Concept of Mokṣa (liberation) in Indian philosophy with reference to Hindu pilgrims.

ABSTRACTRecently an acrimonious debate has emerged about transgenderism. Trans-activists defending the full spectrum of the latter have advocated a form of identity politics based upon individual self-definition. However, gender-critical feminists have disputed the legitimacy of these bids for self-determination, especially when considering men who are claiming to be women. These contrasting positions are examined and their political implications explored. The focus of the paper is on the intransitive aspects of sex and the transitive aspects of gender. The former, with rare (...) exceptions, is a binary whereas the latter is open to social negotiation and variation. The article argues that the gender-critical position is broadly aligned with critical realist philosophy, though the counter view is represented in order to clarify this point of reflection. It ends with a discussion of the ‘trans debate’ and the public policy development emerging in its wake. (shrink)

A brief overview is provided of sociological and historical critiques of Western psychiatry before focusing on pre-empirical, non-empirical and empirical aspects of psychiatric diagnosis. These are then discussed using the analytical devices of the ontic fallacy, the epistemic fallacy and generative mechanisms. It is concluded that mental disorders do not really exist but particular presenting problems of unintelligibility, interpersonal dysfunction and common human misery, in particular social contexts, recur in modern life and thus constitute real problems for those intimately implicated (...) and for social order. These require new ways of understanding, beyond the option of deconstruction, which could displace categorical reasoning and be sensitive to causes, meanings and their situated social contexts. The paper concludes with an outline of an alternative future for research into mental health problems, which could be informed by critical realism. (shrink)

The discipline of psychology has been poorly represented in critical realist texts to date. This is despite Bhaskar’s use of psychoanalytical concepts to underpin his concept of the dialectic. By comparison, other aspects of social science, such as sociology and economics, have a well-established body of critical realist texts. The original approach to psychoanalysis was analogous to the critical realist ontological-axiological chain. It moved from an ontological problem to an axiological solution. Freud’s eagerness to reframe psychoanalysis within a scientistic, objective (...) framework was perhaps due in part to the difficulties that he faced as European Jew in the fin-de-siècle. The application of the critical realist explanatory critique can contribute to our understanding of how and why the fragmentation of Freud’s legacies emerged. Critical realists should avoid the assumption that psychoanalysis is a unitary body of knowledge; as such, they should consider its various legacies separately. (shrink)

The biopsychosocial (BPS) model has been of considerable utility to those researching health and illness. This has been particularly the case for critical realists and those with a systemic orientation to their work. Whilst the strengths of the model are conceded in this article, its limitations are also examined. These relate to its ontological sophistication being compromised by its proneness to epistemological naivety. It is a model to explain the emergence of disease and disability, not a reflexive theory applicable to (...) the whole field of health research. This tension is linked to the emergence of a re-orientation of medical knowledge away from bio-medical reductionism. From the outset the model was not about a general critique, or a grand theory, of health and illness. Instead it was a useful intervention, on the part of medical practitioners, like George Engel and Adolf Meyer, to create a reformed medical model on behalf of their profession. Case studies of the problematics of diagnosis and medicalization are offered to illuminate the limitations of the BPS model for health researchers. (shrink)

Ethical concerns have been raised about routine practice in paediatric gender clinics. We discuss informed consent and the risk of iatrogenesis in the prescribing of gonadotropin-releasing hormone...

ABSTRACTJason Summersell responded to my article – ‘Reclaiming reality and redefining realism: the challenging case of transgenderism’ – by suggesting that I have made an inferential error about ontology. In this paper, I refute his objection and argue that his position does not take seriously the unresolved public policy threat posed by the commercially-inflected and politicized world of trans ideology. The realpolitik of trans-activism contains legal and illegal processes that now suppress a necessary debate about a number of matters: from (...) common sense notions of sex and the findings of biological science; to the rights of women and children. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 3, June 2020, Page 304-307.

