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"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].
Focusing on places, objects, bodies, narratives and ritual spaces where religion may be found or inscribed, the authors reveal the role of religion in contesting rights to places, to knowledge and to property, as well as access to resources. Through analyses of specific historical processes in terms of responses to socio-economic and political change, the chapters consider implicitly or explicitly the problematic relation between science (including social sciences and anthropology in particular) and religion, and how this connects to the new religious globalisation of the twenty-first century. Their ethnographies highlight the embodiment of religion and its location in landscapes, built spaces and religious sites which may be contested, physically or ideologically, or encased in memory and often in silence. Taken together, they show the importance of religion as a resource to the believers: a source of solace, spiritual comfort and self-willed submission.
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 me...
This 2000 book analyses the revival of charismatic Protestant Christianity as an example of globalization. Simon Coleman shows that, along with many social movements, these religious conservatives are negotiating their own interpretations of global and postmodern processes. They are constructing an evangelical arena of action and meaning within the liminal, chaotic space of the global. The book examines globalization not only as a social process, but also as an embodied practice involving forms of language and ritualized movement. Charismatic Christianity is presented through its material culture - art, architecture and consumer products - as well as its rhetoric and theology. The book provides an account of the incorporation of electronic media such as television, videos and the Internet into Christian worship. Issues relating to the conduct of fieldwork in contexts of globalization are raised in an account which is also a major ethnography of a Faith ministry.
Focusing on Christian pilgrimage to locales as far flung as Lourdes, Italy, Jerusalem, Sri Lanka, and Peru, this 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.
"This book offers a new theoretical framework for exploring contemporary pilgrimage, exploring examples ranging from the Hajj to the Camino, and arguing that pilgrimage activity should be understood not solely as going to, staying at, and leaving a sacred place, but also as occurring in apparently mundane or domestic times, places, and practices"--
The Virgin Mary continues to attract devotees to her images and shrines. In Moved by Mary, anthropologists, geographers and historians explore how people and groups around the world identify and join with Mary in their struggle against social injustice, and how others mobilize Mary to impose ideas and rules and legitimize acts of violence and suppression.Far from an outdated practice of little relevance to the modern world, Marian pilgrimage expresses the deep and urgent concerns of a wide range of people. With examples of Marian pilgrimages in Europe, America, South America, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Moved by Mary explores the ways in which men and women of different ages and religious, political, social-economic and ethnic backgrounds empower themselves to deal with modern-day issues with Mary's help. The ethnographic cases reveal the cultural and devotional variation of Marian pilgrimage, but also global similarities. Collectively, the contributors to Moved by Mary show how in many places religion dramatically suffuses everyday life.
"Originally presented at a workshop entitled 'The anthropology of friendship', held at the London School of Economics in June 2006"--Acknowledgments.
This book explores the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, tracing their development and their variety. Hocken shows how these movements of the Holy Spirit, both outside the mainline Churches and as renewal currents within the Churches, can be understood as mutually challenging and as complementary. The similarities and the differences are significant. The Messianic Jewish movement possesses elements of both, the new and the old. Addressing the issues of modernity and globalisation, this book explores major phenomenon in contemporary Christianity including the relationship between the new churches and entrepreneurial capitalism.