Colonial Geographies, Tourist Imaginaries, and Mystical Landscapes

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.