'Politics of the center' in Bali's cultural periphery: Transformations of power in an Old-Balinese 'village mandala'.
Item
-
Title
-
'Politics of the center' in Bali's cultural periphery: Transformations of power in an Old-Balinese 'village mandala'.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9830707
-
identifier
-
9830707
-
Creator
-
Francais-Simburger, Angela.
-
Contributor
-
Advisers: Jane Schneider | L. Lennihan
-
Date
-
1998
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Anthropology, Cultural | History, Asia, Australia and Oceania | Geography
-
Abstract
-
In the anthropological study of Bali, the underlying analytical framework has been characterized by a stereotypical, and sometimes misleading division of Balinese culture into discrete categories of Old-Balinese or "Bali Aga" and Hindu-Javanese types of social organization. This study, based on anthropological fieldwork in eastern Bali, takes a different approach by challenging this "ideal type" framework, and by illustrating the dynamic interaction which historically existed between Old-Balinese and Hindu-Javanese segments of Balinese society. Focusing on a network of nine geographically dispersed Old-Balinese villages whose ritual, social, and economic ties are imbued with the mandala worldview based on the Indic idea of a perfectly still and potent center surrounded by an active periphery of satellite-communities, this dissertation questions earlier anthropological conceptions of Old-Balinese culture as peripheral to, and largely disconnected from, the cultural, political, and economic currents which have shaped the island's vibrant social history.;In addition to, and integrated with, its detailed account of the primary features of this multi-village network, which is centered on the Old-Balinese community of Tenganan Pegringsingan, famous for its double-ikat textile tradition, highly developed ritualism, and extraordinary cultural conservatism, this study considers current political, economic, and cultural transformations as this network is drawn ever closer into larger national and global spheres of power. International tourism, which is now being introduced on a massive scale to Bali's easternmost regions, is one arena where the village mandala's preexisting center-periphery relations are currently being renegotiated, contested, and reaffirmed. By viewing macroprocesses of capitalist expansion and national integration and microprocesses of reaffirmation of local identity and history as mutually implicative, this study is intended to blur the boundaries between the global and the local. In addition, it gives an ethnographic account of a moment in time when eastern Bali's most ancient villages undergo fundamental changes due to the intensifying pace of national integration and development, ever more stretching the limits of the network's resilience.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
