Chat with AI Ep.6: “Tourism microentrepreneurship, and neo-internal colonialism in the Camino de Santiago.”
A few years ago, I did a pilgrimage on the Camino Frances with my father and was intrigued with some of what I observed regarding endogenous microentrepreneurial development as well as commercial development that appeared to be poaching economic benefits from rural communities along the camino. For example, we stayed in a hostel in a small village in which our host had left Madrid’s stressful life, and moved back to his family’s pueblo to restore and live in his family’s farm house running it as a hostel for pilgrims. Conversely, we stayed in hostels operated in houses rented by large national companies and staffed by young workers that left for the nearest city after feeding early dinners to their guests. The Camino de Santiago is a fascinating tourism and socio-cultural phenomenon; and I have been interacting with several colleagues who conduct research about various details within this complex system. There is a growing body of literature on this topic, so I thought I’d