Gospel festivals as heteropia

The chapter presents the gospel festival as a significant postmodern religious tourism phenomenon which has not thus far been recognized or critically theorized. To date, conceptualizations of religious tourism, specifically pilgrimages, have been dominated by Turnerian concepts of liminality and communitas. It is suggested that these concepts, while valuable, do not sufficiently account for the heterogeneous and contested nature of these event spaces or their potentiality for the performance of alternative modes of social ordering. The Foucauldian notion of heterotopia is adapted as a more apposite theoretical framework and an example of a gospel festival in Australia is drawn on by way of explication.