ConclusionWe remain perplexed why Loughlin and Pritchard chose to single out our study on lay views of mental health as a basis for attacking relativism generally within social science. We consider that political, epistemological and health policy grounds for a social scientific consideration of lay knowledge are so strong that they negate naïve objectivist critiques which appearl to the reason and thus reasonableness of professional knowledge. Reason and rationality, like reality, are not singular, clear cut and self-evident. Accordingly, it is (...) the responsibility of social scientists to explore the ambiguities and complexities of knowledge held and enacted by a whole range of social groups. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article introduces the challenges of providing psychological assessments of people seeking asylum in the wake of their reported torture. These challenges invite professionals to consider ontology and epistemology. Critical realism is well-positioned to underlabour for the process of understanding a human rights violation, in which the complainant is both the key, and often sole, witness and claimed victim. For instance, the layered reality of critical realism allows practitioners to use retroduction to describe deeper structures and mechanisms of torture. The (...) judgemental rationality of critical realism allows practitioners to distinguish between competing interpretations of the evidence. Critical realism also avoids both the positivistic assumption that assessors can be value-free; and the relativist social constructionist position that, because assessors cannot av... (shrink)

This paper argues that identity politics is impeding respectful deliberative democracy. Its starting point is an analysis by Loïc Wacquant which problematizes the relationship between race and ethnicity. Wacquant's discussion covers the biological and social ontology of race, the importance of the culture of individualism in the USA and the general limitations of identity politics. I argue that those limitations are the result of restricting the discussion of race to only two of the four planes of social being, namely the (...) plane of group belonging (Bhaskar's interpersonal interactions or relationality) and the plane of unique biographical accounts (Bhaskar's inner being). The other two planes, namely the natural world (Bhaskar's material relations with nature) and socio-economic structures (Bhaskar's social structures), are thereby backgrounded. This absence of engagement with the natural world and socio-economic structures has both analytical and political consequences. This point applies to all forms of identity politics. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the debates surrounding the prevention of mental disorder and the promotion of mental health. In so doing, I offer some provisional insights into the wider notion of wellb...

An account is provided of the historical context of the work one of the best-known figures in British psychology in the 20th century, Hans Eysenck. Recently some of this has come under critical scrutiny, especially in relation to claims of data rigging in his model of smoking and morbidity, produced from the 1960s to the 1980s. The article places that controversy, and others associated with Eysenck, in the longer context of the shifting forms of epistemological and political legitimacy within British (...) psychology in the past hundred years. Eysenck was both lionised and disparaged during his life and after his death. This account explores that ambiguity in order to discern the challenge for British psychology to maintain disciplinary coherence. An understanding of this fluxing historical picture is guided by the meta-theoretical resource of critical realism. (shrink)

A foundational axiom about flux and impermanence from Heraclitus, alluding to the river, has been an important reference point for the philosophy of critical realism. This article begins with this,...

ABSTRACTMedical diagnosis is sometimes used by critical realists and others as an exemplar of a form of inference across time in which a current empirical observation points backwards to the conditions of its emergence and forwards to a possible future outcome or progression. Accordingly, its practice warrants critical exploration to confirm its legitimacy as a philosophical reference point. The strengths and weakness of the exemplar are appraised using case brief case studies. The limitations of medical diagnosis are discussed in the (...) wider context of the sociology of medical knowledge, the social determinants of ill-health and the role of commercial interests in shaping diagnostic practice. The conclusion is cautious, not nihilistic. Diachronic inference in medicine, as in other disciplines working in and with open systems, can be respected for its advantages to humanity. However, this brings with it the perennial caution of epistemic humility and a needed tolerance of uncertainty.. (shrink)

This paper aims to illustrate the advantages of critical realism for biological scientists and to offer an example, for others in philosophy and the social sciences, of applied natural science in p...

