The field of pilgrimage studies has greatly expanded in recent years, with scholarship being produced on “secular” pilgrimages (Margry 2008), the political economy of pilgrimage (Coleman and Eade 2018a), the relationship of pilgrimage with tourism (Badone and Roseman 2004; Mesaritou and Coleman 2018), guiding (Mesaritou, Coleman and Eade 2016), the market (Reader 2014), politics (Eade and Katic 2014; Barkan and Barkey 2015), gender and nation (Jansen and Notermans 2012), and so on. In this special issue we extend the scope of debate still further by looking at processes of production of knowledge and ignorance that unfold within as well as beyond pilgrimage sites. Such an examination illustrates the labor, politics, and power relations involved in the construction of sacred centers but also the ways in which the latter relate to other places where pilgrims learn to practice their religion, and live their everyday lives.
Pilgrimage beyond Pilgrimage Sites: Everyday Religiosity and the Role of Embodied Religious Knowledge
Pilgrimage is a particularly fertile field for examining processes of knowledge and ignorance production. For the traveler, it often involves movement from the familiar to the less familiar, while also pitching everyday awareness of the world against experiences of exceptional revelation. These factors raise questions regarding ways in which knowledge of pilgrimage is gained prior to the pilgrimage itself, as well as sustained after going. They ask how potential pilgrims are socialized and educated by others about the practice, but also what sense is made of their experience. Central to these processes of meaning making are pilgrims’ embodied (Mitchell 2004: 27, 2001: 9; Nikolaisen 2004: 101; Sørensen and Rebay-Salisbury 2013), experiential (Holmes-Rodman 2004: 27), and habitual knowledge of religion.
Looking at the ways in which British Mormons relate “to various places in (Mormon) America,” Mitchell (2001: 10) shows how they draw upon knowledge acquired in the context of previous “religious” experiences that are seemingly unrelated to pilgrimage, including “bodily remembrances” of testimony meetings and engagements with their theology's “objects, buildings and narratives” (2001: 9). Similarly, Bajc (2006: 102), drawing on the work of Halbwachs (1992), argues that sacred texts and beliefs may form master narratives that combine powerfully with ritual practices. As Bajc (2006) notes of her own work in Israel-Palestine, these narratives, which articulate pilgrims’ “collective memory,” are “a kind of prior knowledge” that makes the pilgrims “able to respond to and interpret the framing” (ibid.: 110) performed by group leaders once in Jerusalem. Both of these explorations, therefore, connect pilgrimage centers with the places where people live and worship, illustrating the porous character of the boundaries that are often drawn between them.
“Ignoring” Religion: A Note on Scholars’ and Pilgrims’ Concerns
While knowledge of religion—propositional and/or embodied—may be important in pilgrimage, its possession and significance should not, however, be taken for granted. Despite pilgrimage's resurgence, the growth in those carrying out the practice is not necessarily associated with people knowing more about formal ritual per se—in fact, it may signal rather the opposite trend. Looking at the Great Jubilee Pilgrimage (of 2000), Cipriani (2006), for example, shows that even when pilgrims realize that their knowledge of Jubilee practice is unclear, they may conclude that I did not think about it, really. … It doesn't seem to be so important (2006: 228). Ignorance in this sense is not treated as problematic since it is not felt to obstruct the experience. The unproblematic character of religious ignorance for some pilgrims illustrates the ways in which scholars’ interests may differ from those of their interlocutors. As researchers we must become aware not only of what the latter know, but also of what they do not—and do not wish—to be aware of. As Kormina (2010) shows in her examination of Russia Orthodox bus pilgrimages, knowledge related to a religious tradition may not be seen by pilgrims as a pre-condition for feelings of belonging. In Russian Orthodox Christianity, increasingly characterized by “belonging without believing” (Kormina 2010: 282) very broadly religious practices such as kissing holy icons or bathing in holy springs act for many pilgrims as “a substitute for even minimal religious knowledge” (Kormina 2010: 281); even unbaptized people with almost no knowledge of church liturgy “could convince themselves that they were living out the authentic life of an Orthodox Christian” (2010: 282).
