Conectando trechos do caminho: turismo, lazer e desenvolvimento regional no contexto do projeto estruturador Rota das Grutas de Peter Lund MG

Abstract

The general objective of this doctoral study was to analyze interactions between tourism, leisure and regional development within the context of the Peter Lund Cave Route MG structuring project, seeking to understand its limits and potentialities in terms of collective social praxis, that is, as transformative social action. The territorial setting is within the state of Minas Gerais' structuring project - Peter Lund Cave Route, and its interfaces with the public policy of regional development of Brazilian federal and Minas Gerais state tourism - the Cave Circuit. The intention was to answer this central question: Is there any praxis of the regional development of tourism within the area covered by the Peter Lund Cave Route - PLCR? The theoretical framework provides grounds for tourism as a social phenomenon (URRY, 2001), leisure as a human necessity and cultural dimension (GOMES, 2014), development as a social process committed to attending social necessities (SEN, 2001) and regional development as a possible method of empowering local populations and guaranteeing social well-being (FIGUEIREDO; NÓBREGA, 2015). Considering the methodology, a qualitative approach was adopted involving documentary and empirical research. Documentary research analyzed public and private documents within federal, state, regional and local spheres, such as brochures from the Tourism Regionalization Policy, the minutes of the meeting of the Touristic Cave Circuit (168), the initial manuscripts from the Lund Route project, the study carried out by the Themis Foundation/OMT, among others. Empirical research comprises 27 interviews involving state, regional and local representatives, representatives of companies involved, community leaders, as well as the project creator. The strategy chosen was content analysis, developed with the use of the qualitative analysis software Nvivo, which offers a series of methods to aid in this type of analysis. Four categories were established: understanding of concepts; territory; regional articulation and material transformation. After the data was systematized, the results were generated using word frequency and cluster analysis. Cluster analysis is a statistical multivariate analysis technique that establishes the correlation between the pairs, that is, between the established categories. The results allow us to point out the existence of a line of interaction and shared vision about the concepts of tourism, leisure and regional development, and their appreciation as social phenomena. Leisure was considered to be something present in daily life by many who were interviewed, and its enjoyment is commonplace. The dichotomous relationship between work and non-work time gives way to other perceptions and demonstrates the distancing from this restrictive view of leisure, favoring approximations to other conceptions, such as those adopted by this study. The porosity between the fields of knowledge of tourism and leisure was reaffirmed, so it is, therefore, considered pertinent that they be considered as neighboring and not overlapping fields. More contemporary understandings that were distant from universalist notions were declared by the research subjects when associating them to human development, allowing the consideration that the relation between the three subjects is based on processes that involve collective social transformation. Paradoxically, there was a lack of a shared understanding of what tourism, leisure and regional development are, both in terms of policies and in the Peter Lund Cave Route project, which, along with other factors, results in low rates of integration and cooperation when the project was observed. The results indicate, with expressive fragility, the low presence of the community and regional entrepreneurs in the project. The analysis in its entirety enables the affirmation that the Peter Lund Cave Route was not able to promote significant changes for the aggregation of the different sectoral policies, and even less for the region's inhabitants. Thus, many limits and contradictions still prevent the realization of the regional development of tourism as a collective social praxis.