Pilgrimage is one of the most significant ritual duties for Muslims, entailing the visitation and veneration of sites associated with the Prophet Muhammad or saintly figures. As demonstrated in this multidisciplinary volume, the lived religion of pilgrimage, defined by embodied devotional practices, is changing in an age characterized by commerce, technology, and new sociocultural and political frameworks. Traveling to and far beyond the Hajj, the most well-known Muslim pilgrimage, the volume's contributors reveal and analyze emerging contemporary Islamic pilgrimage practices around the world, in minority- and majority-Muslim countries as well as in urban and rural settings. What was once a tiny religious attraction in a remote village, for example, may begin to draw increasing numbers of pilgrims to shrines and tombs as the result of new means of travel, thus triggering significant changes in the traditional rituals, and livelihoods, of the local people. Organized around three key themes—history and politics; embodiment, memory, and material religion; and communications—the book reveals how rituals, practices, and institutions are experienced in the context of an inexorable global capitalism. The volume contributors are Sophia Rose Arjana, Rose Aslan, Robert R. Bianchi, Omar Kasmani, Azim Malikov, Lewis Mayo, Julian Millie, Reza Masoudi Nejad, Paulo G. Pinto, Babak Rahimi, Emilio Spadola, Edith Szanto, and Brannon Wheeler.
From the Great Panathenaea of ancient Greece to the hajj of today, people of all religions and cultures have made sacred journeys to confirm their faith and their part in a larger identity. This book is a fascinating guide through the vast and varied cultural territory such pilgrimages have covered across the ages. The first book to look at the phenomenon and experience of pilgrimage through the multiple lenses of history, religion, sociology, anthropology, and art history, this sumptuously illustrated volume explores the full richness and range of sacred travel as it maps the cultural imagination. The authors consider pilgrimage as a physical journey through time and space, but also as a metaphorical passage resonant with meaning on many levels. It may entail a ritual transformation of the pilgrim's inner state or outer status; it may be a quest for a transcendent goal; it may involve the healing of a physical or spiritual ailment. Through folktales, narratives of the crusades, and the firsthand accounts of those who have made these journeys; through descriptions and pictures of the rituals, holy objects, and sacred architecture they have encountered, as well as the relics and talismans they have carried home, Pilgrimage evokes the physical and spiritual landscape these seekers have traveled. In its structure, the book broadly moves from those religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--that cohere around a single canonical text to those with a multiplicity of sacred scriptures, like Hinduism and Buddhism. Juxtaposing the different practices and experiences of pilgrimage in these contexts, this book reveals the common structures and singular features of sacred travel from ancient times to our own.
Research on pilgrimage has traditionally fallen across a series of academic disciplines - anthropology, archaeology, art history, geography, history and theology. To date, relatively little work has been devoted to the issue of pilgrimage as writing and specifically as a form of travel-writing. The aim of the interdisciplinary essays gathered here is to examine the relations of Christian pilgrimage to the numerous narratives, which it generates and upon which it depends. Authors reveal not only the tensions between oral and written accounts but also the frequent ambiguities of journeys - the possibilities of shifts between secular and sacred forms and accounts of travel. Above all, the papers reveal the self-generating and multiple-authored characteristics of pilgrimage narrative: stories of past pilgrimage experience generate future stories and even future journeys. Simon Coleman moved to Sussex University in 2004, having spent 11 years at Durham University as Lecturer and then Reader in Anthropology, and Deputy Dean for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health. John Elsner is Senior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Specially commissioned studies of popular pilgrimages - East and West, past and present, religious and 'secular - ranging from Shikoku (Japan), to Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Kosovo (Yugoslavia), Glastonbury, Anfield (UK), Flanders fields, Graceland and military pilgrimages in the USA. The book asks in what ways all these can be called pilgrimages and what their relation is to tourism and to entertainment, highlighting the enduring popularity not only of pilgrimage but also of saints and heroes.
"Presents pilgrimage in a global and historical context. Using a wide range of examples, Reader explores how people take part in and experience their pilgrimages, and what they take back from their journeys, He concludes by examining why pilgrimages appear to be so popular in our increasingly secular age."--Front flap.
