Sacred Mobilities

Avril Maddrell is Associate Professor in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Alan Terry is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography in the University of the West of England. Tim Gale is Associate Head of Department and Tourism and Events Programme Leader in the Bristol Business School at the University of the West of England.

’Mobility and movement have become key topics in the social sciences and humanities, but there has been little examination of the complex desires and beliefs which impel our travels. This exciting new book presents a series of timely studies of spiritual and secular pilgrimages to a variety of places, past and present.’ Peter Merriman, Aberystwyth University, UK ’This excellent thought provoking collection develops and stretches critical debates on the spiritual and the secular, the sacred and the profane, and pilgrimage and tourism in new, important and innovative ways. The authors demonstrate how belief and belonging can be fluid, mobile yet tied to a wide range of places of meaning.’ Kevin Hannam, Leeds Beckett University, UK ’In an age characterised by global travel and mass migration, Sacred Mobilities offers new and stimulating ways of thinking about the dynamic relationship between movement and fixity, rootedness and emplacement, tourism and pilgrimage, past and present. Its rich and immensely varied case studies oscillate across disciplinary boundaries and open out methodological, temporal and material questions about belief and belonging as framed by and expressed through journey, landscape and spatiality.’ Alana Harris, Lincoln College Oxford, UK

• Contents: Introducing sacred mobilities: journeys of belief and belonging, Tim Gale, Avril Maddrell and Alan Terry. Section I The Sacred-Secular and the Secular-Sacred: Being together at the Magh Mela: the social psychology of crowds and collectivity, Nick Hopkins, Clifford Stevenson, Shail Shankar, Kavita Pandey, Sammyh Khan and Shruti Tewari; Feelings of the sacred and their occurrence in journeys, David Crouch; Mobilities of magick, James Thurgill; 'At least once in a lifetime': sports pilgrimage and constructions of the TT races as 'sacred' journey, Avril Maddrell, Alan Terry, Tim Gale and Simon Arlidge. Section II Tracing Historical Footprints: Legend landscapes: sacred mobilities in the 'legend trip' tradition, Rob Irving; The 1652 Country, Pamela Richardson; The Way of Saint James: memory, propaganda and power, Belen Ma Castro Fernandez. Section III Sacred Journeys to Home, Family and Nation: Sacred rootedness - settling into mobility in the nineteenth century American West, Nina Vollenbroker; Origination: journeying in the footsteps of our ancestors, Katy Beinart; Return to Palestine, Suha Shakkour. Section IV Afterword: Contemporary pilgrimage: journeys in time and space, Tim Edensor. Index.