and its influence on the creation of mystical landscapes in modern tourism. Including case studies on more familiar cases of colonialism, such as Kenya and Algeria, which are known as Europe’s ""classic colonies,"" as well as settler colonies, including the United States of America, its Pacific colony in the Hawaiian Islands, and Israel, this book examines how colonial culture inserted itself into these spaces and looks to anti-colonial and indigenous voices to help us understand and counter this mystification. This engaging and accessible work bridges cultural theory, sociology of religion, and human geography and tourism studies through an examination of film, television, theme parks, travel, and leisure activities focused on the wellness industry to illustrate how imaginative geographies function in European and American colonial and imperial projects.

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9781032422114

Table of Contents

Reviews

“This is an innovative and insightful work by a seasoned scholar who delivers a study of what she rightly calls ‘imaginative geographies and mystical tourism.’ Through an examination of media, theme parks, travel, and leisure activities focused on the wellness industry, she examines geography as a foundational part of mystical tourism. The central argument is how the white, colonial gaze plays a central role in the tourism industry. From there, the author proceeds to argue this gaze is crucial in the dominant ideas of Euro-American supremacy and it is from here the erasure of indigenous and Native American histories emerges. It is an exceptionally powerful and important book” Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University “Arjana explores the seemingly ordinary practice of tourism, revealing it as a stage for deeper and darker forces—colonialism, erasure, and a gaze that claims to see but refuses to understand. Her argument is not merely academic; it is moral. Drawing on case studies from Africa, Bali, and the United States, she demonstrates how geography becomes complicit in enchantment—and how enchantment, shaped by colonial power, operates as a tool of erasure. This work offers a searing critique of Euro-American supremacy while urging the necessity of counter-mapping as a method for subverting its dominant gaze.” Roshan Iqbal, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Agnes Scott College “Sophia Rose Arjana’s timely book is a reminder of the liabilities of the geographical and metaphysical claims of authenticity we make about land—land we believe is ours and lands we visit. As she exposes the complicity in that of colonial power and postmodern commodity culture, of which mystical tourism is an indissociable part, she reminds us also that land does not belong to us, we belong to it, and that heritage is not ours to claim, but ours to bear.” Shawkat M. Toorawa, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Yale University

“This is an innovative and insightful work by a seasoned scholar who delivers a study of what she rightly calls ‘imaginative geographies and mystical tourism.’ Through an examination of media, theme parks, travel, and leisure activities focused on the wellness industry, she examines geography as a foundational part of mystical tourism. The central argument is how the white, colonial gaze plays a central role in the tourism industry. From there, the author proceeds to argue this gaze is crucial in the dominant ideas of Euro-American supremacy and it is from here the erasure of indigenous and Native American histories emerges. It is an exceptionally powerful and important book” Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University “Arjana explores the seemingly ordinary practice of tourism, revealing it as a stage for deeper and darker forces—colonialism, erasure, and a gaze that claims to see but refuses to understand. Her argument is not merely academic; it is moral. Drawing on case studies from Africa, Bali, and the United States, she demonstrates how geography becomes complicit in enchantment—and how enchantment, shaped by colonial power, operates as a tool of erasure. This work offers a searing critique of Euro-American supremacy while urging the necessity of counter-mapping as a method for subverting its dominant gaze.” Roshan Iqbal, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Agnes Scott College

Author Information

Sophia Rose Arjana is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Western Kentucky University and is the author of Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi: Orientalism and the Mystical Marketplace (2020); Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Pop Culture (2018); Pilgrimage in Islam: Traditional and Modern Practices (2017); and Muslims in the Western Imagination (2015).

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