A Sacred Vertigo: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Rocamadour, France
Ebook
Built into a huge cliff in central France, the town of Rocamadour is a visual marvel and a place of contradictions. Pilgrims come to venerate its ancient Black Madonna but are outnumbered by secular tourists. Weibel provides an intimate look at the transformation of Rocamadour from a significant religious center to a tourist attraction; the efforts by clergy to restore Rocamadour’s spiritual character; the supernatural reinterpretations of the shrine by non-Catholics; and the desperate decision by the Diocese to participate in tourism itself, with disastrous results.
For more information, check out A Conversation with Deana L. Weibel: A Sacred Vertigo: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Rocamadour, France or this podcast episode on Meaningful Journeys.
Deana L. Weibel appears on The Camino Podcast to discuss A Sacred Vertigo: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Rocamadour, France. Watch here.
The Anthropology of Tourism: Heritage, Mobility and Society series editor Michael A. Di Giovine talks with author, Deana L. Weibel about her latest book, A Sacred Vertigo: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Rocamadour, France. Watch here.
Deana L. Weibel appears on The Camino Podcast to discuss A Sacred Vertigo: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Rocamadour, France. Watch here.
Chapter 1 Looking Backward: An Overview of Rocamadour’s History
Chapter 2 Whose Shrine is it Anyway?: Competing Local Interpretations of Rocamadour
Chapter 3 Primed for Action and Reaction: The Influence of Visitors’ Preconceptions
Chapter 4 Echoes and Energy: Rocamadour’s Numinous Nature
Chapter 5 On Shaky Ground: The Shifting Identities of a Shrine
A Sacred Vertigo is an engaging ethnography that provides vivid portraits of the shrine of Rocamadour and the social interactions that surround it. Weibel’s reflexivity is refreshing, and her concept of “religious creatives” makes an important contribution to debates about the meanings of secular and sacred travel. Essential reading for those interested in pilgrimage, tourism, popular Catholicism, alternative spiritualities and France.
For all its beauty, Rocamadour is a place of vertiginous conflict, where history clashes with economy and memory runs up against desire. Drawing on more than a quarter-century of ethnographic engagement, A Sacred Vertigo beautifully depicts the way in which conflicts over the meaning and purpose of this one thousand-year-old space not only reflects changes in Catholic religiosity and French secularity but also captures the way that both humans and the terrain craft one another to make a sacred space.
Weibel illuminates the long-term evolution and multiple modalities of pilgrimage to the cliff-top churches and Marian shrine of Rocamadour in southwest France. Drawing on twenty-five years of fieldwork, this work delves into the contested and shifting meanings of the site to Catholic pilgrims, “religious creatives” and today's tourists. A significant contribution to twenty-first-century pilgrimage and sacred place studies, this book demonstrates how sites persistently recognized as “sublime” attract heterodox interpretations and practices.
Using an ethnographic approach, Weibel provides a timely text on a developing phenomenon occurring across the globe: contested histories of places and things. She “examine[s] why, as a site, [Rocamadour] is particularly prone to being contested [among secular and religious perspectives] and how different attempts to define and control the site have played out” (p. 6) over the last 25 years. Weibel captures how shared places and experiences among tourists can create divergent perspectives, especially when considering the site's strong Catholic influence. . The narratives here are highly gripping. Anyone interested in cultural heritage and tourism should read this book. Recommended. General readers and advanced undergraduates through faculty.
- Title: A Sacred Vertigo: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Rocamadour, France
- Author: Deana Weibel
- Publisher: Lexington Books
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781793650337, 9781793650320, 1793650322, 1793650330
- Resource ID: LLS:9781793650337
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-11-28T06:36:54Z
Deana L. Weibel is professor in the Anthropology Department and the Integrative, Religious and Intercultural Studies Department at Grand Valley State University.