WebinarOnline
Heritage on the frontline: Community-based tourism, cultural preservation and the geopolitics of sacred sites
Friday, 5 February 2027
Consider how community authority, consent and politically informed heritage practice can protect sacred places, support cultural continuity and enable respectful tourism amid contested histories and changing pressures.
About this event
Sacred sites and culturally significant landscapes often stand at the intersection of identity, memory, faith, political authority and visitor interest. Tourism can provide income and recognition, but it can also intensify disputes over ownership, access and representation. This webinar examines how community-based tourism can contribute to cultural preservation while responding to the geopolitical pressures that shape heritage on the frontline.
The session will consider heritage not as a neutral collection of objects, but as a field of relationships and contested meanings. Decisions about interpretation, conservation and promotion may privilege official narratives over lived experience. Participants will explore how local communities can exercise meaningful authority in tourism planning, including control over storytelling, visitor conduct, commercial activity and the circulation of culturally sensitive knowledge.
Attention will also be given to borders, displacement, conflict, religious difference and competing claims to place. These forces affect which sites receive protection, who may enter them and whose histories become visible. The discussion will examine how tourism practitioners can avoid deepening existing inequalities or treating cultural tension as spectacle, while still enabling respectful learning and exchange.
Practical themes include community consent, benefit sharing, visitor education, safeguarding protocols and partnerships with public bodies. The webinar will ask how success should be assessed when economic growth is not the primary objective. It will argue for approaches grounded in dignity, reciprocity and local definitions of value. By connecting heritage practice with political context, the session offers a critical framework for tourism that protects cultural continuity and supports communities facing change.