The fact that the lack of propositional knowledge about religious ideas and practices does not prevent people from identifying themselves as part of a certain religious tradition is also illustrated by Grant (2011: 656). He notes that although there is evidence that, during the closing years of the former Soviet Union, most Muslims throughout the Caucasus did not even have basic knowledge of Islam's five pillars, in the newly formed republic of Azerbaijan the great majority of Azeris did identify themselves as Muslims. Whatever the reasons for this identification (see Grant 2011: 657), it illustrates that feelings of belonging to a certain religious tradition are not predicated upon knowledgeable participation in that tradition. In fact, ignorance about religion (or pilgrimage as a religious practice) may lead to innovative ways of engaging with religious and ritual forms (see Højer 2010: 149 and Chua 2015: 250), as well as to the need for competent religious performers, who can act on behalf of others.
Post-Soviet contexts, such as the ones in which Kormina (2010) and Grant (2011) work, raise the issue of ignorance as the loss of what Kormina and Luehrmann (2018: 398–399) call “habitual expertise.” Citing research on Christianity in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts, they make the important point that even in such cases of “crisis of competence,” “traditional forms” are not dissolved. What happens instead is that “new performers” appear as a consequence of the disruption of multiple hierarchies that were previously in place (2018: 406). Focusing on Russian Orthodox Christianity they present “prayer as practical competence,” (2018: Abstract) which, by virtue of its ability to be “shared and delegated, … extend[s] the reach of a religious institution into everyday life,” (2018: 395) while also allowing “lay people [to] … establish themselves as competent religious practitioners” (2018: 396). Kormina and Luehrmann's (2018) view on prayer can fruitfully be extended to the analysis of pilgrimages that are performed by someone in place of someone else. Such an extension helps us raise the question of divisions of labor within pilgrimage practices.
Ignorance as loss can also be explored in contexts where religious traditions have been interrupted after conflict and displacement. Such historical events effect radical transformations through which reality is understood and they can lead not only to the actual loss, but also to the “sense of loss” of “religious knowledge, places, objects and experts.” (Chua 2015: 249–250, her emphasis) This indicates the variety of ways in which we can understand ignorance, a point made by Chua (2015: 249) in her review of the anthropological literature on religious and ritual ignorance.
Non-“Religious” Forms of Knowing and Ignoring in Pilgrimage
Religious and ritual forms of knowledge and ignorance are not the only types of knowledge that are relevant to pilgrimage. Pilgrimage sites are made up of and/or produce varieties of knowledge and ignorance that do not necessary relate to ritual or religion in any conventional sense; historical, spatial/geographical, cultural, demographic, and administrative knowledge may all become relevant and important for different reasons, at different times. Often connected to specific features of pilgrimage sites such as their location and historic, aesthetic, and artistic qualities, as well as to wider processes such as those of touristification and heritagization, the relative significance of these different knowledge forms is contingent; when, how, why, and for whom they become important will depend on the wider economic, socio-spatial, and temporal frameworks within which the pilgrimage is situated.
Furthermore, the different knowledge forms produced, circulated, ignored, or concealed in and through pilgrimage sites and practices may contribute to the formation of hierarchies within the pilgrimage through the creation of the need for mediation. Studies of guiding by FJackie Feldman (2007) and Vida Bajc (2007), for example, have indicated the importance of the guides’ historical and geographical “knowledge of the Land” (Bajc 2007: 402, 399; Feldman 2007: 356) in shaping the spiritual experience. This knowledge is felt to be important by the pilgrims who wish to experience (biblical) events relating to their religion in the places where these are thought to have taken place (Feldman 2007: 355). Non-religious knowledge, in this case, enables the enactment of knowledge related to a religious tradition in ways that blend the two.
