The Legacy of Victor Turner for Current Anthropology of Pilgrimage: The Experience of the Journey to Santiago de Compostela

The article deals with the Victor Turner's anthropology of pilgrimage in the light of the journey to Compostela. First, an introduction to the concept of rites de passage and communitas is given. The following is a description of the Way of Saint James, its medieval and postmodern forms. The core of the study lies in the comparison of the ethnohistoric as well as ethnographic data and corresponding pilgrims' competing discourses with the theory. It is argued that communitas may be conceived as a structuralistic, sociological or psychological phenomenon, and that all of these levels may be included in the pilgrimage. Nevertheless, it is sustained that it depends on various circumstances and multiple discourses that operate and interact in the pilgrimage process. Finally, three Turner's topics are stressed to be useful in the present anthropology of pilgrimage: the experience as subjective feeling, bodily practice, and sensual enjoyment. Using the arguments of Halbwachs, Bruner, Connerton or Stoller, a shift from general ideas, norms, values, systems and structures to specific images, feelings, experiences and goals is recognized. Thereby the Turner's anthropology of performance and experience is situated within the particular direction of the postmodern turn and recent social theory.