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Transformed ecologies and transformational saints: Exploring new pilgrimage routes in North East England

Miles‐Watson, Jonathan

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Abstract

County Durham in the UK has witnessed dramatic social and environmental shifts over the past 50 years, yet Durham Cathedral has stood at the heart of the region, seemingly solid, unchanging and eternal. It is frequently narrated as a prestigious jewel (a national treasure) that is surrounded by a countryside (and people) that clearly bear the time-marked scars of the processes of industrialisation and deindustrialisation. In this paper, I explore a recent moment in time when a partnership between the Cathedral and the local secular authorities aimed to rapidly transform our understanding of this space by connecting Cathedral and county through the newly laid Northern Saints' Trails. These Trails were designed as both a response to rapid changes in the local ecology and a catalyst for further transformation. The processes of this formation were ultimately delayed by the outbreak of COVID-19, yet this external force allowed the Pilgrimage project to find new life as a powerful healing practice for those who dwell in Durham. Attention to this process of purposeful, regular pilgrimage directs our attention towards the entangled nature of the home anthropologist and their role in the co-construction of space, leading to a call for a new articulation of both core methods in the anthropology of religion and a return to a form of prophetic anthropology (Miles-Watson, 2020).

Citation

Miles‐Watson, J. (2022). Transformed ecologies and transformational saints: Exploring new pilgrimage routes in North East England. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 33(3), 412-427. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12455

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 6, 2022
Online Publication Date Dec 4, 2022
Publication Date 2022-12
Deposit Date Mar 28, 2023
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2023
Journal The Australian Journal of Anthropology
Print ISSN 1035-8811
Electronic ISSN 1757-6547
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 33
Issue 3
Pages 412-427
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12455
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1177391

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.





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