"Another City, Another Sauna"
Travel as Saunatarian Praxis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.36290Keywords:
sauna, Saunatarianism, travel, religion, spiritual tourism, invented religions, autoethnographyAbstract
This article explores sauna as a religious identity, focusing on the role of travel in the formation of that identity. While the topic of individualist religious/spiritual worldviews has been much discussed in recent sociological literature, so far the literature has not extended to sauna. In large part this is due to the lack of an identifiable Saunatarian community, but this article overcomes that problem by way of autoethnography. Specifically, the article uses personal narrative about my own travel motto ("Another City, Another Sauna") to provide a thick description in response to calls for more data from persons who identify as spiritual tourists. The final section of the article pushes into theoretical terrain: firstly by justifying the label "spiritual tourism" as an appropriate description, then by considering how the idiosyncratic, unpatterned nature of this case study can help to expand our understanding of spiritual tourism as both a category and a phenomenon.
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References
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----- 2016 Sauna Studies as an Academic Field: A New Agenda for International Research. Literature & Aesthetics 26: 41–82.
Builder, Maxine 2015 At the Russian and Turkish Baths I was Beaten with Oak Leaves to Exfoliate My
Skin. Online: https://www.bustle.com/articles/78427-at-the-russian-and-turkish-baths-i-was-beaten-with-oak-leaves-to-exfoliate-my-skin
Buzzard, James 2003 On Auto-Ethnographic Authority. Yale Journal of Criticism 16(1): 61–91. https://doi.org/10.1353/yale.2003.0002
Caffier, Eileen 2017 The Social Spa Concept Design: An Investigation of Innovative Experience Services which Need to Be Included in a Spa Concept to Encourage Socializing: A Case Study of Germany. Master’s thesis. Department of Tourism Studies, University of Tartu.
Cheer, Joseph, Yaniv Belhassen, and Joanna Kujawa 2017 The Search for Spirituality in Tourism: Toward a Conceptual Framework for Spiritual Tourism. Tourism Management Perspectives 24: 252–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2017.07.018
Cinque, Vivien 2013 Nonreligious Spiritual Tourism: On Constructing and Discovering Self through Travels. Honours thesis. Department of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney.
Cusack, Carole 2010 Invented Religions: Imagination, Faith, and Fiction. Surrey: Ashgate.
Demerath Nicholas J. 2000 The Varieties of Sacred Experience: Finding the Sacred in a Secular Grove. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39(1): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/0021-8294.00001
Edelsward, L. M. 1991 Sauna as Symbol: Society and Culture in Finland. New York: Peter Lang.
Ellis, Carolyn, Tony Adams, and Arthur Bochner 2011 Autoethnography: An Overview. Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 36(4): 273–90. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23032294
Global Wellness Summit 2016 8 Wellness Trends for 2017—and Beyond. Online: http://www.globalwellnesssummit.com/wp-content/uploads/Industry-Research/8WellnessTrends_2017.pdf
Hazzard Cross, Samuel, and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (trans. and eds) 1953 The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America.
Heelas, Paul 2008 Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444301106
Historic Environment Scotland 2017 Western Baths Club, 8–12 (Even Nos) Cranworth Street, Hillhead, Glasgow: LB32859. Online: http://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB32859
Knox, Dan, Peter Margry, Daniel Olsen, and Noel Salazar 2014 Is Tourist [sic] a Secular Pilgrim or a Hedonist in Search of Pleasure? Tourism Recreation Research 39(2): 235–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2014.11081769
Kujawa, Joanna 2017 Spiritual Tourism as a Quest. Tourism Management Perspectives 24: 193–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2017.07.011
McCutcheon, Russell (ed.) 1999 The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader. London: Cassell.
Monk, Ray 1990 Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. London: Cape.
Norman, Alex 2011 Spiritual Tourism: Travel and Religious Practice in Western Society. London and New York: Continuum.
----- 2012 The Varieties of the Spiritual Tourist Experience. Literature & Aesthetics 22(1): 20–37.
Norman, Alex, and Jennifer J. Pokorny 2017 Meditation Retreats: Spiritual Tourism Well-being Interventions. Tourism Management Perspectives 24: 201–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2017.07.012
Okker, Juha Tanttu Jaakko n.d. Sauna. Private publication. Translated by Sinikka Kurikka.
Papp, A. A., and E. M. Alhava 2003 Sauna-Bathing with Sutures: A Prospective and Randomized Study. Scandinavian Journal of Surgery 92: 175–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/145749690309200212
Russian-bath.com 2017 Venik and Venik Massage / Platza Techniques. Online: http://russian-bath.com/venik/
Shifrin, Malcolm 2015 Victorian Turkish Baths. Swindon: Historic England.
Smith, Jonathan Z. 1996 A Matter of Class: Taxonomies of Religion. Harvard Theological Review 89(4): 387–403. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1509924. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816000006118
Smith, Melanie, and László Puczkó (eds) 2008 Health and Wellness Tourism. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780080942032
Sompasauna 2015 English [information]. Online: http://www.sompasauna.fi/?page_id=263
Taves, Ann 2011 Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Torstila, Pertti 2010 Speech by Secretary of State Torstila at the XV International Sauna Congress: “Sauna Diplomacy; the Finnish Recipe”. Published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland. Online: http://formin.finland.fi/public/default.aspx?contentid=193756
Tsonis, Jack 2012 A Personal Diary from the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Chicago 2012. Online: http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2012/12/12/a-personal-diary-from-the-american-academy-of-religion-annual-meeting-chicago-2012/
----- 2016 Sauna Studies as an Academic Field: A New Agenda for International Research. Literature & Aesthetics 26: 41–82.
Published
2018-10-15
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Tsonis, J. (2018). "Another City, Another Sauna": Travel as Saunatarian Praxis. Fieldwork in Religion, 13(1), 81-106. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.36290
