Vol. 3 · No. 1
Postcards from the Edge of HistoryNarrative and the Sacralisation of Mormon Historical Sites
Hildi J. Mitchell
Download full article (200 KB) [subscribers only]
Abstract
Since the 1980s, the anthropology of pilgrimage has moved away from its traditional focus on the exoticisms of non-Christian pilgrimage (e.g. Karve 1962; Rabinow 1975; Gold 1988) towards an analysis of pilgrimage in more familiar settings (e.g. Coleman and Elsner 1998). Partly as a result of this shift of ethnographic focus, recent anthropology of pilgrimage has also been marked by a shift of emphasis from a broadly structuralist approach informed by the influential work of Victor Turner (e.g. Turner and Turner 1978) towards a concern with the heterogeneity of the pilgrimage experience.