Pilgrimage as embodied mobility:
approaches and methods
This will paper will outline my
engagement with pilgrimage practices, as an embodied mobility, in contemporary
Ireland. Pilgrimage is a distinctly spatial human behaviour, involving
performances that are centred on specific places. Although pilgrimage has been
the topic of geographic study for several decades now, links between it and the
recent ‘mobilities turn’ are still being forged. The practice of pilgrimage can
be seen as a process involving the subjects (pilgrims) and the spaces (sacred
places/landscapes) both being defined by and, even, emerging through their
interactions with each other. The study of pilgrimage as an embodied mobility
will involve frameworks and approaches that can considered pilgrimage in terms
of both the representational (understandings, narratives, ideologies) and the
practical/nonrepresentational (embodied experiences, beliefs, sensual). This
requires the consideration of methodological challenges in attempts to access
and capture a holistic appreciation of pilgrimage (including the experiential
and sensual, as much as the observable and representable) as it is occurring in
place. The research is concerned with local/regional devotional sites (holy
wells and shrines) and a national pilgrimage space (Croagh Patrick, Co. Mayo).