Rethinking development: Religious tourism to St. Padre Pio as material and cultural revitalization in Pietrelcina

Abstract

Rethinking development: Religious tourism to St. Padre Pio as material and cultural revitalization in Pietrelcina Th is article re-conceptualizes processes whereby religious tourism is adopted to generate socio-cultural "betterment" in small-scale societies by presenting an in-depth case study of the Southern Italian village of Pietrelcina, the birthplace of recently canonized St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina."Tourism development" has long been considered central for economic development, employment, and poverty alleviation; it has also been criticized as fostering neocolonialism, inauthenticity and museumifi cation.Arguing that the pervasive "development paradigm" creates a tautology whereby outside forces create and attempt to alleviate local tensions between maintaining tradition and transformation, the paper argues that such initiatives be organic and focused on tourism's potentialities and intangible eff ects; an adaptation of Anthony Wallace's classic anthropological model of revitalization movements is then proposed.In contrast to the "development paradigm's" linear, top-down, and antiorganic approach, a revitalization movement posits society as a life-cycle, wherein members organically look to past practices to resolve present problems.Drawing on data collected over more than two years of fi eldwork, the paper presents an ethnographic analysis of the variety of responses by Pietrelcina's locals and site managers to tourism's revitalizing potential, ultimately urging practitioners and researchers alike to consider revitalization theory as a model for sustainable tourism development.

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