Diversification of Visiting Crowds and Challenges to Shrine Authorities
The different knowledge forms that make up or/and are produced by pilgrimage may also contribute to the diversification of visiting crowds. The diversification of shrine visitors links to the character of pilgrimage as a practice that signifies religious engagement without requiring it. It may also be fostered by the ways in which pilgrimage activities are organized. In the context of the “prayer walks centring on the medieval keeills in the Isle of Man,” Maddrell et al. (2015: 131) for example, shows how “local historical knowledge and narratives” (2015: 148) are deployed within an annual “week of prayer walks” (2015: 135) by those involved in its direction and maintenance. Talks on local history (2015: 146) that are given during the Praying the Keeills (2015: 140) often appeal to “those interested in educational leisure rather than spiritual engagement” (2015: 146).
The range of potential shrine visitors is also enlarged by non-religious agents such as the media and the “civic and regional authorities, including tourist offices … travel companies … [that] have reshaped the ways people perform pilgrimages,” while also disseminating knowledge and “images that influenced the ways in which pilgrims view pilgrimage sites” (Reader 2014: 25, see also Reader 2014: 171–186). Commenting upon the rising devotion to Saint Nicholas (Bari, Italy) Laviosa (2009) for example, notes how the authorities of the region of Apulia manage and promote “large ecumenical pilgrimages to the saint's shrine” (Laviosa 2009: 207).
The various ways in which pilgrimage are constructed and promoted, as well as the differently motivated crowds that pilgrimage sites attract, pose challenges to the religious authorities managing sacred sites. Shrine authorities have to deal with and cater for differently motivated visitors as well as visitors of different cultural backgrounds (Nolan and Nolan 1992). They also face the challenge of transmitting religious and ritual knowledge as well as “educating” pilgrims regarding religious dogmas and ritual practices (see Eade 2017). Demographic, biopolitical knowledge about the populations visiting shrines is therefore essential to site administrators and those governing regions and states in which pilgrimages take place. As Nancy Frey notes in relation to Compostela, statistical data gathered along the Camino produce knowledge about who and why participates in the pilgrimage while also “illustrat[ing] how bureaucracy manages to work its way into pilgrims’ experiences” (1998: 28). Questionnaires, record keeping of pilgrims’ numbers, inquiries into their motives and modes of travelling (see Frey 1998: 28–29) can all be seen in Foucault's (1977/1995) terms as ways of “ordering of a given multiplicity” (1977/1995: 149), of identifying and therefore distinguishing, controlling and disciplining the pilgrims by producing categories that carry with them moral judgments such as those of the “tourist” and the “pilgrim.” Through these categories the very notion of the “sacred” is constructed in ways that frame the actions of those who visit the site and desire to be considered “valid” pilgrims (see also Caidi, this volume). The type of demographic knowledge produced by shrine managers may therefore be seen in terms of a “micro-physics of power” (Foucault 1977/1995: 26).
As well as having to know their constituencies, shrine managers also have to “negotiate the precarious boundaries between religious practice and professional administration, and sometimes even entrepreneurship” (Coleman 2015b: 74), especially in those contexts such as cathedrals that attract worshipers as well as tourists (ibid.). They are often involved in “secular” promotional activities that aim to “attract pilgrims” (Reader 2014: 3–4, 25) and may set up administrative structures and foundations through which to handle donations (see Terzidou et al. 2008: 119 on “The Panhellenic Holy Foundation of Our Lady of the Annunciation of Tinos”). They may also “establis[h] … procedures to reduce conflict between worshippers and secularly oriented visitors” (Nolan and Nolan 1992: 73) or between “devotees from different communities” (ibid.: 71–72).
Kormina (2010: 283) notes the “‘business’ attitude” of large Russian monasteries that “monopolize pilgrimages to the sites they control,” “provid[ing] their own pilgrimage services and organiz[ing] special courses for people who want to work as pilgrim guides.” Talking about the various actors that comprise “[t]he … market for religious travel in Russia” she also notes the existence of “diocesan pilgrimage operators [who] have offices in the diocese administration” and who “double as specialists in heritage tourism.” (ibid.). Other “[r]eligious organizations” may also “organize tours” to sacred sites (see Vukonić 1992: 89 on Medjugorje), thereby shaping pilgrimage and religious tourism, “powerful … industr[ies]” that are sometimes directed by churches (see Laviosa 2009: 207 on the Russian Orthodox Church).
