Pilgrimage

This article examines the Marian shrines of Walsingham (England) and Meryem Ana (Turkey). Walsingham was a popular pilgrimage site until the Reformation, when Catholic sacred places were disestablished or destroyed by Protestants. Meryem Ana is linked to Walsingham, in that both shrines feature healing springs and devotion to the cult of the ‘holy house’ of the Virgin Mary. Walsingham is a now home to multi-faith pilgrimages, New Age seekers, and secular tourists. Meryem Ana is a rare Christian shrine in Islamic Turkey, where mass tourists rub shoulders with devout Christians supporting the small Greek Catholic community in residence. This article emerged from the experience of walking the Walsingham Way, a modern route based on the medieval pilgrimage in 2013, and visiting Meryem Ana in 2015 while making a different pilgrimage, that of an Australian attending the centenary of the Gallipoli landings. Both shrines are marketed through strategies of history and heritage, making visiting them more than simply tourism. Both sites offer a constructed experience that references the Middle Ages and Christianity, bringing modern tourism in an increasingly secular world into conversation with ancient and medieval pilgrimage and the religious past.

Travel was a crucial element of ancient Egyptian culture. An extensive traffic system by land and by water already existed as early as the Old Kingdom, including various means of transport that did not fundamentally change right through to the New Kingdom. Traveling activity attested for various professions demonstrates that Egyptian society exercised a high degree of mobility. In the majority of cases, a journey was undertaken within the scope of the traveler’s work and on behalf of the pharaoh. Travel had a significant impact on the Egyptian world-view as well as on the development of the
identity of Egyptian society as an entity.

The illustrations of the Benedictine monk, artist, and chronicler Matthew Paris offer a gateway into the thirteenth-century world. This new study of his cartography emphasizes the striking innovations he brought to it, and shows how the maps became an investment and repository of certain medieval spatial practices: travel through the world, the occurrence of history in that world, and the religious practices and devotional attitudes that were assiduously cultivated within the larger visual culture of St. Albans abbey [in great measure produced by Matthew's own images]. Travel [i.e. space], history [time], and devotion [liturgy], then, are the primary issues and meanings deposited in and registered by Matthew Paris's cartographic landscape. In searching out these contexts, the book explores the paradigm of imagined pilgrimage as an organizing principle that pushes into greater relief medieval understandings of their arrangements of places and of histories. Thus traveling through geography could enact its meanings in a dynamic, religious, even devotional performance of the maps' materials. Richly illustrated with black and white and colour plates.

A partir de l'étude du chapitre 38 de l'ouvrage du savant mecquois al-Fâsî (m. 1429), Shîfâ' al-gharâm bi-akhbâr al-balad al-harâm, consacré à l'histoire du hajj, cet article tente d'identifier les modes de représentation du pouvoir mecquois dans l'oeuvre d'al-Fâsî. Il suggère que le récit récurrent des fitnas qui déchirèrent la cité sainte au moment du pèlerinage était une manière de
mieux en neutraliser les effets et les traces, à un moment où s'affirmait un nouveau pouvoir local fort, autour du chérif Hasan b. 'Ajlân.

