P. Post – författare

This book is the product of a relatively long history of pilgrimage research in a Dutch theological setting. It is intended as a report for an international audience on this long-running programme.Two lines are followed in the book. The first is the track of liturgical studies, in which an historical, European ethnological and anthropological approach has predominated. The second is a social science track, with specific content coming from psychology of religion. The combination of these two lines has been extremely fruitful.In addition to results of various surveys of contemporary pilgrimage practice and the expansion of research into ritual and cultural context in which modern pilgrims find themselves, special attention is also bestowed on historiographic issues involved in orienting pilgrimage research, and its theoretical and methodological aspects.The places of pilgrimage examined here are Wittem, Dokkum and Amsterdam in The Netherlands, Banneux in Belgium, Lourdes and La Salette in France, and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The central question which informs the whole study is to what extent one can perhaps speak of a new type of pilgrim today, the "modern pilgrim".

People increasingly look to rituals after a disaster. A silent procession and a memorial service are carefully and observantly organised, preparations are begun for a lasting monument in memory of the victims, or people keep up the tradition of an annual commemoration. Remarkably enough, this ritual repertoire has received hardly any attention from researchers. This book is a report on the first exploration of these rituals which emerged particularly in the 1990s. The exploration focuses on the situation in the Netherlands. From the case studies analyzed a strikingly coherent and well-organised repertoire comes to light, which has become established in a rather short time. There appears to be interaction with both Dutch and international contexts (i.e., influence from the memorial rites after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the 'Dutroux affair' in Belgium, and the rites after a series of episodes of street violence in the Netherlands), as well as with previous, more divergent ritual traces of a Christian-liturgical, general-religious and profane-secular nature. This study more particularly looks at disaster ritual from the perspective of contemporary ritual dynamics. As such, it makes a contribution to gauging the ritual-liturgical milieu today. To this end, the central concepts of disaster and ritual are first defined. Next follows an assessment, first in general through a survey of disasters in the Netherlands and other countries, then on the basis of five Dutch case studies, each of which illuminates a particular theme in disaster ritual, and two international case studies (the 'Estonia' ferryboat disaster and September 11). Then comes a more broadly conceived contextual and analytic chapter in which the general context of contemporary ritual developments is elaborated. The closing chapter has the nature of the familiar 'synthesis and perspective'.