Exploring what does and what does not constitute pilgrimage, Redefining Pilgrimage draws together a wide variety of disciplines including politics, anthropology, history, religion and sociology. Leading contributors offer a broad range of case studies from a wide geographical area, exploring new ways of approaching pilgrimage beyond the classical religious model. Re-thinking the global phenomenon of pilgrimages in the 21st century, this book offers new perspectives to redefine pilgrimage.
"This book proposes a radical new agenda for pilgrimage studies, considering such travel as just one of the twenty-first century's many forms of cultural mobility". "Prioritizing anthropological arguments about mobility, locality and belonging over analyses of traditional religious studies, contributors examine the meanings of pilgrimage in world religions as well as in non-religious contexts such as 'roots-tourism'."--P.[1].
The construct of transformation has emerged as a prominent theme in academic discourse. Based on the accepted notion that processes and living organisms are in an ongoing state of development, it is unsurprising that this concept of transformation would find resonance within literature on the pilgrimage phenomenon. Examples of transformational processes intersecting with pilgrimage are the movement from sickness to wellness, from grief to closure and from fractured to integrated. That the pilgrimage journey itself can be construed as a transformational quest was noted by Winkleman and Dubisch (2005), who stated “Life-transforming experiences are at the core of both ‘traditional’ and more contemporary forms of pilgrimage”. In the current volume, Warfield and Hetherington examine the transformational process of pilgrimage journeys. Contributors are Sharenda Holland Barlar, Anne M. Blankenship, Valentina Bold, Shirley du Plooy, Alexandria M. Egler, Miguel Tain Guzman, Kate Hetherington, Scott Libson, Chadwick Co Sy Su, Kip Redick, Roy Tamashiro and Heather A. Warfield.
The Seductions of Pilgrimage explores the simultaneously attractive and repellent, beguiling and alluring forms of seduction in pilgrimage. It focuses on the varied discursive, imaginative, and practical mechanisms of seduction that draw individual pilgrims to a pilgrimage site; the objects, places, and paradigms that pilgrims leave behind as they embark on their hyper-meaningful travel experience; and the often unforeseen elements that lead pilgrims off their desired course. Presenting the first comprehensive study of the role of seduction on individual pilgrims in the study of pilgrimage and tourism, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, cultural geography, tourism, heritage, and religious studies.
Pilgrimage beyond the Officially Sacred: Understanding the Geographies of Religion and Spirituality in Sacred Travel examines the many ways in which pilgrimage engages with sacredness, delving beyond the officially recognized, and often religiously conceived, pilgrimage sites. As scholarship examining the lived experiences of pilgrims and tourists has demonstrated, pilgrimage need not be religious in nature, nor be officially sanctioned; rather, they can be 'hyper-meaningful' voyages, set apart from the everyday profane life—in a word, they are sacred. Separating the social category of 'religion' from the 'sacred,' this volume brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars employing perspectives from anthropology, geography, sociology, religious studies, theology, and interdisciplinary tourism studies to theorize sacredness, its variability, and the ways in which it is officially recognized or condemned by power brokers. Rich in case studies from sacred centers throughout the world, the contributions pay close attention to the ways in which pilgrims, central authorities, site managers, locals, and other stakeholders on the ground appropriate, negotiate, shape, contest, or circumvent the powerful forces of the sacred. Delving ‘beyond the officially sacred,’ this collective examination of pilgrimages—both well-established and new, religious and secular, authorized and not—presents a compelling look at the interplay of secular powers and the transcendent forces of the sacred at these hyper-meaningful sites. Providing a blueprint for how work in the anthropology and geography of religion, and the fields of pilgrimage and religious tourism, may move forward, Pilgrimage beyond the Officially Sacred will be of great interest to an interdisciplinary field of scholars. The chapters were originally published as a special issue in Tourism Geographies.
