Ritual And The Sense Of Ritual In Tourism

In real life, ritual and the sense of ritual are of great being value, however, their present existing situation and the human’s spiritual crises behind them is worrying. It can be said that it’s human’s spiritual crises and psychological needs that make tourism become a way for more people to pursue spiritual consolation. As to the relationship between tourism and ritual, on the one hand, it stems from my consideration for the negative influence of tourism development on local culture. There is always a contradiction between tourism development and culture preservation without any solution, which makes me pay more attention to their relationship. On the other hand, it’s inspired by tourism ritual theory, in which Graburn put forward that tourism can be perceived as a secular ritual. In recent years, a phenomenon occurs that some tourists prefer their trips to be called travel rather than tourism, which implies that there’s some unknown link between this phenomenon and Graburn’s view that tourism is some of secular ritual. The link can be the sense of ritual in tourism field.This paper’s research object is the sense of ritual. Firstly, those five modules of previous research achievements including ritual concepts, components, classification, characteristics and functions are summarized and combed, thus laying a foundation for a further study of ritual and the sense of ritual in tourism. Secondly, the paper introduces the famous Ritual Theory and tries to seek the hints of the sense of ritual in it. Finally, as the sense of ritual is the nuclear research object, some papers and some Quora users’ discussions on the sense of ritual are summarized and inducted to make the sense of ritual clear. At the end, it’s redefined by visiting or participating personally in a ritual or ritualistic event, people can make themselves integrated its specific context, in which, a chaotic state of mind will be generated when their own cognition, emotion and behavior are highly consistent. Its components implies that it’s a kind of complex psychological state, attentive but chaotic ultimately.As the ritual has seldom been studied, the paper is problem-oriented and aims at sort out the research framework of the sense of ritual by logical deduction, thus making problems clear logically. An inductive analysis will be a supplement. By an inductive analysis of some descriptive episodes in the book 《A lift to Berlin》, the paper discourses the possibility that tourist can produce a sense of ritual in tourism, and pointed out definitely that people need the sense of ritual and there exists the possibility for tourist to produce a sense of ritual in tourism. The sense of ritual in tourism can be called touristic sense of ritual. There’re two forms of ritual in tourism: one is that tourism in itself can be perceived as a ritual, that is, touristic ritual. The other is that there’re some rituals which may exist in the whole journey. During the journey, rituals generating the sense of ritual can be divided into ritualistic events and ritual-cultural tourist products. Tourism in itself as a ritual, is also included in the scope of ritualistic events, which can be called touristic ritualistic events with ritualistic events happening during the journey.Accordingly, touristic sense of ritual contains two levels:the first level is that tourism itself can be perceived as a ritual,which can thus generate the sense of ritual. The second level means tourists can produce it during the whole process of traveling. In other words, the carriers of touristic sense of ritual can be divided into touristic ritualistic events and ritual-cultural tourist products. Touristic ritualistic events place an emphasis on personal pursuits for meanings and tend to contain some difficulties or dangers etc., which can make tourist experience more profound and impressive. The ritual-cultural tourist products, deriving from traditional rituals, can make tourists produce the sense of ritual easier with their own particular ritualistic scenarios. Their differentiation can bring about different senses of ritual, mainly embodied in differences of components. After that, the paper discusses the forming conditions and mechanism on how tourists can produce any sense of ritual. The formation conditions include a specific ritualistic scenario and tourists of some abilities to appreciate. In the specific fields of a ritualistic scenario, some subtle changes will occur in tourists’psychology. The complicated psychological activities will be always collide in the circle between "psychological extreme-conceptual extreme", in which, tourists may communicate with themselves in the deeper mind. Eventually, they can reach the peak of tourist experience by making the cognition, emotion and behavior highly consistent. In a word, it’s not easy to have the sense of ritual, an advanced form of psychological state.Above all, the paper has an in-depth exploration on ritual and the sense of ritual in tourism by logical deduction, and forming some theoretical achievements:the sense of ritual’s new definition, components, categories, characteristics, forming conditions and forming mechanism. Finally, in the perspective of the sense of ritual, the paper tries to provide a new direction of theoretical guidance on solving a long-standing contradiction between the protection of traditional culture and tourism development by categorizing those cultural products and building the sense of ritual for them. This article focused on a more macro level in exploring the sense of ritual in tourism itself and ritualistic events during the process of traveling, rather than the micro level of a particular type of touristic ritualistic events or ritual-cultural tourist products. The importance of the sense of ritual is not only reflected on the theoretical constructions contribution, but also on suggestions and guidance of developing cultural tourist products in practice. It can be said that touristic sense of ritual will open a new perspective for tourism studies.