ABSTRACT
Based on fieldwork in 2005 and 2006, and a “touristic” visit in 2004, this chapter analyzes tropes of seduction in representations of Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a seaside town of approximately 2,500 and pilgrimage center on the Mediterranean coast of France, located in the marshy estuary of the Rhône River known as the Camargue. In my analysis of the seductive images presented in brochures and Internet sites designed for visitors to Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, I draw upon work in the anthropology of tourism and the anthropology of pilgrimage by Coleman (2002), Coleman and Crang (2002), Dubisch (1995), Graburn (1977, 1983, 1995), MacCannell (1976, 2011) and Turner and Turner (1978), among others. In particular, I seek to show how twenty-first-century “touristic” representations of this pilgrimage center perpetuate themes of redemption and salvation that permeate earlier Christian discourses. As a result, even ostensibly “non-religious” travel to Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer can be understood as the expression of a desire for a return to an idealized, sacred, prelapsarean state of existence.
