Since the beginning of the anthropology of pilgrimage, scant attention has been paid to pilgrimage and pilgrim places in eastern and south-eastern Europe. Seeking to address such a deficit, this book brings together scholars from eastern and south-eastern Europe to explore the crossing of borders in terms of the relationship between pilgrimage and politics, and the role which this plays in the process of both sacred and secular place-making.

John Eade is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Roehampton and Visiting Professor at University College London. His main research areas are global migration, cultural diversity, identity politics and pilgrimage. He is co-editor of Reframing Pilgrimage (2004) and Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (1991). He has edited singly and jointly seven other volumes, and is also a single author of two books. Mario KatiĿ is a research and teaching assistant at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Zadar. His main research areas are pilgrimage, place and space, death and memory. He is editor of Usora: past, customs and everyday life (2011), and co-editor of two further volumes dealing with pilgrimage, tourism and Bosnian Croats.

Introduction: crossing the borders, John Eade and Mario Kati¿; Part I Creating New and Reclaiming Old Religious Homes: From the chapel on the hill to national shrine: creating a pilgrimage 'home' for Bosnian Croats, Mario Kati¿; Pilgrimages to Gökçeada (Imvros), a Graeco-Turkish contested place: religious tourism or a way to reclaim the homeland?, Giorgos Tsimouris. Part II Inter-Religious Dialogue and Intra-Religious Competition: Pilgrimage site beyond politics: experience of the sacred and inter-religious dialogue in Bosnia, Marijana Belaj and Zvonko Marti¿; Competing sacred places: making and remaking of national shrines in contemporary Poland, Anna Nied¿wied¿. Part III Reconstructing Religious and Secular Space: From religious to secular and back again: Christian pilgrimage space in Albania, Konstantinos Giakoumis; Sterilization and re-sacralization of the places of secular pilgrimage: moving monuments, meanings and crowds in Estonia, Polina Tšerkassova; Secular journeys, sacred places: pilgrimage and home-making in the Himarë/Himara area of Southern Albania, Nataša Gregori¿ Bon. Part IV: Concluding thoughts, Glenn Bowman. Bibliography; Index.