How do we understand mental health problems in their social context? A former BMA Medical Book of the Year award winner, this book provides a sociological analysis of major areas of mental health and illness. The book considers contemporary and historical aspects of sociology, social psychiatry, policy and therapeutic law to help students develop an in-depth and critical approach to this complex subject.New developments for the fifth edition include: Brand new chapter on prisons, criminal justice and mental health Expanded coverage of stigma, class and social networks Updated material on the Mental Capacity Act, Mental Health Act and the Deprivation of Liberty A classic in its field, this well established textbook offers a rich and well-crafted overview of mental health and illness unrivalled by competitors and is essential reading for students and professionals studying a range of medical sociology and health-related courses. It is also highly suitable for trainee mental health workers in the fields of social work, nursing, clinical psychology and psychiatry. "Rogers and Pilgrim go from strength to strength! This fifth edition of their classic text is not only a sociology but also a psychology, a philosophy, a history and a polity. It combines rigorous scholarship with radical argument to produce incisive perspectives on the major contemporary questions concerning mental health and illness. The authors admirably balance judicious presentation of the range of available understandings with clear articulation of their own positions on key issues. This book is essential reading for everyone involved in mental health work." Christopher Dowrick, Professor of Primary Medical Care, University of Liverpool, UK "Pilgrim and Rogers have for the last twenty years given us the key text in the sociology of mental health and illness. Each edition has captured the multi-layered and ever changing landscape of theory and practice around psychiatry and mental health, providing an essential tool for teachers and researchers, and much loved by students for the dexterity in combining scope and accessibility. This latest volume, with its focus on community mental health, user movements criminal justice and the need for inter-agency working, alongside the more classical sociological critiques around social theories and social inequalities, demonstrates more than ever that sociological perspectives are crucial in the understanding and explanation of mental and emotional healthcare and practice, hence its audience extends across the related disciplines to everyone who is involved in this highly controversial and socially relevant arena." Gillian Bendelow, School of Law Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex, UK "From the classic bedrock studies to contemporary sociological perspectives on the current controversy over which scientific organizations will define diagnosis, Rogers and Pilgrim provide a comprehensive, readable and elegant overview of how social factors shape the onset and response to mental health and mental illness. Their sociological vision embraces historical, professional and socio-cultural context and processes as they shape the lives of those in the community and those who provide care; the organizations mandated to deliver services and those that have ended up becoming unsuitable substitutes; and the successful and unsuccessful efforts to improve the lives through science, challenge and law." Bernice Pescosolido, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Indiana University, USA
The Kanwar is India's largest annual religious pilgrimage. Millions of participants gather sacred water from the Ganga and carry it across hundreds of miles to dispense as offerings in Śiva shrines. These devotees--called bhola, gullible or fools, and seen as miscreants by many Indians--are mostly young, destitute men, who have been left behind in the globalizing economy. But for these young men, the ordeal of the pilgrimage is no foolish pursuit, but a means to master their anxieties and attest their good faith in unfavorable social conditions. Vikash Singh walked with the pilgrims of the Kanwar procession, and with this book, he highlights how the procession offers a social space where participants can prove their talents, resolve, and moral worth. Working across social theory, phenomenology, Indian metaphysics, and psychoanalysis, Singh shows that the pilgrimage provides a place in which participants can simultaneously recreate and prepare for the poor, informal economy and inevitable social uncertainties. In identifying with Śiva, who is both Master of the World and yet a pathetic drunkard, participants demonstrate their own sovereignty and desirability despite their stigmatized status. Uprising of the Fools shows how religion today is not a retreat into tradition, but an alternative forum for recognition and resistance within a rampant global neoliberalism.
Pilgrimage in Practice: Narration, Reclamation and Healing provides an interdisciplinary approach to the topic. It reveals many aspects of the practice of pilgrimage, from its nationalistic facets to its effect on economic development; from the impact of the internet to questions of globalization; from pilgrimage as protest to pilgrimage as creative expression in such media as film, art and literature. Perhaps best understood as a form of heritage tourism or tourism with a conscience, pilgrimage (as with touristic travel) contains a measure of transformation that is often deep and enduring, making it a fascinating area of study. Reviewing social justice in the context of pilgrimage and featuring a diverse collection of interdisciplinary voices from across the globe, this book is a rich collection of papers for researchers of pilgrimage and religious and heritage tourism.
Whether a pilgrimage centers around a place, a visionary individual, or a text, it brings widely diverse individuals and their beliefs, doctrines, and expectations into contact with each other. This important collection assesses the qualities and power of pilgrimage shrines as sites for accommodating various, often competing, meanings and practices, both among pilgrims and between shrine custodians and devotees. Contributors discuss the highly organized shrine at Lourdes and also the shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo in Sangiovannesi, Italy, where conflicting interests among townspeople and pilgrims have crystallized around the life and the remains, respectively, of a holy man. Other contributors consider the competing images of Jerusalem among pilgrims of various Christian faiths-Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Christian Zionist-and explore the unique attributes of shrines in Sri Lanka and Peru. A major advance in understanding the complexity of pilgrimage, Contesting the Sacred provides valuable insight into the process of exchange between human beings and the divine that gives pilgrimage its central rationale. John Eade's new introduction places the book's theoretical frame in the context of recent thinking and writing on pilgrimage and considers the impact of globalization and tourism on pilgrimage cults and sites.
Although research on contemporary pilgrimage has expanded considerably since the early 1990s, the conversation has largely been dominated by Anglophone researchers in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, and religious studies from the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Northern Europe. This volume challenges the hegemony of Anglophone scholarship by considering what can be learned from different national, linguistic, religious and disciplinary traditions, with the aim of fostering a global exchange of ideas. The chapters outline contributions made to the study of pilgrimage from a variety of international and methodological contexts and discuss what the ‘metropolis’ can learn from these diverse perspectives. While the Anglophone study of pilgrimage has largely been centred on and located within anthropological contexts, in many other linguistic and academic traditions, areas such as folk studies, ethnology and economics have been highly influential. Contributors show that in many traditions the study of ‘folk’ beliefs and practices (often marginalized within the Anglophone world) has been regarded as an important and central area which contributes widely to the understanding of religion in general, and pilgrimage, specifically. As several chapters in this book indicate, ‘folk’ based studies have played an important role in developing different methodological orientations in Poland, Germany, Japan, Hungary, Italy, Ireland and England. With a highly international focus, this interdisciplinary volume aims to introduce new approaches to the study of pilgrimage and to transcend the boundary between center and periphery in this emerging discipline.
