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Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. Ed. John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Pp. xxx + 159. Index. $17.95 paper. Inspired to set a new agenda for the study of pilgrimage, John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow published the first version of this book in 1991 with the aim of capturing "Christian pilgrimage in a variety of historical moments and cultural conjunctions" (1). The book succeeds in presenting the complexity of pilgrimage as a phenomenon that exists in contradictions (i.e., as a competing arena for religious and secular discourses or a simultaneous push toward consensus and separateness). By focusing on Christian (and predominantly European) pilgrimage, the editors address what they see as a lacuna in the pilgrimage literature, which has mostly focused on non-Western phenomena. The introduction provides a theoretical overview of pilgrimage, including such concepts as Turnerian communitas, the sacred centre, modalities of the sacred, and corporeal suffering. In the 2000 edition, Eade's new introduction also considers and applies to pilgrimage discourse subsequent developments in the scholarship on gender, tourism, and the textual representation of culture. The first two chapters concern the shrine of Lourdes in France. Andrea Dahlberg examines the symbolic value of the sick pilgrim and how this figure moves from the margins of society to become a means of uniting other pilgrims. John Eade considers the role of lay helpers (brancardiers), suggesting how they mediate between the cult hierarchy and the pilgrims. Because the brancardiers are male and the majority of the pilgrims are female, Eade also broaches the issue of gender and power in pilgrimage. In Chapter 3, Christopher McKevitt turns his attention away from pilgrims, focusing instead on the "locals" who live at San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy, at the site of the shrine of Padre Pio. He explores the cleavage between the devotees of Pio who have moved to the village and the rest of the Sangiovannesi. Glenn Bowman investigates Jerusalem as "a multitude of holy cities" in the fourth chapter, given its various imaginings by different Christianities. He observes how Greek Orthodox, English and Irish Catholic, and Christian Zionist pilgrims view and interact with holy sites in Jerusalem. If other essays consider the importance of sacred locales, Roderick Stirrat's chapter on Catholic pilgrimage in Sri Lanka explores the privileging of the holy person over the holy place as a pilgrim's destination. He locates this shift within the context of changing Sri Lankan politics and in the strong tradition of patron-client relations. The final chapter is Michael Sallnow's treatment of pilgrimage in the Andes. He argues that "pilgrimage, more than any other form of religious practice, discloses the peculiar, internally contradictory character of Andean Christianity and . . . Andean culture as a whole" (137). Sallnow investigates the fusion of symbols and meanings, suggesting that Andean pilgrimage has its origins in colonial discourse and that a persistent ideology of conquest serves to perpetuate the "cultural schizophrenia" of the region. Stephanie Sylvester |
