Introduction: Pilgrimage as a Liminoid Phenomenon
The authors start off by claiming that pilgrimages are as ancient as ancient things can be. They even go to call it "tribal". The only pilgrimages, however, that the world really pays attention to are the ones of the main religions like Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Pilgrimage, according to the Turners, "has been surprisingly neglected by historians and social scientists". They go on to discuss how perhaps pilgrimage is over looked because history doesn't like things that repeat itself to often, making it hard for pilgrimage, doing the same things as others, to stand out.
They identify four different types of pilgrimages. The first being "those pilgrimages which, on the authority of documentary or widespread traditional evidence, were established by the founder of a historical religion" or by someone high on in the religious hierarchy. The second type of pilgrimages are ones that bear traces of "syncretism" with other pilgrimages. The third type are Christian pilgrimages that originated in the time of the European Middle Ages. And lastly, these pilgrimages are the ones that have surfaced after the post-Tridentine period of European Catholicism.
The Turners go onto explain how they, anthropologists, go about studying pilgrimages. They discuss their approaches to pilgrimages as well as the social and culture contexts they focus on.
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