Nineteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Creative placemaking in tourism destinations can be perceived as an emerging trend, whereby creativity is used not only for attracting tourists but also as a tool for furthering environmental awareness and solving global problems. Relying on three case studies - The Living Art Festival, Ayang Trust initiatives, and the Majuli Music Festival, this paper examines how creative assemblages in Majuli - a river island in Assam, India - use local natural and cultural resources, enable local participation, and encourage creative expressions in a tourismscape to produce a space where global problems like soil erosion, climate change, and food security are addressed through locally evolving responses. Inspired and influenced by works of development anthropologists like Tania Murray Li, Anna Tsing and Elizabeth Povinelli, this paper also confronts the limitations of current tourism and development studies literature in India, and attempts to demonstrate how an anthropological and interdisciplinary approach is likely to make better inputs in understanding socio-spatial processes, practices, and phenomena.