The Globalization of Indigenous Cultural Festivals: A Global South Residents’ Perspectives

The globalization of Indigenous cultural festivals has increasingly been affecting the way Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is portrayed and utilized as tourism products due to the deconstruction and reconstruction of cultural meanings and productions. Meanwhile, the role of residents in festivals’ planning, management, and marketing is minimal at best, and non-existent at worst, despite the very essence of these festivals being deeply rooted in their own community culture, beliefs, and shared history. Framed by stakeholder and resource dependence theories and Indigenous Knowledge Systems thinking, this empirical study sought to investigate the interplay between residents and other stakeholders involved in the production and consumption of the Osun Osogbo festival (Nigeria). The findings revealed new theoretical and applied understandings about Indigenous cultural festivals planning and management and proposed a stakeholder’s framework to foster a better informed planning and management process that is economically viable, socially just, and environmentally sustainable in the long term.