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Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 998–1009, 2001 2001 Elsevier S

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 998–1009, 2001 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/01/$20.00 www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures PII: S0160-7383(01)00005-6 MEDIATED RESISTANCE Tourism and the Host Community Christina A. Joseph Anandam P. Kavoori University of Georgia, USA Abstract: This ethnographic study focuses on the mediation of tourism by the host com- munity in the pilgrimage town of Pushkar, India. It provides a framework for understanding the impact of Western tourism in the context of a Hindu religious community. Locally, tourism is perceived as a threat to “tradition” and religion even while a large segment of the population is dependent on its economic beneﬁts. This ambivalence is resolved through three types of rhetoric: exclusionary, political, and religious. This strategy of rhetorical resist- ance, termed here as “mediated resistance”, allows the host community to condemn tourism collectively while participating in it on an individual basis. The theoretical focus of the study draws from cultural anthropology, religion, and communication research. Keywords: Push- kar, mediated resistance, host community. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Re ´sume ´: La re ´sistance par me ´diation: le tourisme et la communaute ´ d’accueil. Cette e ´tude ethnographique se concentre sur la me ´diation du tourisme par la communaute ´ d’accueil dans la ville de pe `lerinage de Pushkar, en Inde. Il fournit un cadre the ´orique pour compren- dre l’impact du tourisme occidental dans le contexte d’une communaute ´ religieuse hindoue. Au niveau local, le tourisme est perc ¸u comme une menace a ` la “tradition” et a ` la religion, quoiqu’un grand segment de la population de ´pende de ses be ´ne ´ﬁces e ´conomiques. Cette ambivalence se re ´sout a ` travers trois types de rhe ´torique: d’exclusion, politique et religieuse. Cette strate ´gie de re ´sistance rhe ´torique, appele ´e ici la “re ´sistance par me ´diation”, permet a ` la communaute ´ d’accueil de condamner collectivement le tourisme tout en y participant individuellement. L’objectif the ´orique de l’e ´tude fait appel a ` l’anthropologie culturelle, a ` la religion et a ` la recherche en communication. Mots-cle ´s: Pushkar, re ´sistance par me ´diation, communaute ´ d’accueil. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION Nestled in the Aravalli hills of the state of Rajasthan, India, is the Hindu pilgrimage center (tirtha) of Pushkar that has for centuries drawn pilgrims from all over the country. These devotees honor the sanctity of this sacred place by performing religiously prescribed rites. Recently Pushkar has attracted another genre of visitors: white, West- ern and wealthy tourists. Tourism has come to this ancient pilgrimage town making for startling and often incongruous contrasts and more Christina Joseph is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Afﬁliated Faculty in the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Georgia (Athens GA 30602-3108, USA. Email <cjoseph@arches.uga.edu>). Her research interests are in the areas of religion, religion and the environment, and in women and development. Anandam Kavoori is Associate Professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. His research interests are in international communication and tourism. 998 999 JOSEPH AND KAVOORI signiﬁcantly raising questions about the impact of tourism on local culture and about local adaptations to this dramatic change. Much of the tourism literature represents the relationship between tourists and hosts as severely asymmetrical in terms of power, for it is the latter that have to bear the burden of adjustment economically, socially and culturally. This position has been argued in the now classic studies by Nash (1977, 1981) and Greenwood (1977) and reiterated by other scholars studying the impact of tourism at various sites (Eastman 1995; Eliot 1983; Erisman 1983; Palmer 1994; Pearce 1982) and from different perspectives (Byrden 1973; Freitag 1994; Hunter 1997; Lanfant 1980). These studies approach host mediation primarily from the tourist’s perspective and are oriented to understanding this participation in local culture. While, tourism does in fact impose a one- sided power asymmetry in contact situations between hosts and guests, the latter are not merely passive subjects that are acted upon. McCan- nell (1973) and Kemper’s (1978) seminal research about the staging of authenticity for tourists by their hosts even while allocating some aspects of their culture to “back regions,” makes a case for the agency of hosts. More recent work has focused on the complexity of local mediation of tourism (Teo and Yeoh 1997), examining