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Finalist, Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Analytical-Descriptive Studies, given by the American Academy of Religion
A groundbreaking reframing of religious pilgrimage
Pious processions. Sites of miraculous healing. Journeys to far-away sacred places. These are what are usually called to mind when we think of religious pilgrimage. Yet while pilgrimage can include journeying to the heart of sacred shrines, it can also occur in apparently mundane places. Indeed, not everyone has the resources or mobility to take part in religiously inspired movement to foreign lands, and some find meaning in religious movement closer to home and outside of officially sanctioned practices. Powers of Pilgrimage argues that we must question the universality of Western assumptions of what religion is and where it should be located, including the notion that “genuine” pilgrimage needs to be associated with discrete, formally recognized forms of religiosity.
This necessary volume makes the case for expanding our gaze to reconsider the salience, scope, and scale of contemporary forms of pilgrimage and pilgrimage-related activity. It shows that we need to reflect on how pilgrimage sites, journeys, rituals, stories, and metaphors are entangled with each other and with wider aspects of people’s lives, ranging from an action as trivial as a stroll down the street to the magnitude of forced migration to another country or continent.
Offering a new theoretical lexicon and framework for exploring human pilgrimage, Powers of Pilgrimage presents a broad overview of how we can understand pilgrimage activity and proposes that it should be understood not solely as going to, staying at, and leaving a sacred place, but also as occurring in ordinary times, places, and practices.
An impressive overview of the state of the field of pilgrimage studies. Coleman does an excellent job of putting scholars in context and in dialogue with each other, from anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner to cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall. Coleman presents a complex view of pilgrimage that opens up new possibilities for study and analysis. . . . This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars of ritual, pilgrimage, religion, geography, politics, and beyond.
"— Sarah Pike, California State University, Chico
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A lucid, wide-reaching, and brilliant book that provides us with a valuable new theoretical lexicon and framework for exploring human pilgrimage. Coleman’s attention to mobilities, context at multiple scales, emergence, uncertainties, and ambiguities further illustrates the relevance of political economy and social justice for pilgrimage studies. This volume will have a major and lasting impact on Pilgrimage Studies and beyond.
"— Sharon R. Roseman, co-editor of The Tourism Imaginary and Pilgrimages to the Edges of the World
"Powers of Pilgrimage is an important book for scholars of pilgrimage and religion, but also for scholars of culture, mobility, economy, and geography. The book provides an impressive overview and analysis of the field as well as an impassioned call to expand the field’s approaches and subjects."
— Melissa Coles
"Coleman’s book is an extremely worthwhile read, bound to leave its mark on the anthropology of religion and beyond.It successfully sets an agenda of interest to anyone, or any discipline engaged in the study of religion."
— Maja Balle and Bjorn Thomassen
"A much-needed and long overdue exploration of the richness of pilgrimage research… Power of Pilgrimage is a compelling and influential book that establishes parameters for comparative research in pilgrimage studies."
"An insightful voyage into the complexities and intricacies of pilgrim practices in various parts of the world today … Coleman’s book is an extremely worthwhile read, bound to leave its mark on the anthropology of religion and beyond."
"Powers of Pilgrimage makes an enormous contribution to studies of pilgrimage by reframing and expanding the field…The book provides an impressive overview and analysis of the field as well as an impassioned call to expand the field’s approaches and subjects, including by rejecting false binaries between 'religious' and 'secular' spaces, peoples, and practices."
"A summation of decades of research that provides a pathbreaking and critical clearing of the field—re-examining older works, discussing recent developments and patterns, and helping open new directions and insights, both methodological and theoretical. It is truly impressive in its scale and depth ... a critical resource for current and future pilgrimage scholars, helping to illuminate meaningful connections and new lines of inquiry beyond the reproduction of certain well-worn tropes within Anglophone studies. This is a refreshing and welcome invitation to enlarge the field of study and ensure pilgrimage remains a vital and productive category to think with (and through) the contours of socio-religious life in the early 21st century."
— David Geary
"Coleman skillfully advances a theoretical vocabulary that brings attention to encounters around and through sacred sites and reinforces pilgrimage’s impacts across relationships, institutions, and time."
"Coleman’s book offers a different perspective on pilgrimage—one which puts to the fore its relevance in the age of heightened mobility—but he does so without discounting the value of previous scholarship on the topic."
"Coleman develops a new lexicon for analyzing pilgrimage, a framework specifically using the metaphor of 'articulations' to expand the category of pilgrimage to reflect its fraught entanglement with cultural mobility, the secular, and economy... Powers of Pilgrimage is an important addition to the literature and invites scholars to expand the study of pilgrimage in contexts beyond those examined within the text."
"Powers of Pilgrimage is an important addition to the literature and invites scholars to expand the study of pilgrimage in contexts beyond those examined within the text. Coleman’s ethnographic approach will appeal to students within both the humanities and social sciences and his lexicon will prove useful to students and scholars alike."
"An ambitious attempt to highlight major issues in pilgrimage studies and point out promising directions for their further development. Based on analysis of hundreds of studies by anthropologists, historians, cultural geographers, and the fieldwork of its author, the book suggests expanding our understanding of pilgrimage and to study it in relation to other ritualised and non-ritualised activities."