با شیوع کووید-19 در اواخر سال 1398، برای جلوگیری از شیوع بیماری، اماکن مقدس و مناسک جمعی در اکثر نقاط دنیا، و نیز ایران، برای مدتی نامعلوم تعطیل شد. از جمله مقاصد زیارتی همچون مشهد که از محبوب‌ترین زیارتگاه‌های ایرانیان بودند دسترس‌ناپذیر شدند. این وضعیت تجربه‌ای را برای زائران ایرانی ایجاد کرد که پیش‌تر در حافظۀ جمعی و دین زیستۀ ایرانیان معاصر بی‌سابقه بود. این شرایط، مرزهای امر قدسی و عرفی، و محدودۀ عاملیت امر قدسی و عرفی را به‌شدت مسئله‌مند کرد. با توجه به اینکه چنین رخداد و تجربه‌ای در مطالعات جامعه‌شناسی دین در ایران تا کنون مورد بررسی قرار نگرفته، در پژوهش حاضر، ضمن تحلیل 14 مصاحبۀ نیمه‌ساخت‌یافته، تجربۀ زائران مستمر از امر قدسیِ تجسدیافته در مکان مقدس در زمانی واکاوی شد که مکان مقدس به دلیل شیوع بلای طبیعی تهدیدکنندۀ بقا به مدت نامعلومی رسماً از دسترس خارج شده بود. در این پژوهش سه موضع متفاوت در برابر تعطیلی حرم در بین مشارکت‌کنندگان شناسایی شد: موافقان، مخالفان، و مخالفان محافظه‌کار. بررسی تجربۀ عاطفی مشارکت‌کنندگان حاکی است آنها عواطف متناقضی را تجربه کردند. در بررسی مواجهۀ شناختی مشارکت‌کنندگانمشخص شدموافقان تعطیلی حرم در برخورد با ناهماهنگی شناختی و تهدید هویت دیندارانه‌شان راهبردهایی را اتخاذ کردند که عمدتاً بر بازتعریف، بازتفسیر، گزینش، و برجسته‌سازی بعضی خوانش‌های الهیاتی و فقهی در مقابل برخی دیگر از خوانش‌ها و فهم‌ها بود به طوری که بتوانند چالش‌های فوق برای دینداری‌شان را حل و فصل و تعدیل کنند. اقلیت مخالفان، با تفسیری تقدیرگرایانه، حکومت و موافقان تعطیلی را به اصیل و صادق نبودن در ارادت به امام و محافظه‌کاری / مصلحت‌اندیشی سیاسی متهم می‌کردند. معدود مخالفان محافظه‌کار نیز به دلیل اهمیت و جهۀ جهانی و سیاسی حکومت شیعی، به رغم نارضایتی، این مصلحت‌اندیشی را درک می‌کردند. در نهایت، مواجهۀ عملی زائران با این ممنوعیت توصیف شده است.

In April 2016, the remains of the very first “Glacis-chapel” have been discovered in the center of Luxembourg-city during extensive road works in preparation of the new tramway crossing the capital of Luxembourg. Although its approximate location was already known thanks to historical documents, the discovery came as a surprise as the remains were thought to be entirely demolished by road works in 1913.
The excavations operated during the first half of 2016 aroused a wide interest on the part of the press, the Church and the population, not only because of the strong symbolism coming from the chapel’s history but also because of the link to the construction of the tramway which caused quite a few debates in the forefront of the project.

According to Sahih Muslim, a Sunni Muslim hadith collection, women are obliged to perform their pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in today’s Saudi Arabia solely together with a legal male chaperone (mahram), i.e. one of their immediate family members, such as a father, brother, husband or son she is not eligible to marry. Shia Muslim women, however, are allowed to go for hajj or umrah (“small pilgrimage”) alone if they feel safe. The Saudi government tightened the corresponding law for all Muslim women at the end of the 1990s. Women are obliged to enter Saudi Arabia together with a mahram only until they reach the age of forty-five – but this legal rule is only applicable for women who need a visa to enter the nation state.
This chapter examines fundamental differences in the experiences had by female pilgrims regarding their male supervision according to their citizenship and their Islamic belief (Sunni or Shia Islam). By comparing three stories of women from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, the goal is to investigate the intersecting social categories and practices of gender, Islamic belief, nationality and age as enabling or as limiting factors for women on pilgrimage. Whereas for those women whose male companionship only depends on the interpretation of the belief system their GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) nationality can be a loophole for their mobility, the Saudi legislation can be an obstacle or an empty legal shell for those female citizens who require a visa to perform pilgrimage in the holy places Mecca and Medina.

This article addresses Rachel’s Tomb as a site of heightened ritual activity and pilgrimage, whose popularity increased during the latter years of the British Mandate in Palestine, and whose role and meaning as a symbolic public site have been transformed. We examine how a set of meanings has been established at the site at the particular historic moment, converging local and national meanings, on the one hand, with religious, heritage and touristic meanings, on the other. Our approach is integrative, and we situate our inquiry by addressing three main conceptual points: the first is the site’s geo-physical characteristics, by which we refer to its functionality in terms of location, accessibility, and mobility, as well as in terms of the site’s size and material characteristics. The second point concerns the agentive interventions of the site’s renowned shamash, Shlomo Eliyahu Freimann, and the crucial role that he played in transforming the site’s collective function and public status. The third point concerns a corpus of documents, most of which were written in situ, that center around the site’s impressive visitor books, filled with numerous notations. Study of these documents suggests a hybrid genre that is part of the site’s changing discursive ecology.

