ABSTRACT
A common feature of contemporary social and economic life is the enormous volume of spatial movements of people throughout the world, including a significant number of tourists who visit countries or regions they consider their ancestral homelands. This has resulted in the emergence of what can be referred to as ‘roots tourism’, ‘diaspora tourism’, ‘genealogy tourism’, or simply ‘personal heritage tourism’ (Timothy 1997). This form of travel often reflects many of the characteristics of pilgrimages, such as a personal connection to one’s spiritual self. Related to this is the research in the social sciences commonly referred to as diaspora studies (Cohen 1997). Although diaspora research inherently includes understanding the historical and modern movement of people, it has been observed, ‘the literature on diaspora (and hybridity) has on the whole neglected tourism, perhaps because tourists are thought to be temporary and superficial’ (Bruner 1996: 290). In common with other social scientists, tourism scholars have so far paid scant attention to the notion of diaspora and tourism, although some authors have hinted at it in examining ethnicity and migration in this context (Duval 2002; Hall and Williams 2002).