I would say very simply that the function of the intellectual is this: to put at the disposal of others, to put in common, this greater set of critical analytical tools, to make those tools freely available, and this naturally demands being rooted in reality that is in movement, a reality in which the researcher herself puts certain choices into practice, in which she can deem some matters to be more crucial than others. And the hope is, depending on the (...) choices made by all of those who are today committed to transforming that which exists, that there effectively comes about the wide-ranging social transformation of which we are in need.Costa’s definition of the intellectual is both inspiring and radical. Her.. (shrink)

We remain perplexed why Loughlin and Pritchard chose to single out our study on lay views of mental health as a basis for attacking relativism generally within social science. We consider that political, epistemological and health policy grounds for a social scientific consideration of lay knowledge are so strong that they negate naïve objectivist critiques which appearl to the reason and thus reasonableness of professional knowledge. Reason and rationality, like reality, are not singular, clear cut and self-evident. Accordingly, it is (...) the responsibility of social scientists to explore the ambiguities and complexities of knowledge held and enacted by a whole range of social groups. (shrink)

This article tests the adequacy of social constructionism from a critical realist standpoint by examining a single social problem in some detail: child sexual abuse. A continuum of positions in the research literature is explored, ranging from strong social constructionism and its justificatory emphasis deriving from social and historical relativism to a position that, while accepting ‘weak constructionism’, prioritizes the real abiding features of sexual violence against children and the proven harm it creates in any social context. That critical examination (...) of competing views on the topic places a particular emphasis upon the rhetorical power of the conceptualization of concern about child sexual abuse as a ‘moral panic’. The notion of a moral panic brings with it assumptions about the degree of confidence we can have in the extent of child sexual abuse in modernity, its wrongfulness, the assumed harm that accrues to victims and the costs to society in its wake. (shrink)

Volume 26, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 77-80.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 139-147 [Access article in PDF] A Mahayana Theology of Salvation History John P. Keenan Middlebury College Salvation history is a Western theological strategy based on biblical ideas about how God acts in history to bring about the salvation/deliverance of God's people. It begins with the scriptural accounts of creation as the inception of God's plan. It moves to describe Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt (...) and goes on to depict the guidance the Lord Yahweh provides for his people throughout their journeys and despite their trials and reverses.Israel may be idealized in scripture as God's domain, sovereign among the nations, but in fact it was a small country sandwiched between the two superpowers of the day—Egypt and Assyria (or Babylon), and subject to the rise and fall of those empires. 1 The New Testament goes on to describe God's plan in sending his son Jesus to effect salvation and unite all people in him (Eph. 1:1-16). The passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus comprise the central drama, in which we all are invited to participate. The author of Luke/Acts gives an account of how God moves through the teachings and the life and death of Jesus to establish his Church and how that Church evolves from a small and marginal community to enter and permeate the very heart of the Empire at Rome. The story continues in postscriptural Christian history, from Constantine's vision at Milvian Bridge to the Christianization of Europe, and further to the missionary endeavors to convert all peoples to the path of the Gospel. In the twentieth century, Liberation theology is heir to these notions, insisting that conversion means not simply becoming Christian, but the furtherance of justice and peace among all peoples, even non-Christians.A Mahayana reading of this schema is not at first glance very promising. Mahayana knows nothing of God, much less of God acting in history. Nor, indeed, of history itself as a purposeful unfolding of events. Indian thought is known for its ahistoricity. No histories were produced in ancient India at all. No Herodotus, no Thucydides. The first Buddhist histories were written not in India but in Tibet, some thousand years after the birth of the Buddha Sakyamuni. Indian traditions in their focus on the eternal truth (sanatana dharma) turned away from the concrete flow of events and from any recording of their progression. [End Page 139]The task before us is challenging. To tackle it best, I will divide this essay into three parts, and thus attempt to argue for a Mahayana reading of salvation history. The first part will treat Mahayana philosophy and argue that despite its Indian lack of historical consciousness, it does possess the tools for writing history. Its teaching that all events are empty (sunyata) is coterminous with its teaching that all events arise in dependence upon a host of causes and conditions (pratitya-samutpada). In a word, emptiness itself entails a radical insight into the contingent and conventional historicity of events (dharmas). Beyond this, since all events are seen as empty of any abiding core essence, Mahayana deconstructs the very idea of an eternal world truth over and apart from the everyday world of events. It proclaims, rather, that to an awakened person, all is "worldly convention-only" (samvrti-matra). 2 This focus on the radical conventionality of events can serve, I would argue, as a needed corrective to a literalistic reading of salvation history. Looked at from this perspective, the story of the New Testament writers can perhaps become more apparent—how they are writing of God's design, purpose, and plan in order to counter the regnant patterns of Greek and Roman arrogance, and to substitute insight into the mystery of our being and of our being here.The second part of this article will address the Western doctrine of salvation history, focusing on the New Testament, particularly Pauline theology as expressed in one passage from Ephesians about how salvation is attained through Jesus as the unfolding plan of God's purpose... (shrink)