This paper will examine the cult of our Lady of Walsingham, paying special attention to its material culture in British cultural landscape, and in the pilgrim’s approach to Walsingham from the West.  As one of England’s premier pilgrim destinations, rivalling Canterbury at times in popularity, Walsingham was the recipient of many royal and high status visitors, and countless examples form the lesser laity. The material record attests to a healthy industry for pilgrim souvenirs, and distribution maps for the ampullae (lead or pewter containers for holy water) and pilgrim badges show a high concentration throughout agricultural communities in central and eastern England, which suggests a potential link between ‘Our Lady’ Marian cults and rural areas.

The second half of the paper will deal with the experiences of my fieldwork, travelling between Ely and Walsingham utilising the traces of the Medieval route network, joining with the ‘Walsingham Way’ or ‘Palmers Way’ from London to Walsingham as it enters Norfolk near Brandon. This routes travels up to Fakenham, Castle Acre and Swaffham, finally leading into Walsingham. In this section I will explain my analyses of the landscapes, and explore the sensory elements which may have differentiated the ‘pilgrim’ journey experience to that of a commercial traveller.

Governments in Arabia today usually ignore the Ottoman Empire’s history in the region, but the Ottomans from 1516 to 1918 played a key role in coastal regions, especially in the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. While Ottoman administrations intermittently ruled in Yemen and eastern Arabia, their influence was greatest in the holy Hijaz, the site of the worldwide pilgrimage. However, Ottoman rule was limited by Istanbul’s distance from Arabia. Religion played a significant role in determining the nature of Ottoman control, helping to legitimize the state among its subjects. A detailed analysis of one province, the Hijaz, with a particular emphasis on the period from 1840 to 1908, shows the impact of general factors on political history. Hijazi environmental, social, and gender history were modestly influenced by the centralizing Ottoman government. The Ottoman Empire in Arabia succeeded in notably slowing the encroachment of European imperialism into the heart of Islam.

La Jerosolimitana peregrinatione del mercante milanese Bernardino Dinali non si limita a esemplificare una delle molte variabili del viaggio in Terrasanta. Questo diario s’impone all’attenzione degli specialisti per l’importanza liturgica del resoconto che dedica ampio spazio alla raccolta in forma estesa delle preghiere che i francescani  facevano recitare ai pellegrini. L’opera, non a caso, è stata considera una delle tappe fondamentali nell’evoluzione del processionale gerosolimitano.

How can cultural works from the distant past-such as the Middle Ages-teach us ethical modes of behavior for today? One form of ecopoetics emerges through slow practice, making the reader collaborate in the measured process of co-creating the emotional impact of an imaginative text. Drawing on rich debates about slow cinema, this essay suggests how Chaucer's The Clerk's Tale-from his grand fourteenth-century poem, The Canterbury Tales-evokes a slow eco-aesthetics with ethical impact. The relative slowness of walking shapes how individuals respond to their environment. In turn, a deceleration of perception affects how travel comes to be written about, as seen in the tale of Patient Griselda. Introduced by Giovanni Boccaccio and adapted by such writers as Francesco Petrarch, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan, she acts dynamically through her apparent silence and notorious patience. The environmental humanities offer paradigms for us to consider the strategies of slowness and patience. This essay shows how medieval pilgrimage literature evokes a slow aesthetic which is at the same time an ecocritical strategy. Slowness results in an enduring impact and heightened sensitivity to the ecological damage for which we all are culpable. Sloweness somatically inculcates key aspects of environmental awareness. Pilgrimage texts from the Middle Ages teach us slow ethical aesthetics, suggesting that the medieval moment-finally and a long time coming-is now. Resumen ¿Cómo puede la producción cultural del pasado más lejano, como la del medievo, enseñarnos modos éticos de comportamiento para hoy en día? Una de las formas de la ecopoética surge a través de la práctica lenta, haciendo que el lector colabore en el proceso medido de co-crear el impacto emotivo de un texto ficticio. Inspirado en los valiosos debates en torno al slow cinema (cinematografía lenta), este ensayo plantea cómo El cuento del erudito (The Clerk's Take) de Chaucer, de su gran poema del sigo XIV, Los cuentos de Canterbury, logra evocar una ecopoética lenta con un impacto ético. La relativa lentitud del caminar determina cómo responde el individuo a su medio ambiente. La desaceleración de la percepción, a su vez, afecta a la forma en la que se narra el viaje, como se ve en el cuento de la paciente Griselda. Introducida por primera vez por Giovanni Boccaccio y adaptada por escritores como Francesco Petrarca, Geoffrey Chaucer, y Christine de Pizan, ella actúa dinámicamente por medio de su aparente silencio y su notoria paciencia. Las humanidades ambientales nos ofrecen paradigmas para considerar las estrategias de la lentitud y la paciencia. Este ensayo muestra cómo la literatura del peregrinaje medieval evoca una estética lenta que es a la vez una estrategia ecocrítica. La lentitud resulta en un impacto duradero y una sensibilidad aguzada hacia el daño ecológico del que somos todos culpables. La lentitud corporal inculca aspectos clave de concienciación medioambiental. Los textos medievales sobre el peregrinaje nos enseñan la lenta estética ética, sugiriendo que el momento medieval, tan largamente esperado, por fin ha llegado.