host percep- tions (King, Pizam and Milman 1993) and possible beneﬁts to indigen- ous peoples (Wilson 1997). The focus of this paper is on the local discourse of resistance to tourism in Pushkar and the rhetorical strategies deployed by the local population to resist Western tourism even while mediating it to make it locally palatable. The crux of the argument is that the relationship between tourism and culture is a complex and nuanced one in that it is mediated even while it is resisted rhetorically. This matrix of culturally derived rhetorical strategies, which constitute “mediated resistance”, function to transform an ambivalent and disempowered relationship into one that is culturally acceptable to the host community. MEDIATING RESISTANCE Pushkar is, ﬁrst and foremost, a pilgrimage town for Indians. Its sacred character is constituted by the interplay of various historical, mythological, ritual, and sociological aspects. Given the scarcity of writ- ten records, the early history of Pushkar is inferred from a diversity of sources like stone inscriptions, numismatic evidence, and temples. However, the main sources of the oral tradition and the locally avail- able mahatmayas (devotional literature) are Hindu sacred texts, like the Epics, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Puranas. An itinerary for pilgrimage around India found in the “Tirthayatraparvan” in the “Aranyakaparvan” of the Mahabharata begins with Pushkar, thus estab- lishing it as an important pilgrimage as far back as the ﬁrst centuries of the Christian era (Ensink 1974:72). Mythologically, the genesis of Pushkar Lake is linked to the god Brahma. According to the most popular religious source, the Padma Purana, Brahma while meditating in his heavenly abode dropped a lotus that resulted in the creation of the Pushkar lake at its point of 1000 MEDIATED RESISTANCE impact on the earth. A number of ancillary myths provide the mytho- logical basis for other topographical features. For instance, the area around Pushkar is described as the vedi (sacriﬁcial site) of Brahma’s yagya (ritual sacriﬁce) and the four mountains surrounding the town are said to be its guardians. The sacred order of the town extends much beyond temples and the ghats to include the numerous sites around Pushkar that are also mythologically related to gods and holy men. The geography of the town is the ﬁrst dimension of sacredness encountered by the pilgrims who acknowledge the sacred boundary by praising Lord Brahma aloud. Locally available maps depict the town as a mandala (ritual diagram) in which the central square represents the sacred lake that lies at the heart of the town. On its periphery are the ghats (step like embankments) where the puja (worship), the most important religious activity for pilgrims, takes place. Temples, the main market and the settlement encircle the lake. The ritual and sociological dimensions of Pushkar are inextricably connected. The ghats are the site for the ritual puja that provides both economic and religious sustenance to this pilgrimage town. It can con- sist merely of a brief prayer celebrating the sacredness of the tirtha, or it can commemorate life cycle events, especially rituals for sraddha (the dead). Proceeds from the puja and other related religious activities form the livelihood of the Brahmin pandas (ritual specialists found at a pilgrimage center). They are an important force within the com- munity and belong predominantly to the Parasar Brahmin community that is said to have inhabited the town since its mythological origin. Pushkar’s antiquity has made possible an extensive panda–client net- work whereby pilgrims from a certain region and caste come to a spe- ciﬁc panda. The allocation of clientele to different pandas is primarily by region. Each visit by a pilgrim is recorded in pothis (books) contain- ing extensive patrilineal genealogical records going back 300–400 years. The pandas cater to all the needs of their clients from the more pragmatic, like food and lodging, to the ritual and in turn receive payments in cash or kind. For most of the rural clientele, the real payment is in kind at harvest when the pandas routinely visit their cli- ents to collect. Pandas also take pilgrims to other major religious sites in Pushkar— mainly its temples. In their litany of praise, they claim that the town has 500 temples. These play an important part in the sacred constitution of the town through a range of daily ritual activities including both indi- vidual puja and collective arti (prayer) thrice a day as well as the cel- ebration of the annual utsavas (festivals). The Changing Order With the discovery of Indian spirituality in the 60s by “hippies”, religious places like Pushkar started attracting Western tourists. The ﬁrst arrived in uploads/Societe et culture/ mediated-resistance-tourism-and-the-host-community-pdf.pdf