Unlike Bali Authenticity and Glocalization in the Lombok Tourist-Landscape
Bas van Gunst 14-8-2015
Supervisor: dhr. dr. G.A. Moerman Second reader: dhr. prof. dr. M.P.J. van de Port Index Acknowledgements ...... 4
1. Introduction: My Presence as Indication of Authenticity ...... 5
2. Setting ...... 9
2.1 Fieldwork Information ...... 11
2.2 Position in the Field ...... 14
3. Methods ...... 17
3.1 Reflexivity on the Production of Culture ...... 17
3.2 Methodology ...... 19
4. Theoretical Framework ...... 23
4.1 Authenticity ...... 23
4.2 The Front- and Back- Stage of the Lombok tourist-Landscape ...... 24
4.3 Forms of capital and the language of the elite actors ...... 25
4.4 The Construction of Authenticity (and Other Discourses) Through Language ...... 27
4.5 The Analysis of Existing Discourses Present in Language ...... 30
5. The Lonely Planet ...... 32
5.1 Representations of and Discourses About Lombok ...... 33
5.2 Lombok’s time is now ...... 40
5.3 Summary ...... 42
6. Tourists: Relational Authenticity ...... 43
6.1 Holiday Goers and Exploring Travelers ...... 43
6.2 Bali versus Lombok ...... 44
6.3 The Condition of Infrastructure as Symbol of Development ...... 50
6.4 Lombok is Located in the Past ...... 52
6.4 Development of Tourism: Investing in Lombok ...... 55
6.5 Summary ...... 57
7. State and Cultural Elites ...... 58
2
7.1 The Indonesian State: Multicultural Domination ...... 59
7.2 Top-down Traditionality ...... 61
7.3 Sade: a Sasak Traditional Village? ...... 64
7.4 Staging Adat [traditions]and Authenticity ...... 67
7.5 The Local Government: Progression and Development ...... 70
7.6 Summary ...... 75
8. Local Actors: Combining Tradition and Modernity ...... 76
8.1 Kampung Resort: The birth of tourism in Orong Gerisak ...... 80
8.2 Transforming Tradition into Marketable Culture ...... 85
8.3 Sameness and Friendliness: The Limits to Commercialization ...... 89
8.4 Growing up ...... 92
8.5 Glocalization: Thinking Global but Acting Local ...... 95
8.5.1 Ale-Ale: Modern Traditions ...... 99
8.5.2 Resorts: Global or local space? ...... 103
8.6 Being One Thing While Seeming Another ...... 105
8.7 Summary ...... 110
9. Conclusion: Unlike Bali? ...... 110
Bibliography ...... 114
3
Acknowledgements
I want to thank my lecturers of the Research Master Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam for their commitment to my, and any students’, work. Without you I wouldn’t have been able to do this research the way I did. A special thanks goes out the Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta for sponsoring my cultural visa to Indonesia. Above all I want to thank my thesis supervisor, dr. Gerben Moerman, for his help in developing my qualities as a researcher, his patience, his kind words, his words of encouragements, and above all for the time he invested in me. Further I would like to thank my girlfriend, Juliëtte Cassé, for her support throughout the past four years and for her patience in listing to all my ramblings about fieldwork and writing. Thank you so much Juul. Further I would like to thank my parents for their role in making me the person I am today, their help and backing in any way possible in making my goals come through. My friends -Stijn, Olf, Sjoerd, Julius, Paul, and Wietse- for keeping believing in me, pushing me to do better, and being there for me in rough times. But above all I want to thank the new friends I made on Lombok, the people that took me in and included me in their community. The people that showed me around the island and accompanied me to so many interviews and fieldtrips. For the people that made me feel at home and cared for me. For Ronny, Adi, Bram, and Hir and their families for always having an extra plate at dinner and for the painful ear they gave me while playing dominos. ‘ Thank you all: without any of you this thesis would not have been written.
4
1. Introduction: My Presence as Indication of Authenticity
Sitting at the small warung in the kampung where I spend most of my days talking with whomever walked in I asked the couple that just sat down for a mango smoothie a simple question: “What do you guys think about the village and Lombok?” Yet the answer was one I never would have expected.
“It’s beautiful here, last year we went to Bali and we were looking for something less hectic. There are no tourists here, not like Bali in any case and the place is still, like, pure. … I don’t know, it like the chickens still walk around on the road and no major intervention by companies wanting to destroy nature.(Transcribed from field notes)”
So far no surprises. It was the day before new year’s eve and I had been writing down similar expressions of this discourse in my notebook for over four months now. But what was said next came as a shock to me. I had spent a total of five months in Indonesia and the thought hadn’t even occurred to me yet.
