The modern pilgrimage - to sites ranging from Elvis's Graceland to the Vietnam veterans' annual Ride to the Wall to Jim Morrison's Paris grave - is intertwined with our existential uncertainties in the face of a rapidly changing world. In a climate that reproduces the religious quest in seemingly secular places, it is no longer clear exactly what the term pilgrimage infers - and this unique glimpse at the modern spiritual journeys critiques our notions of the secular and the sacred, while commenting on the media's multiplication of images that renders the modern pilgrimage a quest without an object. Using new ethnographical and theoretical approaches, this vivid collection offers a surprising new vision on the nonsecularity of the 'secular pilgrimage'.

Author Biography

Peter Jan Margry is a senior researcher of religious culture at the Meertens Institute in the Netherlands and vice-president of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore.