ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to reconstruct the complexities of the Mediterranean geographies and sensibilities by focusing on the unspectacular, the recurrent patterns of life. It emphasizes the significance of mass tourism in shaping and reshaping the region. Mass tourism has become the very fabric of the Mediterranean, conferring to the region a new economic and social centrality. The movement of tourists and those who make their living from them is what today holds together the old Mare Nostrum. The European Union policy language of lagging regions' has reinforced the sense of social temporality and discourses of modernization that has exoticized the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean of those who dwell permanently as residents sits side by side with the Mediterranean of fleeting tourist's dwelling-in-mobilities. The Mediterranean in the age of mass tourism is an elusive region marked by contradiction and complexity.