Knowledge, Ignorance and Pilgrimage's ‘Semiotic’ and ‘Social Risks’
The diversity of shrine visitors and knowledge forms produced at and by pilgrimage sites raises questions concerning different types of semiotic risks (Coleman 2015a) involved in people's participation. Such risks refer to the danger of encountering semiotic forms—religious and ritual—that entrap skeptics or non-believers within non-desired forms of participation (ibid.: 162). These dangers may give rise to forms of systematic ignoring, through which pilgrims dissociate themselves from knowledge of certain signs, rituals, or even people. In her study of the Christian Bidayuhs youth of Malaysian Borneo, for example, Liana Chua looks at the ways in which “knowing and relationality” connect (2015: 252), showing that even a fragmented knowledge of pre-Christian “rituals and practices” (2009: 334) is capable of building “unwanted relations with ‘old’ spirits,” as well as keeping these spirits and their associated dangers alive (2009: 342, 343). Chua's (2009) analysis points to both semiotic and social risks: encountering bird omens alongside entering into relations with older spirits, for example. In this context, ignorance is not merely a loss of knowledge but also an empowering (2009: 341), enabling (2009: 345), and defensive (ibid: 343) mechanism through which people deal “with the dangers of an ‘impurely’ Christian world” (2009: 341) and the diverse risks it engenders.
Chua's discussion of the many different forms that ignorance can take, for instance, “passive ignorance (never having learned anything), partial but innocuous knowledge (the fact that omen birds exist, but not how to identify them), willful ignorance (the active rejection of knowledge), and strategic attempts to ‘forget’ what is already known” (2009: 343), can be fruitfully explored in pilgrimage sites, especially those “shared” by adherents of different religions. Both “semiotic” and “social risks” (Coleman 2015a) can endanger pilgrims’ “ontological security”1 (Giddens 1984) by leading them to question their sense of selves, perceptions, pre-conceptions, and world views. As noted, these risks may also lead pilgrims to (dis-)engage with “others” in multiple ways including “avoidances, mimickings, avowals, and disavowals” (Bowman 2012, 2015: 4).
Bowman has shown how pilgrims’ guides may exclude Palestinian areas from their routes, thereby rendering Palestinians invisible and classifying them as dangerous to pilgrims (1992: 130). He has also demonstrated how, in cases of shrines where people from different religious affiliations mix without sharing a “quotidian experience” (2016: 265), groups “‘enclav[e]’ themselves into mobile units flowing past and alongside each other without either engagement or significant recognition.” They are, therefore, “able … to insulate themselves from others” (ibid.: 266) and from potentially “dangerous” interpretations of the site (2016: 267) confirming in this way their pre-formed views and expectations (2016: 266). Bowman's analysis illustrates how ignoring (a different state from simply being unaware of something) and editing out can confirm the previous knowledge that informs people's expectations by preventing the acquisition of new knowledge in situ.
In a broadly similar vein, the “enclave” is explored by Feldman through his analysis of trips made by Israeli youth to the Holocaust death camps in Poland (2002: 84). Designed to inscribe upon such youth feelings “of belonging to an egalitarian collective” the boundaries of which are “defined, but … threatened” (2002: 91), these trips divide the world into “us” and “them” (2002: 92), dealing with “aspects of the past” that may possibly challenge this distinction through a variety of practices that resemble those of “enclaved religious communities” analyzed by Mary Douglas (1993 cited in Feldman 2002: 92). As a consequence, the current reality of Poland is ignored and the country itself is presented as a threatening place (Feldman 2002: 98). Interactions with Poles are avoided, even if they are part of the local Jewish community (2002: 101).2 These forms of ignoring are crucial to maintaining the “visits’ taxonomy” (2002: 103).