This article begins with arguments evident at the time of writing about the 5th revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The historical lineages of those arguments are international and not limited to the USA. The concern with psychiatric diagnosis both internationally and in the USA came to the fore at the end of the Second World War with the construction of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and the World Health Organization’s classification (...) of ‘Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death’. However, the linkage between categories of morbidity, assumptions about natural biological categories and treatment specificity with ‘magic bullets’ emerged in the middle of the 19th century in physical medicine. This article explores the legitimacy of current psychiatric diagnoses in the light of that international, not national, history of medical knowledge. In conclusion it explores judgements about current cultural imperialism and an older picture of Eurocentrism, which is now being refracted in more recent globalizing knowledge-claims about mental disorder. (shrink)

The mass childhood immunization programme has traditionally been viewed as a safe and effective preventative measure by health promoters, primary health care professionals and governments. This consensus has meant that immunization has rarely been viewed as ethically problematic. A number of recent changes in the context of the delivery of health care, particularly the emphasis on consumerism and the effect of the marketization of services, makes timely an examination of ethical, social and political issues. This article examines four main grounds (...) for problematizing the mass childhood immunization programme. These are: clinical research evidence about the safety and efficacy of vaccines; the masking of wider social and political determinants of ill health; the contradictory strictures about collective and individual rights in relation to immunization; and the uniqueness of childhood immunization as a physical intrusion into a healthy body. The implications of these ethical issues are discussed in relation to informed consent and the need for a 'greenfield' review that includes the views of dissenting parents, lawyers and moral philosophers, as well as health professionals. Les promoteurs de santé, les soignants et les gouvernements ont tous traditionellement vu le programme d'immunisation globale des enfants comme sain et efficace. Cela voulait dire que l'immunisation a rarement posé un problème éthique. Pourtant, actuellement des changements dans les contextes de la distribution des soins, le consumérisme et de l'effet de la commercialisation des services de santé, exigent une revue des problèmes éthiques, sociaux et politiques. Cet article discute quatre éléments problématiques du programme d'immunisation globale: les données des recherches médicales sur la sûreté et l'efficacité des vaccins; la dissimulation des déterminatifs sociaux et politiques des maladies; les critiques contradictoires des droits individuels et collectifs concernant l'immunisation; et le caractère unique de l'immunisation des enfants comme une intrusion physique dans un corps sain. Les effets de ces questions éthiques sont repris en rapport du consentement informé et de la nécessité d'une revue 'verte' qui comprend les vues des parents dissidents, des juristes, des philsophes et des membres des professions soignantes. Das Massenimpfungsprogramm von Kindern wurde allgemein von Gesundheits behörden, medizinischem Fachpersonal und Regierungen als sichere und wirksame Vorbeugungsmassnahme betrachtet. Diese Uebereinstimmung bedeutete, dass Imp fungen selten ein ethisches Problem darstellten. Eine Anzahl von Aenderungen im Gesundheitswesen - besonders im Hinblickin auf Konsum und Marktwirtschaft im Dienstleistungsbereich - berechtigen jedoch zu einer Untersuchung der ethischen, sozialen und politischen Fragen. Dieser Artikel untersucht vier Hauptgründe, die das Massenimpfungsprogramm für Kinder in Frage stellen: Forschungsergebnisse über die Sicherheit und Wirksamkeit der Impfstoffe; die Verschleierung von andern sozialen und politischen Krankheitsursachen; die widersprüchlichen Anordnungen über kollektive und individuelle Rechte mit Bezug auf die Impfungen; und die aussergewöhnliche Art der Impfung als physische Verletzung eines gesunden Körpers. Die Bedeutung dieser ethischen Fragen werden hier diskutiert im Zusammenhang mit der informierten Vereinstimmung und der Notwendigkeit eines 'grünen' Ueberblickes, der die Ansichten andersdenkender Eltern, Rechtsanwalte, Philosophen und Gesund heitsexperten einschliesst. (shrink)

