Pilgrimage in a Secular Age: Religious and Consumer Landscapes of Late-Modernity

Abstract

In Europe and beyond, pilgrimage centres attract millions of visitors each year. This popularity has provoked a burgeoning academic interest in pilgrimage, and this thesis builds on this expanding literature. It emerges out of a dialogue between old and new forms of movement – a conversation that demands further research on the relationship between religious traditions and late–modern consumer culture, a dialogue made explicit through the study of pilgrimage. Although this thesis pays attention to one case study in particular, namely the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, it draws on multi–disciplinary research in order to set a broader context. It reveals four motivational themes, derived from interviews with pilgrims on the road to Compostela. These I explore in depth through qualitative analysis, while at the same time taking note of parallel quantitative work concerned with the Camino de Santiago as well as other pilgrimage sites in Europe. Ranging from the search for spirituality to recreation, motivations are found to be the result of a conflation of meanings; they are ambiguous narratives, which very often include spiritual as well as secular aspirations. My findings suggest a de–differentiation of poles of meaning such as sacred and profane, movement and place, religion and secularity, community and individual. In short, this is a methodologically diverse study which argues that, contrary to perception, traditional forms of religious rituals are not necessarily incompatible with late–modern consumer culture. Through consumer culture religious traditions are being revitalized. The renewed popularity of pilgrimage today demonstrates how some religious landscapes and spaces have remained important through political and religious movements, while others have been regenerated by literature, new media, specialist tourist markets, advertising and private enterprise. Finally, this study reveals a noticeable democratization of traditional rites, and the landscapes in which they take place. A very wide variety of groups and individuals visit them.