Paper short abstract:

By connecting the notion of laterality to studies on situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation, this paper intends to explore the dimension of learning in pilgrimage, among ascetic practitioners involved in the contemporary revitalisation of a premodern route in Katsuragi.

Paper long abstract:

In his recent book, Simon Coleman (2021) has advocated the need to capture zones of operation which “derive yet simultaneously deviate from conventional or expected orientations and stances” in pilgrimage practice, by using the concept of “laterality”. In my paper, I wish to show how this concept may have interesting connections with another important domain of practice, rarely addressed in the anthropology of pilgrimage: the dimension of learning. In their study on situated learning, Lave and Wenger (1991) have in fact argued that every form of learning is a social practice producing individual and collective subjectivities, and learners usually acquire skills by laterally engaging in “legitimate peripheral participation”. By connecting these ideas to studies on learning in anthropology of religion (Berliner and Sarrò 2009) and semiotics (Landowski 2004), we will see how the concept of legitimate peripheral participation bears striking resemblances with laterality, opening interesting perspectives on pilgrimage practice. I will explore these themes through my long-term ethnography in Katsuragi, Japan, among pilgrims engaged in the contemporary revitalisation of a premodern ascetic pilgrimage, linked to the twenty-eight sutra mounds of the Lotus Sutra (Katsuragi nijūhasshuku no kyōzuka). By following the situated learning activities of these ascetic pilgrims in their lateral attitudes and courses of action, we will see not only how pilgrimage becomes a deeply adaptive and dynamic practice, including improvisation and adjustment, but also how by learning a pilgrimage and acquiring skills in often unpredictable situations, practitioners learn how to become pilgrims.