The pathway that controls sexual fate in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been well characterized at the molecular level. By identifying differences between the sex‐determination mechanisms in C. elegans and other nematode species, it should be possible to understand how complex sex‐determining pathways evolve. Towards this goal, orthologues of many of the C. elegans sex regulators have been isolated from other members of the genus Caenorhabditis. Rapid sequence evolution is observed in every case, but several of the orthologues appear to (...) have conserved sex‐determining roles. Thus extensive sequence divergence does not necessarily coincide with changes in pathway structure, although the same forces may contribute to both. This review summarizes recent findings and, with reference to results from other animals, offers explanations for why sex‐determining genes and pathways appear to be evolving rapidly. Experimental strategies that hold promise for illuminating pathway differences between nematodes are also discussed. BioEssays 25: 221–231, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Victor Turner's view of pilgrimage is reexamined and questioned using data collected at the shrine to Saint Francis of Assisi in Canindi, a small town in northeast Brazil. Turner's view of pilgrimage as a liminal state in which the pilgrim is out of structure is summarized in terms of his major theoretical assumptions and objectives. The shrine in Canindé and the pilgrimage there are described. Pilgrimage is examined in terms of the symbolic assumptions of Brazilian "Popular" Catholicism and culture. The (...) author shows it to be a product of a relationship between the pilgrim and the saint in which the pilgrimage is made in fulfillment of a promise made. The pilgrim to Canindi, and other shrines in Brazil, is shown to be fulfilling the obligations of a patron‐client type of exchange with the saint and consequently not out of structure. The author concludes that the patron‐client exchange imagery is better suited to the analysis of pilgrimage in Brazil and Latin America than Turner's view of liminality. (shrink)

THEORIA IN GREEK RELIGION What was the Greek for pilgrim? If there is no simple answer, the explanation is the great diversity of ancient pilgrimages and pilgrimage-related phenomena. People went to sanctuaries for all sorts of reasons: consulting oracles, attending festivals, making sacrifices, watching the Panhellenic games, or seeking a cure for illness; there were variations in the participants , and variations in the length of distance traversed to get to the sanctuary; finally, changes occurred in the shape of (...) pilgrimage over time: pilgrimage is not the same in the Hellenistic period as it is in the classical period, and pilgrimage in the Roman world is different again. If we limit our scope to state-pilgrimage and to the classical period, we find a special vocabulary for pilgrimage in the word θεωρός and its derivatives θεωρέω, θεωρία, and θεωρίς2. θεωρία is the normal term for state-pilgrimage, as we see in the famous introduction to Plato's Phaedo describing the Athenian pilgrimage to Delos. The corresponding term for a pilgrim is θεωρός, found first in Theognis , and frequently in the fifth century. The verb θεωρέω can mean ‘go on a pilgrimage to’, as in Thucydides' account of Ionian pilgrimage to the Delian festival . θεωρίς is the normal Attic term for a sacred ship used to convey sacred delegates to and from a sanctuary. One area where this family of words is never used is that of pilgrimage to healing sanctuaries; if we find any word used there, it is ἱκέτης, in later texts sometimes the neutral σνμϕοιτητής. (shrink)

