Gender, Nation and Religion in European Pilgrimage is a collection of ethnographic and experiential case studies of modern-day pilgrimages. They range in locations throughout Europe, honor a variety of saints, and offer differing scales of physical involvement. The journeys and destinations hold different meanings for practitioners, and those meanings are not always religious, at least not in the traditional Catholic sense. In fact, diversity is the defining feature of this volume.
The first chapter, written by one of the volume's editors, Willy Jansen, is a primer on what will follow and explains the “why” of the title. Jansen writes that each of these categories—gender, nation, and religion—responds to the organizing question “What is the sociocultural and political-strategic meaning of contemporary pilgrimage as expressed at various European Christian pilgrimage sites?” (2). The focus of each category is on its “performativity,” as described by Judith Butler (5). As such, it is the...
