Religious Tourism and the Environment. Группа авторов
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that visit the pilgrim-town. Depending on their economic status, some pilgrims may exercise substantial influence on the pilgrimage centre through their patronage of religious establishments and funding of charities, temples, and public services for fellow travellers. Religious tourists can also be included in this group because of their importance to the continuing economic growth of these destinations in both the religious and secular sectors.
The creation and growth of any pilgrimage site depends on the extent to which these institutions interact in a positive manner to reinforce the religious importance of the place. The ritual practices performed by religious intermediaries, the services and artefacts provided by supporting trades, and the symbolism of various religious events and festivals sustain the religious identity and sacrality of sacred places. But pilgrimage, as both ritual practice and economy, is not independent from the changes in the broader socioeconomic and political realm within which it occurs and is therefore likely to change and consequently transform the religious environment (Shackley, 2001). These changes, as noted above, may be visible in the reorganisation of ritual performances, changes in seasonal patterns of pilgrimage flows, and the characteristics of visitors and religious investments that both shape, and are shaped by, the physical and built environment of the pilgrimage centre. Transformations in the socioeconomic and physical environment of pilgrimage centres are also shaped by changing representations of religiosity, piety, and sacredness of the pilgrimage landscape. These representations are articulated by religious institutions through discourses that interpret the changing environment of pilgrimage in different ways. Some may invoke mythological stories or past traditions to criticize or challenge the changes occurring in the built environment, while others might claim that the degradation of the physical environment reflects moral degeneracy and defilement of the sacred site. Other still might embrace religious symbols to argue for the modernization of religious traditions and pilgrimage sites. Together, these competing discourses of change produce new institutional spaces and configurations for regulating, managing, and sustaining the material landscape and cultural symbolism of the place.
Chapter Contributions
This quick review of the existing literature around the key concepts of tourism, religion, and environment shows that while each of these areas has its own exploratory domains, the relationships between these concepts have received varying degrees of attention. Of these connections, tourism—environment relations have received the greatest amount of attention and yielded basic conceptual frameworks to understand these relationships. However, the role of religious values that influence both positive and negative impacts between tourism and the environment are largely missing. The connections between tourism and religion only sparingly discuss environmental aspects, and regarding the relationships between religion and environment, the appeal of nature and ethical calls for environmental stewardship are quite evident, but investigations into the actual interactions of the various aspects that underpin these relationships within the material world are still lacking.
The chapters included in this volume elaborate on some of the core aspects of this theoretical model presented in this chapter that views ‘the environment’ of pilgrimage as a dynamic process shaped by the activities, forms of control, perceptions, and representations of the actors involved in the production of sacred sites. Some chapters focus on the environment as a resource or generator for religious tourism, while other chapters discuss the environment as a recipient of impacts of religious tourism.
In addition to this introductory chapter, there are eleven contributions in this book. In Chapter 2, Daniel Olsen examines the relationships between pilgrimage, religious tourism, biodiversity, and natural sacred sites, and how religiously motivated travel to these sites affects the natural environment. After highlighting the views of nature by several major faith traditions, Olsen turns to examine how natural sacred sites are defined and categorises these sites into sacred mountains and volcanoes, caves and grottoes, water, trees and groves, and plants and animals. The author then notes some of the impacts of pilgrimage and religious tourism on natural sacred sites, and finishes by discussing attempts at different scales to maintain the sanctity and sustainability of these sites through governance frameworks that focus on the preservation of biodiversity.
In Chapter 3, Kiran Shinde engages in a comparison of six religious tourism destinations in India through the analytical categories of environmental processes, institutional responsibility, place attachment, and governance systems. In doing so, Shinde expands on the conceptual model in this chapter (Fig. 1.2) to provide a comprehensive explanation of the complexities of managing the natural and human-built environment at religious tourism destinations.
In Chapter 4, Joshua Nash focuses on how deeper and more philosophical experiences with sacred places, such as Vrindavan, India, can lead to the creation of human sanctuaries. Although present-day Vrindavan, which in popular mythological image is considered a celestial forest and divine playground of Krishna, is a city full of environmental problems, it still is the focus of spiritual teachings that build on the union of religion and nature conservation. In an almost biographical style, Nash expounds on the Vaishnava teachings and their relevance for conserving the natural environment as he learned them from his study with local Vrindavan ecologist Shri Sevak Sharan, who calls for practical action and contemplative practice (sadhana, chintan) using what he calls the Vrindavan Ecological Concept (VEC). Nash argues that this concept is powerful enough to inspire changes in thought processes and behavioural action that can create human sanctuaries everywhere in the world.
In Chapter 5, Sanjay Nepal, Yang Mu, and Po-Hsin Lai examine how local residents make sense of the sacred landscape of the Sagarmatha (Mt Everest) National Park (SNP) in Nepal’s Khumbu Region. From their fieldwork they report that Sherpas’ emotional and spiritual bonds with the landscape are reinforced through routinized contact with the sacred cultural features and consistent compliance with the rules of conduct. The authors argue that Sherpa residents’ objective recognition of the sacred landscape is influenced by geographical proximity to sacred sites, age of residents, and their religious backgrounds. Subjective interpretations of sacred landscape are also shaped by a strong awareness of behavioural restrictions, family influence and personal experiences. These strong bonds, however, are under threat as the religious influence of the landscape is diminishing with the shift of people’s economic dependency from the land to a consumer culture facilitated by tourism.
In Chapter 6, Anouk Lafortune-Bernard, Rajendra Suwal, Kai Weise, and Robin Coningham discuss the challenges for site managers at the Limbini World Heritage Site in Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha. Since 1978, the Lumbini Master Plan has focused on ecological conservation and preserving the sanctity of the site in the face of increasing urbanization and tourism development in the area. The authors reflect on some of the difficulties in implementing the original plan, showing that the lack of integration of the Lumbini Master Plan with other local and regional plans has made it difficult to achieve the broader sustainable goals for the region.
In Chapter 7, Nour Farra-Haddad looks at interfaith pilgrimages in Lebanon where Christian and Muslims pilgrims worship at each other’s sacred sites. More specifically, the author looks at how the natural elements of these sacred sites, including trees, water, and stones, are utilized by pilgrims. In doing so, Farra-Haddad argues that the use of these natural elements in shared religious rituals acts as a catalyst for interfaith cooperation and experiences between different faith traditions in Lebanon.
The importance of understanding the sociopolitical contexts in which a sacred site is constructed is the focus of Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes in Chapter 8. Garcia-Fuentes discusses the building of the Sagrada Familia, a well-known Catholic expiatory temple in Barcelona. The author argues that its design and construction was symbolic of competing religious and political forces to use the mountain