Pelas franjas dos santuários: turismo, fé e religião em flashes etnográficos

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between tourism, faith and religion around sanctuaries, based on three ethnographic experiences revisited in the form of multissituated flashes – and a partial bibliographical revision. The sanctuary, in a broad sense, embraces a central nucleus and an extensive fringe, spatially and symbolically. Between the center and the outskirt there are gradations, continuities and discontinuities. In this way, this paper understands the sanctuary through its shadows and simulacra, rather than its luminous presence and splendor, through the periphery rather than through its centrality. The question posed here refers to the intermediate spaces where religion and tourism meet by confluence, mixing and contrasting among each other. This paper analyzes three spaces from an ethnographic methodology: Aparecida – SP, Cancao Nova – SP, and Ashram-Vrajabhumi – RJ. Therefore, we argue that the outskirts of sanctuaries allow the reverberation of ambiguous and oscillating identities between and integrity-oneness (faith) and a non-integrity/non-uniqueness (tourism).