In a Different Place

Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine

Jill Dubisch

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780691029672
  9780691029689
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400884414
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In a Different Place offers a richly textured account of a modern pilgrimage, combining ethnographic detail, theory, and personal reflection. Visited by thousands of pilgrims yearly, the Church of the Madonna of the Annunciation on the Aegean island of Tinos is a site where different interests--sacred and secular, local and national, personal and official--all come together. Exploring the shrine and its surrounding town, Jill Dubisch shares her insights into the intersection of social, religious, and political life in Greece. Along the way she develops the idea of pilgrimage-journeying away from home in search of the miraculous--as a metaphor for anthropological fieldwork. This highly readable work offers us the opportunity to share one anthropologist's personal and professional journey and to see in a "different place" the inadequacy of such conventional anthropological categories as theory versus data, rationality versus emotion, and the observer versus the observed.


Dubisch examines in detail the process of pilgrimage itself, its relationship to Orthodox belief and practice, the motivations and behavior of pilgrims, the relationship between religion and Greek national identity, and the gendered nature of religious roles. Seeking to evoke rather than simply describe, her book presents readers with a sense of the emotion, color, and power of pilgrimage at this Greek island shrine.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Transliteration
• CHAPTER ONE Introduction
• CHAPTER TWO The Pilgrim and the Anthropologist
• CHAPTER THREE The Anthropological Study of Pilgrimage
• CHAPTER FOUR Observing Pilgrimage: Churches, Icons, and the Devil
• CHAPTER FIVE Pilgrimage Observed: The Journey and the Vow
• CHAPTER SIX The Observer Observed
• CHAPTER SEVEN An Island in Space, an Island In Time
• CHAPTER EIGHT Writing the Story/History of the Church: The Panayía and the Nun
• CHAPTER NINE Of Nations and Foreigners, Miracles and Texts
• CHAPTER TEN Women, Performance, and Pilgrimage: Beyond Honor and Shame
• CHAPTER ELEVEN The Virgin Mary and the Body Politic
• CHAPTER TWELVE Epilogue: In a Different Place
• Notes
• References Cited
• Index
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR