Approaching Pilgrimage Chapter

Pilgrimage and Academic Journeys, 2019

Since the late 1980s there has been a massive increase in academic research and writing about diverse types of pilgrimage (religious, spiritual, secular etc) and hybrid forms (pilgrimage tourism). Yet in the rapid growth of pilgrimage studies relatively little attention has been paid to the researcher’s personal engagement. This is surprising given the influence of Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture where Victor and Edith Turner make clear their commitment as Roman Catholics and Edith Turner’s subsequent writing on Catholic pilgrimage as well as the detailed discussion by Jill Dubisch of her position as a female ethnographer in various ethnographic studies (Dubisch 1995, Michalowski and Dubisch 2001). I seek here to fill this gap by drawing on my experience as a voluntary worker at the famous Roman Catholic shrine of Lourdes in France which I visited every year for a week between 1968 and 1992 and then again from 2014. Since my most intense experience was working as a helper in the baths, I examine the changing procedures concerning bathing and my own sensuous experience of bathing. More generally, Lourdes provides a fine case study of the role played by water in the relationship between the material and human world.

This paper overlaps with another unpublished paper which I uploaded a few days ago. It combines both a discussion of pilgrimage studies, in general, and Lourdes, in particular. I draw on my first period of working at Lourdes, i.e. between 1968 and 1992, but I also add a section on the economic dimension of pilgrimage through a reflection on the career of a hotel owner, and a good friend who was also a central figure within the pilgrimage confraternity (the Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes). Religion and business can work together!

Pilgrimage is one of the oldest and most basic forms of population mobility known to human society, and its political, social, cultural and economic implications have always been, and continue to be, substantial. This study aims to examine key issues, arguments and conceptualizations in the scholarship on pilgrimage in order to better understand how it has changed over the years. The findings indicate a shift to a postmodern approach within the study of pilgrimage, particularly with regard to the increasingly obfuscated boundary between tourism and pilgrimage reflected in the terms secular pilgrimage and religious pilgrimage. Dedifferentiation has penetrated the scholarship in terms of its features and its multidisciplinary treatment by researchers.

Groniek, 2018

2018

CATHERINE PAGE LAGARDE: Pilgrimage in the Modern World: Collected Stories (Under the direction of Dr. Matthew Bondurant) This thesis seeks to creatively explore various aspects of the modern pilgrimage in a collection of two nonfictional personal essays and one fictional short story, all of which are thematically linked. It is a study of faith, doubt, journey, and their intersection and manifestation in the modern world. It is inspired both by personal experiences as well as the works of various authors, most notably Carlos Eire, Walter Macken, Dodie Smith, Sharon Creech, Sigrid Undset, St. Thomas More, and St. Thomas Aquinas. This work seeks to give modern context and understanding to traditional understandings of “pilgrimage,” as described in The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Far from changing or turning away from this traditional understanding of the word, this work serves instead to uphold it within a modern context.

Religion, Pilgrimage and Tourism (4 volume reprint series with Routledge)

Introduction For as long as human beings have existed they have been interested in travel. Particular homelands and cultural norms have always been constructed with reference to, or contrasted with, the lands and habits of ‘the Other’. Implicit in this statement is the notion that some places are more special (perhaps sacred) than others, and this is the core of the intimate relationship between human beings, place and travel, and religion. The field encompassed by this four-volume reprint series ‘Religion, Pilgrimage, and Tourism’ is thus vast. At the least controversial end of the spectrum are those incidences of travel which are sanctified by the so-called ‘world religions’ (Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam), such as the Hajj, the Camino de Santiago, the Shikoku henro, the Kumbh Mela, and the hope expressed at the annual Passover meal, ‘next year in Jerusalem’. However, the field extends far beyond these ‘official’ journeys, and encompasses the nomadic wanderings of Australian Aboriginal peoples through their ancestral lands, travel to participate in Native American potlatch gatherings, the assembly of Ancient Greeks every four years to honour Zeus Olympios at the Olympic Games, and the modern Druids who perform rituals at Stonehenge at the midsummer solstice. Yet beyond the immediately religious lies journeying that is motivated by individual ‘spiritual’ needs, which may involve traditional sacred routes and sites (for example, Westerners going to Indian ashrams), and radically eclectic, non-traditional pathways (for example, Wagner aficionados who travel to experience productions of the Ring Cycle and fans of Elvis Presley who visit his home, Graceland). In the post-religious milieu of the twenty-first century, almost any journey to almost any site may be religious and/or spiritual, a journey ‘redolent with meaning’ (Digance 2006).

Despite the different types of pilgrimage (internal, moral, and place pilgrimage), they all involve movement and an engagement with the sacred. Anthropological research has focused mainly on place pilgrimage and this entry begins by outlining the social and economic processes which have encouraged the growth of this form of pilgrimage since the 1960s. It then proceeds to discuss both religious and nonreligious place pilgrimage around the world and illustrates these pilgrimages through particular examples. Key changes in the anthropological study of pilgrimage since the 1970s are considered next and the entry concludes by outlining two promising avenues which researchers are exploring: (1) alternatives to the dominant constructivist approach; and (2) attempts to break down the boundaries between Anglophone and non‐Anglophone pilgrimage research.

Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2018

Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 2017

Pilgrimage is often seen as a physical journey to a sacred destination fixed by custom, destination-centred and broadly penitential in tone. The work of anthropologists in the last century broadened definitions to consider pilgrimage, across a range of faiths, in terms of a journey of transition and formation of identity. More recent historical scholarship has critiqued the longer development of our idea of pilgrimage, as well as its theological structures and markers. This diachronic approach to pilgrimage has also considered its origins with respect to early Christian conceptions of the life of the Christian in society and found resonances for patterns of lay pilgrimage in early monastic ideas. Such historical-theological dimension of research into pilgrimage provides a useful platform from which we can interrogate the idea of 'faith tourism' or 'pilgrimage tourism'. Many people of faith visit particular churches and holy sites to invoke their historic dimensions as well as to see what is presently on such sites. Visitors seek to re-enact historical narratives in the performance of certain pilgrimages and liturgies associated with them. Historical studies of theology thus may identify narratives that drive choices of action in pilgrimage. An historical reflection on pilgrimage may also be productive in widening definitions of pilgrimage for future development and may offer ideas for development of resources for the traveller.