Eat, Pray, Love and Tourism Imaginaries

In this chapter, I analyse Eat, Pray, Love as a cultural production that reflects preoccupations of the contemporary Euro-American society. In particular, I suggest that Eat, Pray, Love provides insight into Euro-American ways of thinking about travel, “Other” people and places, and spiritual development. Scholars in the anthropology of tourism have highlighted the significance of “tourism imaginaries” in shaping intercultural contacts in our increasingly connected global world. Broadly speaking, imaginaries or the imaginary can be understood as referring to intangible, shared aspects of mental life. I argue that Eat, Pray, Love, in both its print and film versions, provides a vehicle for a tourism imaginary that acts as a “world-shaping device” for its audiences.