Pain, suffering and the consumption of spirituality: a toe story

Veronique Cova () and Bernard Cova
Additional contact information
Veronique Cova: CERGAM - Centre d'Études et de Recherche en Gestion d'Aix-Marseille - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - UTLN - Université de Toulon
Bernard Cova: Cermes - Université Bocconi

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The article addresses spiritual consumption from a corporal perspective, with a specific focus on pain and suffering as vehicles to a higher spiritual state. It applies a comparative auto-ethnography of the pain that people participating in two pilgrimages – the Camino de Santiago in France and Spain and the Quebec Compostela in Canada – feel in their toes and uses this to discuss how the experience and manifestation of pain actualises the spiritual experience. The results show that corporal pain transforms into a spiritual experience in the way that it connects to both the spiritual features associated with a particular context and the spiritual capital of the person experiencing the pain. They also reveal that displaying corporal pain during rituals – much like the sense of communion that is generated through the act of sharing – fosters further transformations leading to spiritual experiences.

Keywords: Body; Camino de Santiago; Compostela; consumption; pain; pilgrimage; spiritual capital; spiritual feature (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-01-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Journal of Marketing Management, 2019, pp.1-21

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01980520

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().