A Sacred Vertigo is an engaging ethnography that provides vivid portraits of the shrine of Rocamadour and the social interactions that surround it. Weibel’s reflexivity is refreshing, and her concept of “religious creatives” makes an important contribution to debates about the meanings of secular and sacred travel. Essential reading for those interested in pilgrimage, tourism, popular Catholicism, alternative spiritualities and France.

Ellen Badone, McMaster University

For all its beauty, Rocamadour is a place of vertiginous conflict, where history clashes with economy and memory runs up against desire. Drawing on more than a quarter-century of ethnographic engagement, A Sacred Vertigo beautifully depicts the way in which conflicts over the meaning and purpose of this one thousand-year-old space not only reflects changes in Catholic religiosity and French secularity but also captures the way that both humans and the terrain craft one another to make a sacred space.

Jon Bialecki, University of California, San Diego

Weibel illuminates the long-term evolution and multiple modalities of pilgrimage to the cliff-top churches and Marian shrine of Rocamadour in southwest France. Drawing on twenty-five years of fieldwork, this work delves into the contested and shifting meanings of the site to Catholic pilgrims, “religious creatives” and today's tourists. A significant contribution to twenty-first-century pilgrimage and sacred place studies, this book demonstrates how sites persistently recognized as “sublime” attract heterodox interpretations and practices.

Celeste Ray, Sewanee: The University of the South

Using an ethnographic approach, Weibel provides a timely text on a developing phenomenon occurring across the globe: contested histories of places and things. She “examine[s] why, as a site, [Rocamadour] is particularly prone to being contested [among secular and religious perspectives] and how different attempts to define and control the site have played out” (p. 6) over the last 25 years. Weibel captures how shared places and experiences among tourists can create divergent perspectives, especially when considering the site's strong Catholic influence. . The narratives here are highly gripping. Anyone interested in cultural heritage and tourism should read this book. Recommended. General readers and advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews