Ritual and Democracy - Protests, Publics and Performances - Sarah M. Pike
4. Affective Communitas and Sacred Geography: Mapping Place and Movement in Norwegian Pilgrimage
Ritual and Democracy - Protests, Publics and Performances - Sarah M. Pike
Marion Grau [+]
MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society
Marion Grau is Professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism and Missiology at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society in Oslo, Norway. Her teaching interests are in constructive theology and her current research projects include the redevelopment of pilgrimage and the reshaping of identity in Norway and a Theology of petroleum economies and climate change in the Northern hemisphere. She is the author of Rethinking Theological Hermeneutics: Hermes, Trickster, Fool (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), Rethinking Mission in the Postcolony: Salvation, Society, and Subversion (T&T Clark/Continuum, 2011), Of Divine Economy: Refinancing Redemption (T&T Clark/Continuum, 2004).
Description
This essay proposes an expanded methodology for studying pilgrimage that aims to integrate aspects that go beyond the anthropocentric study of the phenomenon. By paying attention to ecological history, the effects of climate, landscape, water and weather on pilgrim and pilgrimage, and inspired by the work of Eduardo Kohn, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing, the essay envisions pilgrimage as a complex interspecies relationship. The practice of climate pilgrimage provides an example of an embodied ritual that goes beyond the anthropocentric by gathering and carrying water from all across Norway to the UN Climate negotiations in Paris.