The studies by Bowman [1992; 2012 and 2015] and Feldman (2002) highlight the role of guides in both presenting and editing out knowledge, thus encouraging possibilities of ignoring the “other” in the consolidation of in-group identity. The “other” is also bypassed “through selective excavation, display, and signposting of certain remnants of the past, often at the expense of members of other religious or national communities” (Feldman 2007: 355). Pilgrimage as a medium through which to connect as well as ignore “certain aspects of the past” is also explored by Coleman (2012) in his study of the pilgrimage site of Walsingham, which he presents as a “theatre of memory,” on the various stages of which multiple “images and experiences of the past both clash and merge” (2012: 2).
The Articles
The articles in this issue explore many of the issues raised thus far. How is knowledge about pilgrimage acquired before and sustained after the journey by pilgrims (Caidi)? How is pre-existing knowledge of religious traditions assumed, employed, suggested, and drawn upon by organizers of pilgrimage and pilgrims (Zandi)? What is the role of materiality (Luz) or the lack of it (Zandi) in knowledge/“truth” production processes? What is the role of the mediatized gaze in producing different kinds of religious and non-religious knowledge relevant to the pilgrimage and how do the gaze, knowledge, and the body connect (Eade)? What is the importance of experiential knowledge and living memory of pilgrimage sites (Luz) and of other places which, although linked to pilgrimage, do not directly relate to it (Mesaritou)? What are the various types of risks and stakes involved in knowing and/or ignoring the ways in which a pilgrimage should be practiced (Caidi) or the landscape in which the pilgrimage site is situated (Mesaritou)?
By examining such questions, the articles expand our scope beyond pilgrimage sites and journeys, as well as beyond religion as exclusive realm of action (cf. Coleman 2002: 363). Such extensions of scope have an impact on the kind of knowledge we are obliged to seek as ethnographers; the questions we should ask, what we should study and why, the way we mark out our fields, the kind of data we collect and how we analyze them—even the theoretical frameworks to be deployed.
We start this issue with Nadia Caidi's contribution, which focuses on the contexts in which people prepare for their journeys. Looking at pilgrimage through “the lens of everyday life information practices,” she focuses on the Hajj, illustrating how people actively seek various types of reliable information (on topics ranging from spirituality to practical logistics) from different sources in order to be able to “get it right” (Coleman 2014: S287; Caidi, this issue). Looking at the different ways in which future pilgrims collect and/or avoid information about the pilgrimage, Caidi shows how anxieties over the “correct” practicing of pilgrimage shape the information sources they choose in preparation for their journeys. She also examines “post-Hajj learning,” noting how in their attempt to adjust to the return “home,” pilgrims “consum[e] media content” that allows them to revisit and relive their pilgrimage experience while also sharing information, stories, and photographs with others. In the latter, they frame and edit the information they disseminate, ignoring certain aspects of the pilgrimage site and therefore contributing to the “reproduc[tion] [of] prevailing beliefs and narratives.” As a consequence they actively extend the pilgrimage site, blurring the boundaries between home and away and becoming active and knowledgeable agents in forming the pilgrimage, which is presented by Caidi as an “information landscape.” By exploring pilgrims’ information practices prior to, as well as after, their pilgrimage journeys, she illustrates the importance of extending our scope to include not only the home environments of pilgrims but also the non-religious practices in which pilgrims engage outside pilgrimage centers per se.
Our second article also deals with the role of (assumed) preexisting knowledge. The Rahian-e Noor (RN) tours that Mahshid Zandi focuses upon—a kind of religio-political “pilgrimage”—are not only modelled upon “pilgrimage and commemorative rituals” of Shiism but also explicitly recall its “collective memories” even if in a fragmented and incohesive manner. The RN bases the tours on a “theological framework,” presupposing different pre-acquired forms of knowledge to which it exposes tour participants in the spaces of the battlefields. Remarking that “knowledge without enactment, disqualifies the religiosity of a nominal Muslim,” Zandi argues that “ultimate knowledge is interpreted [by the RN] as putting the already-known-words into deeds.” “[Μ]artyrdom” is, in this context, introduced in the tours as “the most ideal form of putting knowledge into practice.” We thus see how the war battlefields are transformed into a didactic space where religion is invoked for the formation of political subjects and the promotion of a “‘revolutionary’ ethos.”
An interesting feature of the battlefields Zandi studies is that they are literally void of almost any materiality. Consistent with this emptiness is the fact that the narrative provided on the tours is “geographically non-specific, historically inconsistent, and usually achronological;” the time of war is dismembered and “its geography and events are compartmentalized and incoherent.” Material and discursive voids may be thought to engage and even entrap visitors in interpretative and imaginative acts that require the mobilization of the previous knowledge “pilgrims” are assumed to have. Writing on “televangelical preachers,” Harding (2000: 86), for example, talks of “interpretative gap[s] or excess,” which she defines as, “a silence or an anomaly in a story that incites the imagination by failing to meet expectations”; to fill these gaps one needs to have knowledge of a religious tradition and also put this knowledge in motion. Similarly, Zandi talks of “the graves of anonymous martyrs … [as] a space of imagination for the visitors” and of the tours as a space of encounter between tour participants and semiotic forms that they are expected to interpret.
In striking contrast to such voids, the site that Nimrod Luz explores in this issue is abundant with a materiality that is deployed to legitimate new readings of its significance. Focusing upon a former Muslim location, Luz raises the issue of concealment and deliberate ignoring of the presence of the “other” by showing how material traces of previous “Muslim presence” were erased in the process of converting a deserted Muslim site into a Jewish one. These material transformations, which included the refashioning of the compound as well as the addition of various objects, follow the conventions of established, regional Jewish pilgrimage centers, which thereby lent their legitimizing capital, and were accompanied by “new mythologies of the site, [and] specific interpretations of historical texts.”
Arguing that the materiality of pilgrimage sites can validate the mythologies constructed around them, Luz presents it as an agent “for (a certain type of) knowledge to become conventional and accepted as true in social circles”—or rather in certain social circles but not in others. While non-local pilgrims, unfamiliar with the site's past, do not care to know “the ‘true’ nature of the place,” accepting without reservation “the new narrative as true,” various religious as well as secular voices coming from Tiberias contest the processes of “signification” unfolding at the site, often on the basis of different concerns. Showing how dissenting voices come even from local Jews “who knew the site before its transformation,” Luz is able to demonstrate how traces of presence not only take a material existence but can also take the form of a memory. Although the traces of the previous Muslim presence were concealed through the re-materialization of the site, they still exist in the memory of the locals, who recall the failed Muslim attempts to resist the Jewish rebranding.
The importance of living history and memory is also illustrated by Evgenia Mesaritou, who focuses on Greek Cypriots’ return pilgrimages to the Christian-Orthodox monastery of Apostolos Andreas, in the Turkish occupied area of Karpasia (Cyprus). The revival of the pilgrimage in conditions of ongoing conflict—importantly occurring within the life span of the generation that was forced to abandon the practice owing to the Turkish invasion and subsequent occupation of the island's northern part—brings to the fore issues of memory, “post-memory” (Hirsch 2008) and first-hand, experiential knowledge.
Situating Greek Cypriot pilgrimages within the larger framework of seeing “our places,” Mesaritou shows how (re-)acquaintance with Cyprus's occupied areas (temporal as well as spatial) is the type of knowledge most commonly sought out by pilgrims also highlighting the stakes of not knowing or forgetting may be for the island's future. Pilgrimage in this framework becomes a medium through which the memory and post-memory of the pilgrimage and therefore the occupied areas is realized. “[K]nowledge … as an awareness of what has been lost or forgotten” (Chua 2015: 254) and we could add of what could be “lost or forgotten”—in this case related not so much to religion but rather to Cyprus’ history and geography. A loss of knowledge of the past (personal as well as collective) and of the places in which this past and expectation for the future are rooted, is ultimately experienced as a fear of the loss of Cyprus itself. Knowing and remembering in this context are seen as empowering people, and especially the youth, by motivating them to “fight” for the re-unification of their country.
By showing that the knowledge practices and productions involved in what can conventionally be seen as religious pilgrimages do not always have to do with religion and ritual—a point that an exclusive focus on “religion” would obscure—Mesaritou illustrates the ways in which pilgrimage becomes embedded in everyday socio-political concerns. At the same time, she alerts us to the importance of looking at other forms of non-religious knowledge involved in pilgrimage practices.
