The Liminal Self: Transnational Mobility, Spiritual Consumption, and the Negotiation of Identity in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love

Abstract

that are studied from different perspectives. This field studies not only people but also their psychology, tradition, community, race, gender stereotypes and culture.The present article employs a sociological lens to analyze Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love as a primary source text illuminating the practices and paradoxes of contemporary transnationalism. Moving beyond a literary critique, it frames Gilbert’s year-long journey across Italy, India, and Indonesia as a case study in privileged mobility, examining how the transnational subject confronts, consumes, and reinterprets differing social structures, cultural codes, and spiritual marketplaces. The analysis dissects Gilbert’s interactions with three distinct societies: Italy’s ethos of sensory pleasure and dolce far niente, India’s ascetic spiritual industry within a guru-centric ashram, and Indonesia’s complex blend of Balinese Hinduism, tourism, and communal obligation. Through this tripartite structure, the article argues that Gilbert embodies a form of “therapeutic transnationalism,” where geographic mobility is instrumentalized for self-actualization, often replicating neo-colonial patterns of extraction and commodification. The study draws on sociological theories of globalization, cosmopolitanism, and spiritual consumption, integrating quotes and concepts from established transnationalism scholarship sourced from Scopus-indexed journals. It concludes that while narratives like Gilbert’s popularize a vision of borderless self-discovery, they simultaneously reveal the stratified nature of transnational mobility, its embeddedness in global capitalist networks, and its role in crafting a modern, market-friendly spiritual identity