On Balinese Tourism and Social Change

For the past week I've been hanging out in Bali with my family, experiencing the tourist perspective rather than the student one I've become accustomed to all semester. In some ways, the two aren't terribly different: tourism by far accounts for the majority of the Balinese economy, and it's difficult to be a foreigner living on the island without being perceived as a tourist. A lot of what we did during the semester -- visiting temples, climbing Batur, etc. -- could be classified as tourism, although we were generally studying the religious or social structure in more depth while at the sights. In any case, this week I've felt much more like a tourist, largely because I've been staying at this lovely hotel rather than in a home stay and we've been doing more guided tours and such things. I think I've spent more time reading my guide book in the last week than I did all semester.

All of this reiterates a question that I've been thinking about for a long time: how is cultural tourism beneficial for the Balinese, and in what ways is it detracting from the culture and from the Balinese position in the global economy?

First, the benefits. Given that tourism in one form or another accounts for the majority of Balinese incomes and constitutes the majority of the island's economy, it follows that people are receiving economic benefits. Although the rural villages in, for example, Tabanan regency are still heavily reliant on agriculture (mostly rice production) for their livelihoods, most people in larger towns are somehow connected with tourism. For example, in my homestay family, of the six people who have jobs, three work in a hotel, one works in a tourist-driven woodcarving shop, and one has a shop outside of a tourist site that sells sarongs and little gifts. The only working member of the family who is not directly involved in tourism is my host grandmother, who is in her nineties and runs a little snack stall outside their family compound. (This is, of course, anecdotal evidence, but it's what I've got.) Other host families, from what I can tell, had a similar breakdown, as did friends of my host family. So obviously some of the money pouring in from tourism is benefiting many Balinese people.

In addition, tourism ensures that some form of Balinese traditions remain alive. As Michel Picard points out in this article, "the very fact of qualifying tourism as 'cultural' bestows it with the attributes of culture," thus insuring that to some extent the customs (non-Balinese) people come to observe will remain alive. And it's true: whereas in numerous cultures that I've studied in my anthropology classes it's common for a younger generation to move away from "traditions," here it seems that the younger generation places importance on continuing traditions. Every year the universities celebrate Saraswati Day, a religious festival celebrating the goddess of wisdom, and all of the students my age that I've met take part in day-to-day rituals as well. Perhaps it is not as high a priority for them as for the older generation -- my host mother sometimes complained that her daughter-in-law devoted less time to making offerings than she (my host mother) did -- but it is still certainly a priority. Tourism is also keeping alive traditional music, dance forms, and art, although there is the question of whether it is secularizing religious dances.

But on the other hand, tourism seems in some ways to be a more damaging force. While some of the money coming in from cultural tourism does, as I discussed above, go to the Balinese people, most of the significant capital goes to "outsiders," that is, Javanese and non-Indonesians. Most of the hotels, to my knowledge, are owned by foreigners, and most of the people in shops and restaurants in Ubud have told me that their stores are owned by non-Balinese. (Studio Perak, a silver shop in Ubud, is owned by a Canadian, and my host sister worked in a shop in Gianyar owned by a Dutch man. Indus, Casa Luna, and Bar Luna, three of Ubud's major restaurants, are owned by a woman who I'm fairly certain is Australian. Often these people are married to Balinese individuals, but the businesses are nevertheless owned and run by non-Balinese.) While the stores and restaurants are typically staffed by Balinese individuals who do benefit from their salaries, most of the profit bypasses them. If the owner is married to a Balinese person, some of this money will be funneled back into the banjar (neighborhood), but that's not always the case.¹

So why does this happen? A lot of it has to do with the banjar and with religion, both of which demand huge amounts of time. From the time he is married onward, a Balinese man is expected to put in work for his banjar, activities that can range from fixing buildings and roads to preparing for temple festivals. Comparatively, women are responsible for creating the offerings that are used both daily and for major festivals. Both of these are major time sucks, and since they are major priorities, they detract from the time a person can devote to, say, running a business. They also cost a lot of money, so some of the capital that might be used to start up a business instead gets funneled back into these other avenues. I haven't been able to find a statistic backing this up, but I've heard it said that Balinese people often spend more money on offerings than on education; it may be an exaggeration but it's at least representative of the mindset. In my host family, only my brother and his sister-in-law had been to college (my two other host siblings and their spouses had not), and my host family is fairly well-off by local standards. There seemed to be a sense that higher education was a fairly low priority.

But that raises a tricky issue. Is it valid to tell people that in order to take more ownership of their own province's economy, they have to put their culture and daily lives on a back-burner? It's not exactly clear-cut. On the one hand, by making their religion and neighborhood unit less of a priority, Balinese people would be able to devote more time and energy to jobs and businesses and therefore would be able to have more agency in the tourism economy. On the other hand, if people want religion and their social network to be their highest priority, and that makes them happy, who's to say that's inherently problematic?

What tips me toward the first hand is that if the general trend continues, the Balinese will lose a lot of their cultural agency. If the industry continues to be dominated at the top by non-Balinese, it won't be the Balinese guiding the culture that's presented to visitors. They will receive fewer of the benefits brought in by tourism and they'll have less control over the industry itself.

The other issue there is that there's a lot of lamentation over how tourism changes Balinese culture and resulting claims that that's terrible. In some ways, yes, I see the problems in the "Westernization" (a troubling but convenient term so I'm using it anyway) brought in by tourism. But, of course, culture is supposed to evolve: think of American culture today versus thirty years ago. So it's not necessarily problematic that change is coming to Balinese culture. The larger issue is where the change is coming from, and whether or not the Balinese have agency over their own culture. What's tricky, also, is that tourism relies on Balinese culture being recognizable as "Balinese culture." If the culture here evolves too much in a different direction, it may lose the tourism that is supporting its economy and guiding the cultural changes.

So how does one reconcile these issues? The short answer, although somewhat of a cop-out, is that I don't really know. What I do know is that education is going to be a key aspect if Balinese people are going to take ownership over tourism. It's clear that a balance needs to be found between religion/social structure and business, but I don't think it's a balance that can be dictated by an outside source. My inclination would be to say to dial back on offerings and rituals (which have in fact increased in recent years largely as a result of tourism) and place more emphasis on taking control of the tourist industry, but I've grown up in a society that typically places emphasis in that manner. Who am I to say that rituals shouldn't take top priority, if they make people happy?

So what do you think? Is there a more obvious answer that I'm missing? Am I being too American, too capitalist, when I see these issues? Or is it as important as I think it is for the Balinese to have maximum agency in the tourist economy?



¹ An interesting but somewhat unrelated parallel exists with the food stalls and carts around the island, the majority of which are owned by Javanese, who have a history of a landless class and come to Bali to make a living. Most of their food stalls end up being more successful, partially because their food is halal and will be eaten by Muslims on the island, and partially because, as some Hindu Balinese people have told me, the food is often "lebih enak," more delicious.