"The book explores the ritual geography of a pilgrimage system woven around medieval local saints in Norway, and the renaissance of pilgrimage in contemporary majority Protestant Norway, facing challenges of migration, xenophobia, and climate crisis. The study is concerned with historical narratives and communal contemporary reinterpretations of the figure of St. Olav, the first Christian king who was a major impulse towards conversion to Christianity and the unification of regions of Norway in a nation unified by a Christian law and faith. This initially medieval pilgrimage network, originated after the death of Olav Haraldsson and his proclamation as saint in 1030, became repressed after the Reformation which had a great influence on Scandinavia and shaped Norwegian Christianity overwhelmingly. Since the late 1990s, the Church of Norway participated in a renaissance that has grown into a remarkable infrastructure supported by national and local authorities. The contemporary pilgrimage by land and by sea to Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim is one site where this negotiation is paramount. The study maps how both pilgrims, hosts, church officials and government officials are renegotiating and reshaping narratives of landscape, sacrality, pilgrimage as a symbol of life journey, nation, identity, Christianity, and Protestant reflections on the durability of medieval Catholic saints. The redevelopment of this instance of pilgrimage in a majority Protestant context negotiates various societal concerns, all of which are addressed by various groups of pilgrims or other actors in the network. One part of the network is the annual festival Olavsfest, a culture and music festival that actively and critically engages the contested heritage of St. Olav and the Church of Norway through theater, music, lectures, and discussions, and features theological and interreligious conversations. This festival is a platform for creative and critical engagement with the contested, violent heritage of St. Olav, the colonial history of Norway in relation to the Sami indigenous population, and many other contemporary social and religious issues. The study highlights facets of critical, constructive engagement of these majority Protestant actors engaging legacy through forms of theological and ritual creativity rather than mere repetition"--
This edited collection brings together a series of ethnographically grounded studies on sacred and secular pilgrimage in the age of globalisation from around the world. Pilgrimage is explored as a distinctive form of mobility in late modernity, which emphasises inner transformation. Thus, the studies in this volume show how pilgrimage unifies physical and metaphysical mobility into a holistic project of self-realisation through motion.
Although there has been a massive increase in the volume of pilgrimage research and publications, traditional Anglophone scholarship has been dominated by research in Western Europe and North America. In their previous edited volume, International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies (Routledge, 2015), Albera and Eade sought to expand the theoretical, disciplinary and geographical perspectives of Anglophone pilgrimage studies. This new collection of essays builds on this earlier work by moving away from Eurasia and focusing on areas of the world where non-Christian pilgrimages abound. Individual chapters examine the practice of ziyarat in the Maghreb and South Asia, Hindu pilgrimage in India and different pilgrimage traditions across Malaysia and China before turning towards the Pacific islands, Australia, South Africa and Latin America, where Christian pilgrimages co-exist and sometimes interweave with indigenous traditions. This book also demonstrates the impact of political and economic processes on religious pilgrimages and discusses the important development of secular pilgrimage and tourism where relevant. Highly interdisciplinary, international, and innovative in its approach, New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies: Global Perspectives will be of interest to those working in religious studies, pilgrimage studies, anthropology, cultural geography and folklore studies.
The study of pilgrimage often centres itself around miracles and spontaneous populist activities. While some of these activities and stories may play an important role in the emergence of potential pilgrimage sites and in helping create wider interest in them, this book demonstrates that the dynamics of the marketplace, including marketing and promotional activities by priests and secular interest groups, create the very consumerist markets through which pilgrimages become established and successful – and through which the ‘sacred’ as a category can be sustained. By drawing on examples from several contexts, including Japan, India, China, Vietnam, Europe, and the Muslim world, author Ian Reader evaluates how pilgrimages may be invented, shaped, and promoted by various interest groups. In so doing he draws attention to the competitive nature of the pilgrimage market, revealing that there are rivalries, borrowed ideas, and alliances with commercial and civil agencies to promote pilgrimages. The importance of consumerism is demonstrated, both in terms of consumer goods/souvenirs and pilgrimage site selection, rather than the usual depictions of consumerism as tawdry disjunctions on the ‘sacred.’ As such this book reorients studies of pilgrimage by highlighting not just the pilgrims who so often dominate the literature, but also the various other interest groups and agencies without whom pilgrimage as a phenomenon would not exist.
Pilgrimage in the Twenty-First Century: A Kaleidoscopic Inquiry showcases the rich diversity of religious and secular pilgrimage on the world stage. Scholars from the Global North and South working in diverse fields in the humanities and social sciences share their research on the nature of pilgrimage—otherwise known as travel for transformation—providing insight into why it is one of the fastest growing segments of the worldwide tourism industry. Topics under scrutiny include the ancient history of pilgrimage, pilgrimage in literature, the development of new trails and the refurbishment of others, pilgrimage as an avenue for justice and peacebuilding, as an example of intangible cultural heritage, and as a unique driver of domestic economies. Each chapter in this survey—covering more than fifteen countries—makes a significant contribution to our understanding of this age-old and multi-faceted phenomenon that is central to our understanding of what it means to be human.
