Pilgrimage, Consumption and Rituals: Spiritual Authenticity in a Shia Muslim Pilgrimage
Event Date: 28 November 2018
Speaker: Dr Mona Moufahim
Time: 2pm
Location: Strathclyde Business School, Cathedral Wing, CW506a. Tea, coffee and cakes will be provided from 1.45pm.
Please confirm your attendance with Christina MacLean (christina.maclean@strath.ac.uk).
Abstract: A critical dimension of pilgrimage is arguably pilgrims' experience, in particular the authenticity of their experience. The aim of the study is to understand how authenticity is evoked in a religious pilgrimage and the relationship between authenticity, rituals and consumption. The research contributes ethnographic insights from a Muslim pilgrimage called Ziyara-t-Arba'een. In so doing, pilgrimages are conceptualised as a quest for spiritual authenticity, a hybrid form of existential, ideological and objective authenticity. The findings section leads to a discussion of the ways in which spiritual authenticity is realised through rituals and the consumption of texts, material objects and space. The contribution of this paper is threefold: 1) it explores the different dimensions of authenticity in a pilgrimage experience; 2) it examines the role of material culture and ritual consumption in achieving forms of authenticity; and 3) it broadens the understanding of the pilgrimage as a context-bound and culturally specific phenomenon.
Biography: Mona Moufahim is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Stirling Management School, Stirling University (UK). Her current research projects focus on issues of identity (organisational, ethnic/racial, religious or political) in social movement organisations; religion, travel and consumption; and the marketing of the extreme right. Her research has been published in Organisation Studies, Journal of Marketing Management, Marketing Theory and Consumption, and Markets and Culture. She has also contributed chapters to scholarly books on political marketing, critical marketing and Islamic marketing.
Published: 24 October 2018