Oppe på høyfjellet  på Skurdalsporten i Meråker ligger tre bergflater som er oversådd med korsfigurer. De første korsfigurene ble oppdaget  på 1980-tallet, og ble da antatt å være spor etter pilegrimstrafikk gjennom området i middelalderen. Så langt har man funnet greske kors, latinske kors/t-kors, patrialkalkors/erkebispekors og Andreaskors her, men siden feltene i dag er overvokst med skorpelav, kan det finnes enda flere uregistrerte korsformer her.

Pilegrimsleden fra Skurdalsporten til Nidaros har i motsetning til leden fra Gauldalen og over Vassfjellet  ingen nærliggende arkeologiske funn som kan knytte lokaliteten til pilegrimstrafikken. Trekker vi imidlertid linjene østover til det norrländske landskapet finnes mange bevis på pilegrimstrafikkens eksistens og olavskultens stilling. Det at leden ble lagt gjennom dette landskapet, kan oppfattes som et politisk styrt forsøk på å skape et tyngdepunkt i Norden gjennom innføring av skatt til Nidaros også i Mellan-Norrland.  Gjennom Norges innføring av lover som skulle verne om pilegrimene, og opprettelsen av overnattingssteder, ser vi det samme bildet (Ekroll in prep.).

Korset var pilegrimenes mektigste symbol. Ved å etterlate seg et merke i form av et innrisset kors eller en korsfigur kunne man på en enkel måte kommunisere for omverdenen at man var på pilegrimsreise. Å merke landskapet med kors kan oppfattes som en ritualisering eller kristning av stedet, der man sikret seg mot «ukristne» makter, spesielt i utmarka.

Rituals are often used as opportunities for self-reflection and identity construction. The Camino to Santiago de Compostela, which has become a singularly popular pilgrimage since the late ‘80s of the last century, is an example of a ritual that is explicitly used to gain a deeper understanding of one’s identity through distancing oneself from daily life and creating a space of contemplation. Implicit in this function of rituals in general, and the pilgrimage to Santiago in particular, is the assumption that one is more authentic and closer to one’s true identity during the pilgrimage, than one is in daily life. The ritual self, as an idealized identity, functions thus as a critique on one’s regular cultural identity. This critique also plays a role in the construction of a so-called authentic pilgrim identity, which creates a hierarchy in the ways the pilgrim identity can be appropriated by individuals. This presentation proposes to investigate both the ideal, ritual identity and the implicit critique towards the cultural dynamics that force the pilgrim to ‘not be her/himself’ in daily life.

