Religious Tourism and Cultural Heritage Preservation: A Sociocultural Analysis of Pilgrimage Sites in South and Southeast Asia

Abstract

Religious tourism has grown rapidly across South and Southeast Asia, generating substantial economic benefits while raising urgent questions about cultural authenticity, community welfare, and heritage preservation. Drawing on 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between September 2022 and March 2024 at six pilgrimage sites — Varanasi and Bodh Gaya in India, Borobudur and Prambanan in Indonesia, the Shah Jalal Dargah in Sylhet (Bangladesh), and Angkor Wat in Cambodia for comparative purposes — this study analyses the sociocultural dynamics that shape contemporary pilgrimage and the conditions under which heritage preservation succeeds or fails. The qualitative inquiry combines 90 semi-structured interviews with pilgrims, 45 with heritage and tourism stakeholders, sustained participant observation, and analysis of management plans, government policies, and UNESCO documentation. Reflexive thematic analysis identified four overarching themes: (1) ongoing negotiations between sacred and profane uses of pilgrimage space; (2) tensions between economic benefit and perceived cultural erosion; (3) community agency and resistance to top-down management; and (4) the role of governance frameworks in shaping outcomes. The study contributes to pilgrimage and heritage scholarship by providing a directly comparative multi-site account, by extending Victor Turner's communitas framework and Eade and Sallnow's contested-space framework into 21st-century mass pilgrimage, and by translating findings into policy recommendations for sustainable religious tourism management.