No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
New Pilgrim Stories. Narratives, Identities, Authenticity
Abstract
of S.E. van der Beek: New Pilgrim Stories: Narratives, Identities, Authenticity. Date of defense: June 18, 2018, Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands.
This chapter investigates how virtual pilgrimage reached a new level of societal and academic recognition during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the politics that informed and animated these processes. Virtual pilgrimage is often considered a global and globalizing force, defying national borders and democratizing engagement. Evidence from a data-driven approach to understanding the scope and character of virtual pilgrimage growth during the COVID-19 pandemic complicates these interpretations. Based on a study of ritual adaptation in the UK, the argument assembles social media and media analysis to investigate virtual pilgrimage trends and developments, demonstrating the responsiveness of virtual pilgrimage forms to the (national) politics of COVID-19. The evidence presented here identifies two contemporaneous operations: (i) the dominance of nationally grounded institutional digital infrastructures over virtual pilgrimage production to meet particularly pressing challenges after COVID-19; and (ii) the transformation of pilgrimage discourses, as they became invigorated by the identity politics of COVID-19. The chapter thus explores virtual pilgrimage in all its ‘virtualities’ – as a genre of digital culture and social media discourses – as a valve for the pandemic’s anxieties and tensions in the UK.
Scholarship in pilgrimage studies suggests that people use travel to sacred sites to mark life transitions such as moving into adulthood, retirement, the death of a loved one, or the ending of an intimate relationship. This research has also illustrated how walking pilgrimage can provide physical and symbolic structures for individual therapeutic and spiritual practice. However, pilgrimage scholars have not put the experience of ending long-term partnerships at the center of analysis, and family scholars have yet to explore how people might use extended walking pilgrimage as ritual when relationships end. Recent scholarship in pilgrimage studies has called for a more dynamic and inclusive approach that highlights the multiple and varied social forces at work in travel to and around sacred spaces. I draw from existing empirical studies, recent theory in pilgrimage studies, the literature addressing divorce rituals, and my qualitative document analysis of published narratives of extended walking after ending long-term partnerships to identify important sociological questions, methods, and perspectives for future research.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.