1st Edition
Approaching Pilgrimage Methodological Issues Involved in Researching Routes, Sites, and Practices
This volume seeks to explore pilgrimage studies as a distinctive sub-field of research, and to define its key methodological approaches and problems. Pilgrimage studies has long been influenced by such academic disciplines as anthropology and this volume considers the new insights that pilgrimage studies can offer to these disciplinary fields. Bringing together experienced pioneers and a younger generation of pilgrimage scholars, the chapters address the directions contemporary pilgrimage research is taking and how it is developing into the future. Covering topics like digital pilgrimage, multi-site pilgrimages, and long-term ethnography, with examples from Europe, the Middle East, and Japan, this is an important resource for all researchers engaging with pilgrimage.
1 Approaching Pilgrimage: Introduction
Mario Katić and John Eade
Part I Time and Pilgrimage
2 The Method of Participant Observation, Communication and Changing Pilgrimage Practices
John Eade
3 Twists, Turns and Changing directions: reflections on long-term studies on a Japanese pilgrimage path
Ian Reader
Part II Positionality and Experiencing Pilgrimage
4 Displacing religion in Greek Cypriot Pilgrimages to the Turkish-occupied Monastery of Apostolos Andreas in Cyprus
Evgenia Mesaritou
5 Walking the Sutra: A Semiotic Theory of Pilgrimage
Tatsuma Padoan
Part III Multi-Site and Multi-Role Ethnography and Pilgrimage
6 Researching the Baptism Sites along the Jordan River – A Multi-sited Ethnography of Adjacent Places
Lior Chen
7 Multi-sited and multi-role research of Bosnian Croat pilgrimages
Mario Katić
Part IV Methodological Techniques and Tactics
8 Epistemological and ethical challenges of gathering and interpreting personal prayers from the archives
Mirela Hrovatin
9 The Visual Anthropology of Pilgrimages: Exploring the Making of Films and Photographs
Manoël Pénicaud
10 The Ethnography of Hasidic Pilgrimage in the Digital Age
Gabi Abramac
11 Studying Mecca elsewhere. Exploring the meanings of the hajj for Muslims in Morocco and the Netherlands
Kholoud Al-Ajarma and Marjo Buitelaar
12 Concluding Thoughts
Simon Coleman
Biography
Mario Katić is Associate Professor at the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology at the University of Zadar.
John Eade is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Roehampton and Visiting Professor at Toronto University.