This thesis analyses how the transformation which contemporary forms of religion have undergone is reflected in the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Longstanding pathways through Europe have structured space in a particular way by creating holy sites and these pathways are interestingly still being used. In the first chapter I discuss contemporary forms of religion and their features. These new forms are characterized by their emphasis on authenticity, the ‘selfexperience’ of religion and the huge role being played by media. In the second chapter some important theories in the contemporary study of pilgrimage are discussed. Central in this chapter and the rest of the thesis is the spatial approach, which focuses on people give meaning to space. People ‘use religion in order to orient and move themselves in time and space, making it interesting to study this complex relation in the context of physical movement. After discussing the qualitative research methods in chapter three, this thesis present a history of the pilgrimage to Santiago in chapter four. This chapter points to the involvement of many actors, such as the European Union, the Catholic Church and the local ‘Spanish Federation’. In chapter five the information gathered by my qualitative research on Dutch pilgrims is presented. All pilgrims are (according to themselves) changed because of ‘their Camino’. Also, there appear to be many social norms active on the Camino, some of them being approved by almost all pilgrims while others just by a few. Finally, there is a prominent role for media: the active Dutch Facebook group ‘Sint Jacobs Route’ enables pilgrims to discuss matters related to the pilgrimage, such as preparation and updates from ‘actual’ pilgrims on the Camino. Chapter six discusses how pilgrims construct their own unique Camino. Pilgrims to Santiago are confronted with many visions and ideas provided by all kinds of authorities and people back home, experiencing the pilgrimage ‘vicariously’. By positioning themselves in the complex ‘web’ of social influences, embracing some authorities while abandon them in other situations, pilgrims construct their own unique Camino. The transformation post-secular religions have undergone is thus reflected on the pilgrimage to Santiago because of a comparable quest for authenticity in a complex plural field. Pilgrims are looking for their own unique pilgrimage and successfully find it by mediating between (traditional) models provided by authorities.

Over the last twenty years there has been a growing participation of a wide audience from Israel and other Jewish communities around the world in the Rosh Hashana pilgrimage to Uman. Recently more and more people affiliated with Religious Zionists have joined this spiritual festival; participation which comes into conflict with some core issues in what can be seen as Religious Zionist ethos and doctrines. This paper quotes the reactions of some R"Z rabbis and analyses kinds of discourses which take place in regard to this issue. The paper concludes that there are different trends in the rabbinic discourse in R"Z, and while it seems that some trends are using an authoritative "Daat Torah" style to try to dictate religious behavior, the R"Z mainstream rabbinic discourse uses a more subtle and relational-educational means of coping with issues of this kind. Thus the R"Z Rabbis’ answers to the religious problems they are asked are being negotiated with their adherents with less ideological conviction and more practical pragmatic and personal guiding.

Last year was the 30th anniversary of the Cultural Routes of Council of Europe. It is interesting to notice that some of these cultural itineraries refers to important medieval pilgrimage routes: for instance, it is the case of “St. James’ Way” and the “Via Francigena”. Both itineraries have known a growth in the number of tourists during the last years. Their success is due to two main aspects: firstly, they are slow-tourism products, different from the mass-tourism ones; secondly, they are presented to the public as an authentic experience, strictly connected to the one lived by the medieval pilgrims centuries ago. In my paper, I would like to explain why it is not possible to assimilate the medieval pilgrims with the modern tourists, and in which way these cultural and touristic projects use the Middle Ages as an element of attraction for tourists. In fact, while for a medieval man the pilgrimage was a journey undertaken mainly for religious motivations, a modern tourist decides to set out for different reasons, like the desire of escaping from the daily routine or the opportunity of visiting cultural heritage sites. Furthermore, the idea of reconnecting modern tourists with medieval pilgrims, and the importance of the authenticity of these experiences, seem to suppose a clear dichotomy: the fast modern world is opposed to the quieter and peaceful medieval period, a time when it was possible to face a long journey on foot in order to visit important sanctuaries and churches.

Shikoku is best known for a pilgrimage of 88 Buddhist temples, a thousand-mile clockwise circumambulation of the island. The pilgrimage of Shikoku symbolically recapitulates the career of Japan's great saint, Kūkai or Kōbō Daishi (774-835), from birth to enlightenment.

The reconciliation of Ibn al-Kalbī's ninth-century CE text of on pre-Islamic Arabia with modern scholarship offers certain insights to religious practices in the Arabian Peninsula from prehistory through the seventh cenury CE This study integrates his early Book of Idols into existing archaeological and anthropological studies about diverse aspects of pre-Islamic religion and ritual: diverse forms of litholatry; pilgrimage rituals; and the social economy of sacrifice and rain rogation rituals. Al-Kalbī's text is recognized rightly for its essential character as a product from a distinct cultural milieu, early Islamic Kūfa, distant by time, geography, and culture from the pre-Islamic culture of Arabian antiquity of the peninsula and particularly the ancient kingdoms of Yemen in the southwest. Nevertheless, this article analyzes this contested source for several of its alignments with recent archaeological and anthropological findings.

