Economics of pilgrimage
The economics of pilgrimage is the study of how sacred journeys make, move and spend money, and how markets, governments and local people shape pilgrimage in turn. The anthropologist Simon Coleman argues that pilgrimage and economy cannot be separated, and that holy places are run by churches, states, businesses and heritage bodies alike.[1]
Holy day, market day
Coleman cites the scholar of Japanese religion Ian Reader, who shows that pilgrimages operate "not just in the marketplace but through it". In Japanese, the word ennichi means both a holy festival day and a market.[1] Pilgrimage has always brought trade with it; see Incense Route for how incense, temples and caravans grew up together.
The Hajj economy
Coleman describes "Hajjonomics", the business of managing and profiting from the growing numbers of pilgrims to Mecca. Saudi planners hope pilgrim income will reduce the country's dependence on oil. The scholar Robert Bianchi argues that Saudi Arabia has planned "destructively", damaging a heritage that belongs to all Muslims. Coleman's example is the hotel and clock tower completed in 2011 in the Abraj Al Bait complex: 601 metres tall, with the world's largest clock face, it towers over the Grand Mosque, and its construction meant demolishing an 18th-century Ottoman fortress. Architecture, religion and economics meet in a single building.[1]
The Camino and the countryside
On the Camino de Santiago, pilgrims walk through a working countryside. Coleman quotes a farmer, Paco, asked by the researcher Pablo Alonso González whether he had walked the Camino: "Yeah, I've walked it many times. Every day, with my sheep."[1] Since the early 2000s, Coleman reports, the region of Castilla y León has treated the Camino as a measurable asset, steering pilgrims to hotels, hostels and restaurants. European Union rural development money has helped regenerate villages, and some former villagers have returned to restore houses, though less entrepreneurial villagers are more doubtful. The EU has also promoted the Camino as a symbol of a "borderless Europe".[2]
Pilgrims, workers and migrants
Coleman draws on Emanuel Marx's study of the Bedouin of Mount Sinai, who lived with insecure work away from their families. Their pilgrimages to saints' tombs created what Marx called "an alternative economy", and for them a purely spiritual or purely material occasion was "inconceivable".[3] Coleman also notes the anthropologist Carol Delaney's comparison between Turkish migrant workers' annual journey home from Europe and the Hajj, and Eickelman and Piscatori's list of Muslim forms of travel: the hajj, the hijra (leaving lands where Islam is restricted), ziyara (visits to holy places), rihla (travel for knowledge), trade and labour migration.[3]
Soft power and heritage
Pilgrimage sites can also be tools of diplomacy. Coleman cites David Geary's work on Bodh Gaya in north-east India, the site of the Buddha's enlightenment, as a "soft power" heritage resource supported by aid from across Asia, including Japan.[1]
Debate
Coleman warns against reducing pilgrimage to economics alone. Drawing on the geographer David Harvey, he argues that both long-distance walkers and hard-pressed migrants are caught up in the speeding-up of modern life, and that pilgrimage can both resist and reinforce the values of the market.[4]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Coleman, Simon (2022). "Enclaving and Entraining: Economies of Mobility". Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement. NYU Press. section "Pilgrimage Entangled". ISBN 9780814717295.
- ↑ Coleman, Simon (2022). "Enclaving and Entraining: Economies of Mobility". Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement. NYU Press. section "The Pilgrim's Process: Enclaving". ISBN 9780814717295.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Coleman, Simon (2022). "Enclaving and Entraining: Economies of Mobility". Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement. NYU Press. section "Pilgrimage, Mobility, and Political Economy". ISBN 9780814717295.
- ↑ Coleman, Simon (2022). "Enclaving and Entraining: Economies of Mobility". Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement. NYU Press. section "Victims of Capitalism?". ISBN 9780814717295.