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Pilgrimage and Healing. Jill Dubisch and Michael Winkelman, eds. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005.268 pp.
This edited collection brings together ten studies at the intersection of pilgrimage and healing experiences. Ethnographically diverse and thematically coherent, the collection is engaging and compelling, if not particularly theoretically innovative.
Several themes run through the studies: the typical combinative approach to healing used by those who have access to a range of resources; the social fact that typically more women than men turn to alternative healing resources, such as those available on pilgrimages; the relative autonomy of popular religious practices from formal, institutionalized religious structures; the (post)modernity of the ancient practices of both pilgrimage and healing; and, finally, the complex ways that healing and pilgrimage "work" for those inclined to engage in them. As a whole, the chapters are at their strongest when ethnographically demonstrating what healing means and how pilgrimage aids in its achievement, and at their weakest when trying to uncover how the process of healing is universal and mechanistic, centrally located in our brain's chemical composition, and, thus, presumably (and problematically), outside of culture.
The ethnographic diversity of the volume will be of particular interest to readers looking for a variety of examples to...