Nationalizing the Sacred: Shrines and Shifting Identities in the Israeli-Occupied Territories

Bowman, Glenn

doi:10.2307/2804234

Cited by 52 publications

(38 citation statements)

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“…[2] For case studies in the Middle East and Southeastern Europe see, Albera (2005), Bacci (2006), Bowman (1993), Bowman (2010), Fowden (1999Fowden ( , 2002, Meri (2002), as well as the papers in Albera and Couroucli (2009), Bowman (forthcoming) and Chiffoleau and Madoeuf (2005). The project "Sacred Spaces: Religion and Conflict Resolution" organized by Karen Barkey and Elazar Barkan of Columbia University's Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion recently (May 2010) hosted "The Choreography of Sacred Spaces" in Istanbul.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“In Dubious Battle on the Plains of Heav'n”: The Politics of Possession in Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre

Bowman¹

2011

History and Anthropology

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Debates about the "divisibility" or "sharing" of religious sites continue to engage historians, political scientists and anthropologists. This paper assesses the issue of agency in two of the more salient critiques of religious coexistence before approaching the Holy Sepulchre, or Anastasis, as a site for investigating the way various constituencies, most significantly visiting pilgrims and resident monks, have dealt with issues of "sharing". It contends that inter-communal antagonisms there originate with elite struggles over the possessions of places-struggles which tend to engage political actors far from the site of the conflicts rather than local communities-and concludes that, rather than accept an "identitarian politics" which assumes a profound "civilisational" attachment of cultures to religious identities, we must carefully assess the "politics of possession" which variously play out in sites of inter-communal engagement.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“In Dubious Battle on the Plains of Heav'n”: The Politics of Possession in Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre

Bowman¹

2011

History and Anthropology

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“…11. Sometimes opposition to a common enemy becomes the cement that draws together pilgrims of different religions, as Bowman (1993 documents for Palestinian Muslims and Christians in Beit Sahour. At times, the presence of a religious other is needed for authentication of a site, as with, for example, Byzantine pilgrim authorities' mobilization of the Jew as a reluctant witness to the power of Christ at Golgotha (Limor 1996).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We know of many sacred sites shared by more than one religion: Jews and Muslims at saints' tombs in North Africa (Ben-Ami 1998), at Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, and at the Cave of Elijah in Haifa; Muslims and Christians in Java (Courtens 2009), Bosnia (Duijzings 1993), Palestine (Bowman 1993(Bowman , 2012a, and Jordan (Jansen 2012); Catholics and New Age worshippers in France (Fedele 2013;Weibel 2001); and Jews and Christians in medieval Palestine (Limor 2007) and at the Western Wall today. Some pilgrimage sites are places where syncretic practices are performed, blurring the boundaries between religions (see Albera 2012a).…”

Section: Religious and National Sacred Spaces-contestation And Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…10;Jansen 2012;Sered 2005;Winkelman and Dubisch 2005: xx-xxvii), or generation. Some sites used by multiple publics are characterized by syncretism (Bowman 2012a), while, for other sites, groups or ecclesiastical authorities may develop a variety of practices and regulations to allow them to be shared with minimal friction (Olsen and Ron 2013). These include assigning separate spaces within the sites for pilgrims or celebrating rites on different days or times of day.…”

Section: Religious and National Sacred Spaces-contestation And Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Introduction: Contested Narratives of Storied Places—the Holy Lands

Feldman¹

2014

Religion and Society

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ABSTRACT:The articles in this special section on pilgrimage and the Holy Lands provide a wide range of perspectives on the practice, representation, and production of sacred space as expressions of knowledge and power. The experience of space of the pilgrim and the politically committed tourist is characterized by distance, impermanence, desire, contestation, and the entwinement of the material and the spiritual. The wealth of historical Christian and Western narratives/images of the Holy Land, the short duration of pilgrimage, the encounter with otherness, the entextualization of sites, and the semiotic nature of tourism all open a gap between the perceptions of pilgrims and those of 'natives' . Although the intertwining of symbolic condensation, legitimation, and power makes these Holy Land sites extremely volatile, many pilgrimages sidestep confrontation with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as inimical to the spirit of pilgrimage. A comparative view of the practices of contemporary Holy Land pilgrims demonstrates how communitas and conflict, openness and isolation are constantly being negotiated.n KEYWORDS: conflict, Holy Land, home, materiality, narratives, performances, pilgrimage, sacred spaces, tourism Edith Turner (2005: 7145-7148) provides the following definition of pilgrimage: "A religious believer in any culture may sometimes look beyond the local temple, church, or shrine, feel the call of some distant holy place renowned for miracles and the revivification of faith, and resolve to journey there. " According to this definition, the space of pilgrimage is a renowned place, a storied place. Like Mount Moriah of Isaac's sacrifice, it is "one of the mountains I shall tell thee of " (Genesis 22:2; King James translation), a distant space beyond a horizon that becomes a focus of vision and imagination, one that calls people to take to the road to journey there-a place that creates desire and, perhaps, transformation. The spiritual charge or 'magnetism' (Preston 1992) of the place, the accretion of new stories around the original ones, the transmission of those narratives in text, ritual, and iconography through generations and beyond borders-all this leads to the success of a site's career, but it also sows the seeds of conflict. The sheer number of individuals attending the site makes it a source of legitimation for believers with differing visions and a Introduction: Contested Narratives of Storied Places n 107 point of contestation between the conflicting claims of locals and visitors, laity and hierarchy, and more. Should one lapse into comfort, into taken-for-grantedness at such a place, some other will be there to remind one that claims and stories must be voiced (yet again), flags unfurled, and rituals displayed to reassert a sense of belonging to what cannot be fully possessed. Space and Place in Pilgrimage-Centers Out ThereThe study of space and place in religion has developed at a rapid pace since the spatial turn in anthropology in the 1990s, although studies of pilgrimage and the Holy Land-b...

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“…Thus, they enjoyed the opportunity not only to remedy their personal needs but also to heal temporarily the 1947 evisceration of the region. Glenn Bowman (1993) reported a similar unifying dynamic at saints' shrines in the Palestinian territories where Muslims and Christians worshipped together. There, the opportunity to publicly gather and manifest a shared Arab culture also served as an act of resistance to the Israeli occupation that affects Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike.…”

Section: Abmentioning

confidence: 95%

Saved by the Saint: Refusing and Reversing Partition in Muslim North India

Bigelow¹

2009

JAS

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Nationalizing the Sacred: Shrines and Shifting Identities in the Israeli-Occupied Territories

Abstract: The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.

Cited by 52 publications

References 24 publications

“In Dubious Battle on the Plains of Heav'n”: The Politics of Possession in Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre

“In Dubious Battle on the Plains of Heav'n”: The Politics of Possession in Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre

Introduction: Contested Narratives of Storied Places—the Holy Lands

Saved by the Saint: Refusing and Reversing Partition in Muslim North India

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