Abstract
The chapter starts by stating the theoretical stand and proposing a case study: a safe haven in Brazil, Caraça. An interdisciplinary stand puts together environmental, tourism, historical, and other perspectives to understand how religious heritage, nature, and people's perceptions interact and produce meaning. The approach proposes a look at the conservation and tourist use of religious heritage from a perspective of the spirit of the place in which culture and nature are in constant dialogue enabling important debates in the present century.
TopSustainability And Religious Heritage
This revealing character imbued in the religious heritage is related to the sustainability debate and demonstrates at the same time the social and human insertion of the inherent face of environmental criticism. This, in turn, clearly portrays the perception of a crisis denounced in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There are many authors who structure their theories to understand this historical and global moment. However, our approach here deals with scholars of the environmental sciences, because they allow us to establish links with a question that seems to us elementary in the debate about heritage and sustainability: the problem of the split between culture and nature.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Natural Heritage Private Reserve: Category of private protected area, present in the Brazilian National System of Protected Areas. It allows sustainable use, characterized by scientific research, environmental education, and tourism.
Pilgrim: One who travels on a trip with a central motive sustained in the religious and spiritual elements of a certain destiny.
Spirit of Place: An expression that encompasses the tangible and intangible dimensions of a space, giving it meaning, emotion and mystery. It was a theme for reflection by Unesco, culminating in a Declaration in 2008 in Quebec City, Canada.
Tourist: A person who travels and stays overnight at a certain destination, due to one or more motivations.
Sustainability: The term presented in 1987 in the Bruntland Report, whose central question is based on the proper use of natural resources in the present so that future generations may not suffer the negative consequences. The concept became common currency more emphatically during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Caraça Sanctuary: A religious and natural sanctuary located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. With a permanent occupation since the eighteenth century, this space acted as a pilgrimage center, destiny of great naturalists, an important Brazilian college. Since the 1970s, this sanctuary is also an important tourist destination, sheltering a significant biodiversity of Brazilian territory and a cultural heritage listed at the national level. Congregation of the Mission, a Vincentian religious institution owns it. Conservation of The Spirit of Place: A conservation model based on the material and immaterial singularities of a given space and / or heritage. In this model, the characteristics that impart meanings, tangible elements and location are taken as central to the definition of strategies and planning.