Turismo religioso em Natividade-TO: festas religiosas, agenciamentos e o desenvolvimento local

Abstract

This research intends to investigate the main religious festivals in the city of Natividade – Tocantins, the Festa do Divino Espírito Santo and the Pilgrimage of Senhor do Bonfim, how the relationship between local development and religious tourism occurs, through the agency of social actors around of a religious identity that is attributed to the city. Authors such as Bajoit (2006) and the relational management theory of the self, linked to the habitus presented by Bourdieu (2009), as a way of life, which influences the performative forces treated by Yúdice (2004), was used mainly as a basic construction on culture and identity. With regard to local development, several authors who work with endogenous development and who see culture as a factor generating development for a community or region were used. The research starts from the ontology of subject-object interaction, with a constructivist epistemology, thus leading to the adoption of a phenomenological approach and using research methods of a qualitative, applied nature, character and exploratory objectives, using production techniques data such as bibliographic survey, combined with records and analysis of field diaries with participant observation, application of an online questionnaire for 120 people and in-depth interviews with twenty-three social actors who are related to the area of tourism and culture in Nativity. Photographic records and audiovisual recordings were also used, juxtaposing narratives of memory and history to the recorded observations and material produced during the Festa do Divino and Senhor do Bonfim Pilgrimage in 2018 and 2019 (in person) and in 2020 and 2021 remotely (due to the new coronavirus pandemic). However, the material collected reflects more than fifteen years of involvement by the author with the aforementioned theme. It is supposed that the religious identity attributed to the city of Natividade demarcates a set of practices and manifestations that can guide a model of local development, in which religious festivals acquire centrality. With that, this thesis presents about the assemblages around the religious festivals of Natividade, in which it will not be about subjects or institutions, but about recognizing the projects developed in the locality and who are the actors that are involved in these projects. The identification of these assemblages around the religious tourism project for the city of Natividade is essential to understand the processes that occurred or occur in the municipality, since these assemblages can be individual, in groups or by associations. Finally, the interpretations made it possible to establish the thesis that there is indeed a logic of organization of actors in the Natividade community, so that the agencies around religious festivals do not intend to affirm the city as a destination for religious tourism within Tocantins, but rather a self promotion of actors isolated in themselves or grouped by family affinities. And, that the actions are geared towards cultural tourism, experience tourism and, more recently, ecotourism. There is still no community awareness that religious tourism can be attractive. There is an individualized awareness and, therefore, there is a lack of creating and putting into practice the network of actors with projects and actions.