For centuries pilgrimages are present in Christianity. For Catholics, the importance of devotions and visits to the Marian sanctuaries is indisputable. The number of visitors and pilgrims to these temples make the local economy an important destination of religious tourism. In order to understand the economic determinants of religious tourism, two sanctuaries were studied, namely, Aparecida and Fatima. Given the large collection of statistical information of the Portuguese Sanctuary, it was verified through the Vector Autoregressive model that Gross (...) Domestic Product and Unemployment have a causal unidirectional relation with the pilgrimages. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag model revealed that an increase in Gross Domestic Product and international arrivals in the short term positively impacts the number of pilgrims. Through the Ordinary Least Squares regression, significant statistical relationships between climatic factors and visitors in the Sanctuary of Fatima were found. The Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average forecast method was applied to the number of monthly visitors to the Sanctuary of Aparecida and to the number of pilgrims in the Sanctuary of Fatima, the results show a strong seasonality and that the first and last months of the year are periods of low demand. The results of this study allow a new look at religious tourism in the Marian context, the empirical results allow those responsible for establishing public policies, tourism agents and the administration of the Sanctuaries to direct their actions. Measures planned and executed jointly between the various agents can benefit residents, visitors, pilgrims, the tourism sector, the local economy and the Sanctuaries themselves. (shrink)

This is a most welcome handbook arriving at a timely moment for those interested in feminism in relation to sex/gender, progressive politics and sustainability. Critical realism has been an invalua...

Abstract:This article examines the experiences of pilgrims to Trier between 1844–1933 and argues that pilgrimage is a separate practice from tourism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scholars have treated pilgrims like tourists, especially in the twentieth century, but travelers to the Holy Coat of Trier did not think of themselves as tourists. Labeling pilgrim participants as “modern tourists” ignores their religious motivations to travel and creates a false dichotomy between “pilgrims” of the medieval and early (...) modern period and “tourists” of post-Industrial Revolution Europe. Pilgrims who sought a miraculous physical cure or encounter with the blood of Jesus in the Coat of Trier wanted to gain access to divine presence they identified as part of the space of Trier. Pilgrim use of sacred space should lead historians to draw sharper distinctions between the motivations of pilgrims seeking sacred presence and tourists seeking recreation. (shrink)

…Not without a providential design, the historical events of the thirteenth century led to the Holy Land, the Order of Friars Minor. The Sons of St. Francis have since then remained in the land of Jesus … to continuously serve the local Church and to preserve, restore, protect the holy places, and their loyalty to the wishes of the Founder and the mandate of the Holy See was often sealed by acts of extraordinary virtue and generosity…Holy Land guides mediate between (...) pilgrims and multiple Jerusalems. This article focuses on the roles played in this process of mediation by Franciscan human guides in two contexts: actual Jerusalem and the virtual Jerusalem of San Vivaldo.1 The longstanding, special relationship... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the changes in perceiving the sacred which have appeared in the history of pilgrimage. These are linked with different theological approaches to space and subsequent periods of desacralisation, secularization and re-sacralisation. Relying on a modern theology of pilgrimage and research into the philosophy of religion by M. Eliade the paper offers a new interpretation of the message of the Camino de Santiago which overcomes previous reductionisms based on seeing the sacred (...) solely in the destination (the shrine). The relationship with the Camino and the content of pilgrim blessings indicate the role of experiencing order, beauty and these virtues which shape the relational order (corresponding with the virtue of _religio_). The effort of pilgrims is linked to this, however, it is no longer described in terms of ‘sacrifice’ although it is related to the same content which is perceived in a new post-secular cultural context. (shrink)

This papers explores the diversity of pilgrim expressions in the Celtic Christian sources, focusing largely upon scriptural and theological images-namely, the image of Jerusalem, the example of Abraham, and journey as a metaphor for the earthly life. Discussion on Celtic interest in Jerusalem will focus on the text, De locis sanctis, by Adomnán of Iona. Central to Abrahamic pilgrimage is the ideal of being a stranger, foreigner, exile and alien in the world. Columbanus and Columba are both described as (...) class='Hi'>pilgrims in the tradition of Abraham. The life of Patrick raises the question of the relationship between Abrahamic pilgrimage and the missionary life. The phenomenon of the seafaring monks, most famously St Brendan, will also be discussed through the lens of Abraham, while the corresponding text, The Voyage of St Brendan, will lead to a short discussion of liturgy as a form of pilgrimage. Finally, the lifelong journey of the Christian life-expressed through the metaphors of road and journey in the writings of Columbanus-will be discussed. (shrink)

