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.

So That's Why They Call It the Rainy Season

I had just finished lunch in Ubud and was en route to finding a new cafe with wifi, when it started to rain. I ducked into the market to buy an umbrella (usually I wouldn't mind getting wet but my computer was in my backpack), at which point it started pouring. Now, I'm not talking "slightly above a drizzle" pouring. Nope -- after about twenty minutes, the streets looked like rivers, current and little rapids included. A very nice group of Balinese people let me sit in their pottery stall for a couple of minutes, until I got bored and ventured out. I wish I'd had my camera with me. It really was amazing.

Anyway. The French tourist story.

A couple of weeks ago (I think; my comprehension of the passage of time is a little wonky at this point), my Ibu and Bapak informed me that two French tourists would be staying in the spare bedroom across from mine for two nights. (By across I mean in the building next to mine, the one with the bathroom I use. I think I've explained that Balinese houses tend to be a collection of small buildings rather than one big one. If I haven't, well, then, there you go.) Apparently this sort of thing happens with some frequency; as long as my host family has spare bedrooms, they figure they may as well use them.

That evening, I was sitting on my porch reading when an enormous tour bus pulled onto our street. We live on a fairly major street in Bedulu, but it's not the main road that goes through town and to see a tour bus there was bizarre. I had assumed it was just going to be two random tourists; instead, it turned out, it was a whole group.

So these two ladies came into the yard accompanied by one of the group guides and my Bapak. I tried very hard not to judge them by the enormousness of their suitcases (which really were bigger than mine, and I've been here for two and a half months. Ah well.) Bapak showed them the room, and hardly a moment passed when there was a shriek. Ibu and I looked in that direction, and caught something about a lizard. They had seen a tokek, the bigger of two varieties of gecko commonly found in Bali. Now, if you piss off a tokek (i.e. by chasing it or trying to catch it), it might bite you, which'll probably hurt. But short of that, they're totally harmless. I'm pretty sure one lives behind my closet. Still, they refused to go back into the room until the guide came out with a dead lizard in hand, which he did.

While this was going on, my ibu and kakak (older brother) and I were cracking up, teasing them in Indonesian. My ibu asked me if I was afraid of lizards, and I laughed, telling her that they're everywhere and there's no sense in being afraid. I didn't have the heart (or the language skills) to explain to the two Frenchwomen that another tokek would probably find its way into the room later.

Things were pretty uneventful until the next night, when Bapak came to get them to go to some dance performance their group had planned. As they were leaving, one of the women pointed at the painting that hangs outside my kakak's door. "I bought one just like that!" she said. "Only bigger."

So my bapak promptly started trying to sell it to her. He explained to them that he and Ibu own a painting shop, which is kind of true, in that my Ibu owns a tourist tchotchke store outside of Goa Gajah which sells some paintings, among other things. Then he named a fairly ridiculous price.
She declined, but said, "maybe we got it at the same place!"

At this point, my bapak feigned being upset. "No, no, no!" he exclaimed. "I painted it myself."

Up to this point, my ibu and I had been watching the exchange with interest, giggling occasionally, but at this point we completely lost it. My bapak is a very talented man, and he makes awesome woodcarvings (that being his job), but he definitely doesn't paint. Without thinking, I said to him, "bohong!" which means liar. For a moment, I panicked, not sure if it was really bad to tease one's elder. Fortunately, when I said it my ibu laughed even harder and repeated it to him.

The French women didn't buy the painting. Still, it was a pretty entertaining thing to watch.



In other news, to answer Ryan's question about whether auspicious days are spontaneous:

So, the Balinese have several calendars. There's the lunar calendar, which determines when things like Nyepi fall. Then there's a seven-day calendar, based on the Gregorian calendar and used for things like school calendars and general day-to-day business, since it matches internationally. It's also the basis for the 210-day Balinese year, since the calendar is made up of 30 seven-day wuku, or weeks. That determines when a temple's odalan, or temple birthday, falls. Then there's a five-day calendar and a three-day calendar, both based off of traditional market days (one Javanese and one Balinese, though I can never remember which is which). Then there's also a calendar that works something like 1-day week, 2-day week, 3-day week, etc etc, but that one is completely over my head so I won't even try to explain it.

The point is, when you look at a Balinese calendar, it's got all sorts of writing on it. Each day will have the Gregorian date, the Gregorian day of the week, and then what day of the five-day, three-day, bizarre cycle I don't understand, and lunar week it is. Also, all of the wukus have their own name, so that's on there, too.

As far as I can tell, in terms of religious offerings, the five-day and three-day week are most important (although the wuku is important for odalans). Each week has its "most auspicious day," and the intersection of those days, Kaja-Kliwon, is the most auspicious day of all. A lot of rituals go on on that day. Days that are just Kaja or just Kliwon are also reasonably auspicious, and I think some of the other intersections are too. Some of them are not auspicious at all, but I don't know which particular days those are.

So to make a long story short, yes, people absolutely know about these events in advance. They take a ton of planning, especially for something like the enormous odalan at Besakih. In the days before a festival, women are making various offerings out of palm leaves and flowers, and the men are doing the cooking necessary for sacrifices and offerings. Also, the temples are decorated, and I imagine the high priests are also doing a whole bunch of things to prepare (though I can't say with certainty what they are).

But this stuff also goes on on a daily basis, too, since every day people make offerings, usually in the mornings and the evenings, part of whatever they've cooked that day. It's actually kind of problematic: a generation or two ago, people made offerings less frequently, but as tourism and other forces have emphasized Balinese Hinduism, there has been pressure to make more offerings. In and of itself, that's not necessarily problematic, except for the fact that daily offerings require both a lot of money and a lot of time. As a result, some Balinese families put more effort into offerings than things like education.

Still, it is pretty cool to watch the whole community come together in preparation for the big festivals. Everyone gets really excited, and the temples really do look spectacular. Plus, it's a lot of fun to get to go to them.