Kasodo, Tourism, and Local People Perspectives for Tengger Highland Conservation

Abstract

"The relationship between God, nature and society among Tengger people at Tengger highland, East Java Indonesia is expressed in Kasodo ceremony. From the tourism perspectives, Kasodo is one of the Indonesia's best tourism attractions, and many domestic and international tourists entertained Tenggerese culture and the beautiful landscape of Mt. Bromo - Tengger Caldera (BTC). While Kasodo becomes an important tourism event, there are few studies related to the relationships of the ceremony, tourism and BTC conservation. Most of the scholars attention to Kasodo addressed the socio-religion and anthropological perspectives. The aim of the research is to examine some of the dynamic complex of the Kasodo, tourism, local people and the perspectives of ecosystem conservation to ensure sustainability of Tenggerese community and tourism industry. Semi structured interviews and questionnaires were employed to explore Tenggerese perspectives toward Kasodo, tourism and BTC conservation issues. Our findings show that Kasodo is an important part for Tenggerese to reflect their thankfulness, and it should be conserved to ensure the Tenggerese culture sustainability. The dependency of Tenggerese to BTC was high, mainly for Kasodo ceremony. According to Tenggerese, tourism should be managed to ensure the sacredness of the ceremony than nature conservation issues. However, less attention and participation for BTC conservation among Tenggerese should become the main issues of discussion to draw the conclusion, both for national park authorities and local government. Hence, Kasodo, tourism and nature conservation should be viewed integrally, particularly to the regional planning policy to ensure sustainable society."