Pilgrimage is an ancient form of religious expression, inherent in almost every confession. Modern pilgrimage differs from past pilgrim travels in various attributes. Pilgrimages contribute to the tourism development because they affect interreligious and international communication. In the first place, significance and topicality of the subject is explained, and basic concepts are defined. After that, a theoretical and methodological framework has been provided. Research relays to religious and ethical?mixed? pilgrimages and also includes Orthodox chancels: St. Petka?s chapel in (...) Kalemegdan and Madonna of Djunis monastery and catholic chancel Madonna of Tekije near Petrovaradin. These places are visited regardless of the visitor's faith. In depth interviews were conducted in 2007 in Belgrade, and the sample consisted of 25 Orthodox and 25 Catholic interviewees. We were monitoring religiosity of pilgrims through time by using three categories: upbringing, conversion, and self-assessment of religiosity. Regarding the category of upbringing, three groups were identified: those with a traditional religious formation, an irreligious formation, and those from devotional families. According to the self-assessement of religiosity, the following typology was formed: assured and practical believer, missionary, and traditionalist. We noticed three straight lines in believers? religious life: progression, stagnation and regression. The results of this exploration confirm that family influence on examinees? religiosity is strong, but the key category for progression in their religious lives is conversion understood as a dynamic category. (shrink)

How do abstract doctrinal ideas become visible and meaningful in the lives of religious practitioners? This article approaches this question by examining the diary of the Tibetan pilgrim Khatag Zamyak (kha stag 'dzam yag) (1896–1961) to explore how he engages with the idea of karma. Scholars of Buddhism often define karma as a law of cause and effect that is fundamental to Buddhist ethics, but this third‐person approach to understanding karma can lead scholars to overlook what it feels like to (...) live in a world structured by karma. This article explores how Khatag Zamyak confronts the fact that he does not know his own karma and how he undertakes specific practices to be able to see and tell stories about his own karma. It further argues that Khatag Zamyak's process of engaging with karma is integral to his formation as an ethical subject. (shrink)

Despite the trend of secularization, pilgrimages to sacred sites flourish. Most of the pilgrims are women and the reasons for their visits often have to do with the dynamics of women's lives. Some of the pilgrims to sites dedicated to St Mary are Muslims. This is interesting in the present political context in which lines are being redrawn between Christians and Muslims and their respective religious identities. Why would Muslims go to Marian shrines and how do they (...) negotiate their relationship to the figure of the Virgin Mary and thereby define their gender and religious position? This article describes the experiences of Muslim pilgrims at Marian sites in Germany, Portugal and Turkey, and analyses these in terms of gender and religious identity. (shrink)

In 1293, only two years after the fall of Acre, but many years before the end of crusading aspirations to reclaim Jerusalem, William Durandus, Bishop of Mende, composed a new rite for those taking up the cross “to go in aid of the Holy Land,” which he included in his magisterial and enduring edition of the Roman pontifical. In this rite the bishop would bless and then bestow to the departing crusader the devotional insignia of his canonical status: the cross, (...) along with the traditional pilgrim's scrip and staff. Durandus' rite drew on a number of long-standing texts for travel benedictions and pilgrimage benedictions, but reworked them into an elegant whole, the sum of which was far greater than its inherited parts. It enjoined the crusader to “take up the cross” and hasten towards “your [that is, Christ's] tomb,” beseeched God to protect him from danger and absolve him from the chains of sin, and emphasized taking the cross as a passion emblematic of Christ's own salvific sacrifice. The rite thus echoed the ideals, shaped the language, and embodied the spiritual and devotional values of crusading around 1300, which had increasingly emphasized Christomimetic suffering as central to the spiritual value of crusade. As such, the rite is testament to the idea of the crusade and crusading as it had developed over the course of two centuries. (shrink)