Religious leisure, heritage and identity construction- A case of Tibetan college students

Engagement with heritage is a potential site for the exploration, creation and re-creation of identity. Leisure, a cultural manifestation, provides a path to the better understanding of heritage and identity construction. The purpose of this paper is to explore how religious leisure, particularly circumambulation and pilgrimage, contributes to the building of identity. Nine Tibetan students in a key university in eastern China were selected for interview by snowball sampling. Results show that their religious leisure is not only a way to experience and keep their heritage, but it also plays an essential role in their identity formation, which fell into three stages, i.e. identity development, identity maintenance and identity moderation/reconstruction. This research reflects the call for interdisciplinary studies between leisure and heritage studies.