Eat, pray, love and tourism imaginaries

Abstract

In this chapter, I analyse Eat, Pray, Love as a cultural production that refl ects preoccupations of the contemporary Euro-American society. In particular, I suggest that Eat, Pray, Love provides insight into Euro- American ways of thinking about travel, “Other�? people and places, and spiritual development. Scholars in the anthropology of tourism have highlighted the signifi cance of “tourism imaginaries�? in shaping intercultural contacts in our increasingly connected global world. Broadly speaking, imaginaries or the imaginary can be understood as referring to intangible, shared aspects of mental life. I argue that Eat, Pray, Love, in both its print and fi lm versions, provides a vehicle for a tourism imaginary that acts as a “world-shaping device�? for its audiences.