Religion, spirituality, and the formation of tourism knowledge

ABSTRACT Over the last decade, tourism academia has been increasingly characterised as working in a knowledge domain that is sociologically framed. To date, however, there has been no explicit consideration in the literature as to whether and how an academic’s spiritual and/ or religious beliefs should influence their engagement with knowledge formation. Drawing on Barkathunnisha et al.’s article “Towards a spirituality-based platform in tourism higher education” published in Current Issues in Tourism that proposed the notion of the 7th platform of tourism knowledge based on spirituality and the underlying four pillars – a spirit of knowing; a spirit of doing; a spirit of being; and a spirit of becoming – this exploratory paper will seek to propose some preliminary thoughts on some of the challenges and opportunities that a belief in spirituality and religion might have for tourism academia. Drawing on autobiographical insights from the author’s own Christian faith, the paper concludes by discussing issues that the tourism academy will have to face in order to find ways to bring such a spiritual/ religious perspective into the formulation of tourism knowledge .