Kiran A. Shinde

Bio: Kiran A. Shinde is an academic researcher from Bharati Vidyapeeth University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Religious tourism & Pilgrimage. The author has an hindex of 12, co-authored 33 publications receiving 415 citations. Previous affiliations of Kiran A. Shinde include University of New England (Australia) & La Trobe University.

Entrepreneurship and indigenous enterpreneurs in religious tourism in India

Abstract: This paper demonstrates how indigenous religious entrepreneurs drive religious tourism in a non-western context. Building on the case study of Vrindavan, an emerging religious tourism destination in India, it explains religious tourism as a natural progression of traditional pilgrimage economy, where entrepreneurship springs from socio-cultural and ritual exchanges and knowledge of religious protocols and procedures between indigenous religious functionaries and visitors. Using religious hegemony, social status and networks, religious entrepreneurs innovate, develop new products and expand the cultural economy of rituals and performances to suit the demands of the burgeoning tourism. The tendency to consider such entrepreneurship as ‘informal’ not only exempts them from most regulations and legal responsibilities but also undermines their contribution in maintaining the ‘religious’ — the most important resource in religious tourism. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pilgrimage and the Environment: Challenges in a Pilgrimage Centre

Abstract: Large scale movement of visitors during pilgrimages has a high potential to influence the environment in sacred sites. In traditional pilgrimage, environmental effects are governed by seasonality and are limited over time and space. This paper argues that significant changes in scale, frequency and character of such visitation over the past few decades reflect new pressures on the environment of sacred sites. Using a case study of the sacred complex of Tirumala-Tirupati, a popular pilgrimage centre in south India, this paper explores causal linkages between different factors that shape the environment in a pilgrimage centre.

Policy, planning, and management for religious tourism in Indian pilgrimage sites

Abstract: This paper examines the current policy framework under which religious tourism operates in India. It is based on a study of Vrindavan, a pilgrimage site representative of a majority of Hindu religious tourism destinations in India, receiving more than six million pilgrims annually. Using a case study approach, the paper highlights how most religious tourism activity takes place outside the state's framework of policies and institutions. The contemporary religious tourism industry has largely evolved from the tradition of pilgrimages and continues to thrive on the economy of religious devotion. Religious actors drive this industry by providing religious services, accommodation and transport options in pilgrimage sites yielding an explicit ‘religious’ and ‘informal’ orientation. Following the colonial legacy, quasi-religious entrepreneurs continue to enjoy exemptions from the state with regard to revenue generation and abstain from civic responsibilities. While the role of the state is undeniable, at presen...

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion

Abstract: Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. By Rodney Stark and Roger Finke. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 343 pp. $48.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). At a recent American Academy of Religion meeting, after a brilliant paper was presented on God and religious experience, the speaker was asked this question by an academic: "But how can you say these things in our postmodem, anti-enlightenment, pluralistic age?" Acts of Faith secures the thesis that not just talk about, but devout belief in, God is rational, widespread, and shows no sign of abating. For a vast number of well-educated, articulate human beings talk of God is not very difficult at all. Acts of Faith is an important treatment of the sociology of religious belief and should be considered required reading by anyone interested in the social standing and assessment of religion. It overturns the conventions of a great deal of earlier sociological inquiry into religion and stands as a model of clarity and rigor. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke begin by documenting the social and intellectual history of atheism, noting how history, sociology, and psychoanalysis have been employed to exhibit the irrationality of religious belief. They underscore how many of these projects have done little more than presup- pose the credulous nature of religion. There is something darkly humorous about the many techniques employed by "intellectuals" and social scientists to explain why religion persists and even grows amidst "modernity." Stark and Finke's analysis is devastating. From the outset through to the last chapter the writing is crisp and at times quite amusing. Here is a passage from the introduction, lamenting the fact that many sociologists focus their work on fringe religious groups: A coven of nine witches in Lund, Sweden, is far more apt to be the object of a case study than is, say, the Episcopal Church, with more than two million members. Some of this merely reflects that it is rather easier to get one's work published if the details are sufficiently lurid or if the group is previously undocumented. A recitation of Episcopalian theology and excerpts from the Book of Common Prayer will not arouse nearly the interest (prurient or otherwise) than can be generated by tales of blondes upon the altar and sexual contacts with animals (p. 19). Stark and Finke have written a text that abounds in technical case studies, while at the same time giving us a book that is a pleasure to read. The introduction and first three chapters alone are a tour de force. They expose the blatant inadequacy of sociological work that reads religious belief as pathology or flagrant irrationality. They challenge the thesis of impending, virtually inevitable secularization, for instance, in part by refuting the claim that in the distant past almost everyone was religious. …