Theorizing modernity through the religious pilgrimage

By Clement C. Camposano, Ph.D.

(The author is the 11th Chancellor of U.P. Visayas. This article was delivered as a lecture during the 4th Asia-Pacific International Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Conference in Cebu City on Jan. 13–16, 2026.)

A pleasant afternoon to all the participants in this conference. Before anything else, I wish to thank the organizers for this opportunity to address you and share my thoughts on the subject of religious tourism and pilgrimage. In this short lecture, I propose to approach these cultural practices as artifacts of modernity, their ties to tradition and antiquity notwithstanding. In particular, I shall argue that the pilgrimage is not only a form of sacred travel but also a cultural resource that creates opportunities for people to negotiate and constitute meaning as they navigate multiple cultural and historical contexts.

Travel, religious tourism, and pilgrimage are not mutually exclusive categories. This assertion, of course, strikes at the very core of the sacred-profane binary which was introduced by Emile Durkheim into sociology through his work, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912). Mircea Eliade elaborated on this distinction in The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (1959). It is crucial to point this out as the binary remains widely influential and is often taken for granted, notwithstanding the social facts on the ground.

Introduction: A world of non-places

It is almost customary in academic discussions of what defines the modern world to contrapose that which we call “modernity” with religiosity. This is easy to understand given the Enlightenment’s vociferous opposition to traditional religion as the enemy of reason and science. In Philippine history, this view of the world was most clearly articulated by the Ilustrados of the late 19th century…

Max Weber, perhaps the most influential theorist of modernity, described modernity as the progressive rationalization of life. By this, he meant the increasing dominance of instrumental rationality that has led not only to the rise of bureaucratic organization but also to what he called the disenchantment of the world. Disenchantment (Entzauberung) was the decline in the compelling power of religious metaphysics in explaining phenomena vis-à-vis science and reason. Unified experience would become increasingly difficult.

This contraposition of modernity with religion and religiosity would become a central theme in much of the consequential scholarship on modernity. An interesting example of this extended conversation with Weber is Bruce Lawrence’s Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against Modernity (1989). Lawrence argued that fundamentalism is an ideological response against the uncertainties and disruptions of modernity — an attempt at re-enchantment and unified experience in a world that has become secular, plural, and therefore morally fragmented.

Other attempts to theorize modernity critically engage with Weber’s suggestion of a singular (and universal) path toward modernity defined by the expansion of instrumental rationality. Prompted by the unprecedented linking of markets, economies, and societies in the late 20th century, brought about to a large degree by developments in digital technology, other scholars began moving away from what was considered a Eurocentric model of modernity, that is to say, predicated on Western European experience and culture.

A good example of this is Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996). Himself a part of the Indian diaspora, Appadurai challenged Weber’s singular rendering of modernity by arguing that in a world increasingly defined by movement of people, images, ideas, and capital, modernity itself cannot be seen in singular terms. By highlighting the complexity of this process, modernity may be seen as being experienced in diverse ways and inflected by different cultural and material contexts. What emerges is a model of modernity that is disjunctive and involves fluid and discontinuous elements.

One aspect of modernity that has increasingly attracted scholarly attention is the phenomenon of mobility and its cultural ramifications. A number of other scholars aside from Appadurai have made important contributions in exploring mobility and the consequent “deterritorialization” of culture. These include Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (1997), Manuel Castells (1996), and Ulf Hannerz (1996), all of whom argue that the processes of globalization have led to a disjuncture between cultural forms and practices on the one hand, and particular geographical locations on the other. In this context, global flows and networks are creating new forms of identity and belonging.

An interesting contribution to the literature is by French anthropologist Marc Augé, whose book, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), describes contexts where technology and mobility have undermined notions of place, identity, and community. The realities of movement and mobility have created a world characterized by the proliferation of so-called “non-places” defined by transience and anonymity — airports, highways, hotels, malls — where people are more likely to be detached from more settled identities and relationships, thus creating a sense of dislocation.

Reframing pilgrimage

It is at this point in the scholarly conversation that we encounter Coleman and Eade’s interest in religious pilgrimage. In Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion (2004), Coleman and Eade extend analysis beyond the notion of pilgrimage as a sacred event. Drawing from the work of Augé, they argue against Victor and Edith Turner’s place-centered approach to understanding the culture of sacred travel, which the latter pursued in Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978). Seen as a form of voluntary displacement, the pilgrimage is explored as a creative process and a cultural resource allowing people to constitute meaning in a destabilizing world that is constantly in transit.

While not claiming that pilgrimage can be mobilized as an “all-purpose” metaphor, they nonetheless shift analysis away from sacred places toward various forms of motion and inquire into “the fact that certain forms of travel, labeled pilgrimages (or the rough equivalent) by their participants, appear to be flourishing in many parts of the world” (6).

In a move somewhat similar to Lawrence’s view of religious fundamentalism, the pilgrimage is framed not as a retreat from modernity but as a creative and adaptive response — a way to reconfigure existing relationships and create new meanings and identities. Pilgrimage, of course, can be a way to reconnect with heritage and traditions, but it can also be transformative when assumptions are challenged, resulting in new ways of seeing the world. By embarking on a pilgrimage (or, indeed, its rough equivalent), individuals can gain a sense of purpose, which can be crucial in times of uncertainty or rapid change.

The pilgrimage is thus a staging point for a more nuanced ethnographic exploration of modernity that helps to complicate Weber’s unidirectional notion of rationalization and disenchantment, even as it broadens the scope of analysis beyond Western history, cultural experience, and values. By reframing pilgrimage as an adaptive response to modernity, involving complex negotiations of identity, Coleman and Eade are able to shed light on how traditional forms of religiosity may be reconfigured, even repurposed, by participants as they contend with the transgressive processes of modernity.

In The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), Clifford Geertz famously described man as “a creature suspended in webs of significance [or meaning] he himself has spun” (5). In this important sense, the pilgrimage can reveal how people are shaped by, and in turn also shape, the cultural landscape of modernity through processes of meaning-making. As physical and metaphorical mobilities disrupt existing webs of significance, people creatively respond to such disruptions by reconfiguring and repurposing existing cultural forms in their attempt to reconstitute such webs.

 

Conclusion

Identities and cultures are not etched in stone, and this much is made painfully clear as people and communities grapple with the transgressive processes of a world that is constantly “en route.” Yet these very same processes attest to the human ability to create meaning and attain some measure of stability in everyday life. The pilgrimage, as a context for the negotiation of meanings and cultural practices, helps us to see how this works in the contemporary world. We are indeed creatures of meaning. As identities and cultures — the settled stories about who and what we are — are undermined by movement driven by material and social forces larger than ourselves, we are not helpless nor hapless and do find ways to reconstitute these stories.

We are, Geertz (1973) again tells us, “incomplete… animals who complete… ourselves through culture — and not through culture in general but through highly particular forms of it” (49). Attending to the meaning-making that goes on (and, indeed, on and on…) in the pilgrimage as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon brings us closer to understanding creativity and cultural resourcefulness in an unsettled and unsettling world.