On the Road to Being There

This volume consists of a collection of twelve empirical studies addressing theoretical and practical issues relating to pilgrimage and tourism activities, particularly assessing the ways in which religious expressions have changed as a result of the technological and social changes of late modernity that affect human behavior in a more general sense.

William H. Swatos, Jr., is completing his first decade as Executive Officer of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, prior to which he served for six years as editor of Sociology of Religion, the ASR’s official journal. He is also executive officer of the Religious Research Association, senior fellow of the Center for Religious Inquiry Across the Disciplines at Baylor University, managing editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, and an adjunct member of the faculty at Augustana College (Illinois). He received his B.A. with honors from Transylvania University, his M.Div. summa cum laude from the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky, with honors in social theory. He is author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of over twenty books including the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society (AltaMira 1998). His most recent book is The Protestant Ethic Turns 100 (Paradigm 2005), co-edited with Lutz Kaelber. His current research in pilgrimage and tourism studies focuses on the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, Paris.