Camino Modernism: Re-evaluating Modern Pilgrimage Studies

An international tourist phenomenon, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela brings hundreds of thousands of people to Europe each year. An historically Catholic pilgrimage, its religious history is downplayed today, with organizations like UNESCO focusing instead on its status as a repository of “cultural heritage.” This paper proposes the term “Camino modernism” to describe this transformation, tracing its origins in the work of nationalistic scholars in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to its present deployment in advertising, literature, and academic writing on the Camino. I conclude by showing how the paradigm of Camino modernism permeates the study of pilgrimage more widely. Pilgrimage is often presented or described as an opportunity for affective transformation, a journey with transcendent potential. Thus it is vital to continue to ask how Camino modernism might color the meanings we make or identify in others.