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Accepted Paper:
"A spa for pilgrims": the commodification of the experience and its implications in the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
Paula Palanco Lopez
(University of Oulu)
Based on my findings during my fieldwork in the Camino, this paper focus on how the commodification of the experience (derived from the capitalist logics that govern the touristic activity) affects to the perception of the "authenticity" searched by the pilgrims.
Paper long abstract:
The catholic pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (Spain) is becoming more and more popular amidst many kinds of people. This fact originates a wide array of business opportunities, awakening a growing interest from the tourism industry that, ultimately, is translated into a process of commodification of the "pilgrimage experience". The commodification process is perceived as a source of negative consequences for those people that came to the way as a temporary scape of the capitalist logics that govern their daily lives, being this reflected on their rejection of the tourism and the figure of "the tourist" as opposed to "the pilgrim".