Esta pesquisa objetiva entender de que modo os processos midiáticos contemporâneos se integram à experiência de peregrinação, tendo por lugar de observação o Caminho de Santiago. A peregrinação midiatizada se dá a ver em múltiplas frentes: nos materiais expressivos que circulam nas mídias em que se cria uma peregrinação à distância atravessada por lógicas externas ao ritual; nas práticas midiáticas incorporadas ao cotidiano do peregrino que instituem modos pelos quais o fazer dessa experiência é afetado e ressignificado; e nos múltiplos caminhos, inclusive simbólicos, que se constituem e se entrecruzam em prolongamentos do Caminho em si. A investigação lançou mão de conceitos como experiência, narrativa, circulação, lógicas de mídia e lógicas de midiatização e de técnicas de análise diversas articuladas a um olhar de inspiração etnográfica. Desse modo, por meio de entrevistas, análise de aplicativos e de interações em grupos de Facebook dedicados ao Caminho de Santiago, formulários e de uma pesquisa participante em uma das rotas de peregrinação (o Caminho Francês), procurou-se, por estas múltiplas entradas analíticas, perscrutar que tipo(s) de experiência(s) despontam na midiatização contemporânea. Os caminhos da midiatização são marcados por tensões e ambivalências pelas quais um ritual cuja vivência que historicamente se constituiu como externo às estruturas sociais é cada vez mais invadido por injunções midiáticas na sua experiência. Não se nega a existência de processos midiáticos harmônicos, mas foi a dicotomia entre ações que levam o indivíduo a experimentar, de um lado, uma peregrinação idealizada e, de outro, práticas que o afastariam dela, é que se manifestou como força dúbia característica da midiatização quando esta se insere em uma experiência em que a busca pelo retorno ao tradicional se faz por gramáticas do tempo presente. Evidenciam-se nesta tese constantes negociações que envolvem a Igreja Católica, o campo político, o campo econômico e, especialmente, os próprios atores sociais que reinventam seu caminhar e, por conseguinte, a própria noção do Caminho e do(s) sentido(s) de uma peregrinação.

Religious sites, either as places of pilgrimage or as cultural resources, have always attracted the tourists’ interest. The tourist value of religious areas is enhanced when these are combined with a special natural beauty. These choices are identified in
many regions both in Greece and abroad and concern different religions and doctrines. The monasteries of Meteora, Mount Athos, St John the Theologian in Patmos etc. are indicative examples in Greece.
The protection of the sacred areas has drawn the attention of the Greek State which has adopted a special legal framework to protect the sacred sites, the monuments, the heirlooms and the treasures. This regulatory framework is composed of laws concerning specific regions, both continental and insular. There is similar legal protection in other countries as well.
This study examines the special legal framework governing the sacred places of Greece and at the same time treats the question often raised when conflicts arise between the religious character of the place –pilgrimage- and the cultural character of the place –cultural interest leading to religio-cultural tourism. In other words, there is a question whether the sacred nature of the place complies with its cultural nature and to what extent cultural tourism affects the pilgrimage in sacred places with an active
religious activity. There is also a question whether the implementation of restrictions and restraints on sacred places and sites and the reduction of disturbances from the “hordes” of tourists are practically possible.
The answers to these questions vary according to the perspective and the position of the person who examines the issue, namely according to what they consider prevalent: the pilgrimage character or the cultural character. In any case, by
establishing the sacred nature of the place, the legislator tries to make the two elements compatible. However, the achievement of this goal depends on those who enforce the law.

The paper explores the interaction with sacred places in New Age pilgrimage. There is a tendency in social theory of religion to define New Age spirituality as individualized form of religiosity in accordance with the notion of "private religion". Such an interpretation is based on the priority of personal beliefs and narratives upon bodily aspect of religious experience and the ways of reflecting about it. The author claims that while the New Age pilgrimage does not necessarily imply identities and narratives shared by most of the participants, it is characterized by a common regime of interaction with the sacred and grassroots proselytism.