Pilgrimage for a New Age Ancient Sites, New Meanings

Pilgrimage for a New Age draws on the perspectives both of the anthropological researcher and participants in pilgrimages to provide an anthropological exploration of a range contemporary New Age pilgrimages, from dream healing journeys to ancient sites in Greece, to Magdalene pilgrimage in England and France. It makes an important contribution to the study of religion and pilgrimage by its focus on New Age spirituality, by its use of pilgrimage to ancient sites as a framework for examining key features of the New Age movement; and by its focus on healing within such pilgrimage journeys. Examining the ways in which these journeys address healing both of physical illness, and the healing of a fragmented world, Pilgrimage for a New Age analyzes some of the implications for anthropological fieldwork of doing research on a shifting population that is also part of a global spiritual movement.

Jill Dubisch is Regents’ Professor of Anthropology at the Northern Arizona University, USA, researching on migration, gender, religion, pilgrimage, medical anthropology and contemporary spirituality. She has authored and edited a number of books including Gender and Power in Rural Greece (Princeton 1986); In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine (Princeton 1995); Run for the Wall: Remembering Vietnam on a Motorcycle Pilgrimage (with Raymond Michalowski, Rutgers University Press 2001) and Pilgrimage and Healing (with Michael Winkelman, University of Arizona Press, 2005). She has also written a number of articles and book chapters on Greece, gender, and pilgrimage, and most recently, on contemporary spirituality.