The experiential knowledge acquired by Mesaritou's interlocutors through seeing “our places” relates to gazing, which John Eade explores in relation to “knowledge and the body” in his contribution to this issue. Focusing upon Lourdes, he explores the ways in which the introduction of technologies such as the camera have shaped the site's representation, while also producing a variety of (mediatized) gazes (photographic and cinematic) through which different kinds of knowledge are created.
As Eade shows, the object of these different gazes in the past was often the “‘sick’ body” exposed to the gaze of “‘healthy’ visitors” by becoming the center around which public rituals were structured at Lourdes. Photographs, for example, were initially used to record as well as “prove” claims of miraculous healings. The “sick” body was also frequently the focus of the “cinematic gaze,” which helped to promote the shrine by raising its popularity. In time, the camera “enabled ‘ordinary’ people (‘healthy’ and ‘sick’) to exercise their own agency” (Eade, this issue), posing moral dilemmas for shrine officials as to where and when photography should be allowed. Eade notes how shrine administrators attempted to control the pilgrims’ “perspective” through the spatial organization of the shrine, which secluded some spaces such as the spring from public view, and through the placement of signs prohibiting the taking of photographs.
By “disciplin[ing] the gaze, protecting the privacy of the pilgrims and prevent[ing] dissemination of data through modern technologies, social media etc.” shrine administrators attempted to control knowledge produced and disseminated in relation to Lourdes where the prominence the body had acquired was accompanied by concerns over “unacceptable physical contact inside the sanctuary as well as ‘inappropriate’ use of its communications network.” Such concerns have impacted the ways in which direct gazes have been dealt with by some pilgrims, therefore shaping the interactions between bathers and helpers at the shrine. At the same time, concerns over terrorist attacks, which were spurred by the murder of a priest in Normandy after a terrorist attack in Nice, introduced surveillance practices seen by Eade “as a form of [concealed] gazing.”
The examination of different forms of mediatized gazes present at Lourdes—the gaze of “healthy” visitors, the photographic and cinematic gaze, the “security”/“monitoring,” and “official surveillance” gaze—raise important questions such as:
Who does the gazing, for what reason and to what effect? Is there a hierarchization of gazes not only on the basis of their medium but also of their beholder? What legitimizes each gaze and what principles underlie the different gazes?
These queries ultimately lead to a question regarding the legitimation of the knowledge(s) produced at and about sacred sites via the gaze(s) that are allowed within their spatial “boundaries.”
Collectively, these articles illuminate processes of production that unfold within as well as beyond pilgrimage sites and which help constitute such sites as something more than merely “sacred.” They also show how different types of ignorance and of ignoring that are at play in pilgrimage sites may, as Chua notes, overlap with “other cognate phenomena such as secrecy, ambiguity, loss and indifference” (Chua 2015: 247).3 Our contributors help us reflect upon our own assumptions and occlusions as pilgrimage scholars by implicitly asking what sorts of knowledge about pilgrimage we focus upon and which we tend to ignore. We might ask, for instance, whether a strong focus on ritual and religious, propositional knowledge has obstructed us from seeing other knowledge forms relevant to such travel. In other words, has a focus on pilgrimage sites and what is happening within them “blinded us from examining wider pilgrimage environments” (Coleman and Eade 2018b: 4) and numerous other places and spaces in which knowledge and ignorance about the pilgrimage are produced? This special issue raises, and begins to answer, such questions.
Acknowledgments
Evgenia Mesaritou's Fellowship has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 7521.
Notes
“Confidence or trust that the natural and social worlds are as they appear to be, including the basic existential parameters of self and social identity” (Giddens 1984: 375).
Indicative of this is the fact that the local Jewish community is not integrated “into the prayer service” held “at a synagogue in Krakow” (Feldman 2002: 100).
For a literature review “on ritual and religious ignorance” (Chua 2015: 247), see Chua, 2015.
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