“When mister Adi told us about a researcher staying in the village where the waterfall is I was like; ‘ooh they even have a real anthropologist here, how exiting!’ It’s so exotic, like, you guys [anthropologists] go to these tribes in difficult to reach places and we end up in one of those places! It’s like Andy said, it feels just pure! (Transcribed from field notes)”
I was perplexed. I went to Lombok to do fieldwork on the ways in which the construction of authenticity in interaction between the local population and tourists takes place. For over a year already I was reading about authenticity, the Other, orientalism, and tourism – on the basis of these readings I was under the assumption that authenticity is constructed through symbols. Yet this idea had never arisen in my thought: I, myself as a cultural anthropologist, am a symbol of authenticity for those tourists visiting the kampung of Orong Gerisak. For these tourists, as for most I spoke to, going up a shady path at the end of the road, without big resorts giving you shade to walk in but simple palm trees to fulfill this function, and devoid of any other tourists, gives a certain sense of adventure; a feeling that you are
5 setting foot in a place that is yours to discover. Walking up to that kampung five kilometers from the end of the asphalt road gives you the sense that you are about to encounter the Real Lombok, the authentic everyday life that cannot be seen in the touristic areas. To grasp the otherness of Lombok that is oh so difficult to sense when walking on a beach where speakers blur out the same pop songs you hear on the radio during your monotonous office job. These things, these sensations, make you feel like an adventurer, an explorer of a forgotten past. And, when you finally reach the kampung, sweaty and looking forward to a shower at the waterfall, you see him. This large, big, white from sunblock, red-haired cultural anthropologist. At that moment you know that you’ve stumbled upon the real local way of life, that space where no tourist ever comes. It is here that you realize that you truly are of the beaten path. Or so I imagine the experience to feel. My presence in the kampung of Orong Gerisak was for many tourists an indication that they had found a local traditional setting. That they shared a place with the noble savages that inhabited it and no-one else: so pure, so untouched. Their ideas, fantasies, and imaginations about the Other, traditionality, discovery, and above all of finding the authentic all came through in an orgasm of exoticism, romanticism, and orientalism. Once the local tour-guides realized that telling people they had a real anthropologist in their kampung worked wonders for business I had to tell them when and where I would be in the kampung. I was being shown off as an object, as a symbol of authenticity, to these tourists. I never would have expected that to happen during my fieldwork, but it opened my eyes to a lot of thing discussed in this thesis. For many tourists that visit Lombok the above touched upon discourses are always relational to Bali or their home society. These tourists construct the Lombok tourist-landscape in dichotomies: you are either, or. It is this or it is that. The grey area doesn’t seem to exist: touristic or untouristic, no in-between. I had chosen Lombok for my thesis research as it was being advertised in the Lonely Planet as away from the beaten path, and still right next to Bali. This was going to be the next big destination for tourism in the Global South. The main research question I set out to answer during my fieldwork was How is authentic culture ideationally and materially constructed by interactions between local actors and tourists in Lombok’s tourist-landscape? As such the focus of this thesis is upon the ways in which, the how, (in)authenticity came to be in interactions characterized by cultural sameness and difference in an ever more globalizing world. For this reason I opted to take a theoretical approach to authenticity that recognizes its constructiveness, its subjectiveness, and the ways in which authenticity is something man-made. Following Wang (1999) it can be
6 stated that objects and cultural aspects are not authentic because they are original but because they are constructed as symbols of such authenticity by its consumers. The observations I made during my fieldwork point to a confirmation of authenticity, or what many tourists seem to refer to as the real local life, as constructed within and through social interaction. Albeit consciously or subconsciously In this thesis I present the analysis of data collected during a six-month fieldwork stint on Lombok, Indonesia. I start out by researching the construction of authenticity through a critical discourse analysis of the guidebooks of the Lonely Planet on Indonesia and on Bali and Lombok. The meaning these discourses hold cannot be analyzed without researching the social practices and environments of which these discourses are part. This as to constitute what these discourses in the man-made and fuzzy reality of Lombok mean. It follows that the discourses found in the Lonely Planet are traced to the ways in which tourists consuming these guidebooks use them to make sense of Lombok’s tourist-landscape. These insights are then further substantiated through analyzing the ways in which the Lonely Planet, tourists, and the Indonesian state and local government position Lombok. It was analyzed that the Indonesian state aims to include the local actors of Lombok as modern Indonesian subjects through multicultural domination in the form of museumification and adat. The Sasaknese, based on the case study of the Kampung Resort in Orong Gerisak, to a certain degree resist these projections of them as local, authentic, and located in the past through what they call ‘growing up’ –glocalization. In the chapter 2. Setting I will outline the setting I conducted by research in and my experience within the setting of Lombok. Next up, in chapter 3. Methods, I will outline the methodology I used to conduct my fieldwork and a reflection on how feasible these methods proved to be. As well as taking a more practical reflexive stand on my research experience and what it entails to write a thesis on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork. After this I will outline my 4. Theoretical Framework as to indicate which theories and concepts governed the analysis of the data I collected during my research. It is here that analysis proper begins. In chapter 5. The Lonely Planet I will outline the discourses present in the guidebooks of the Lonely Planet Indonesia and the Lonely Planet Bali and Lombok. This will be done on the basis of a critical discourse analysis which will yield insights into the tropes used within the text of the Lonely Planet. The key discursive practices present within its text are those of un(der)development, otherness, authenticity, pre- modernity, and discovery.
7
The discourses uncovered during the critical discourse analysis are then traced to the social practice of which they are part. It is here that 8. Tourists: Relational Authenticity will be analyzed as to discover if they use the same discourses as they can read in the Lonely Planet. It can be concluded that tourist construct authenticity relationally on the basis of discourses. These tourists view the development of tourism on Lombok as negative as they think that this will diminish the authenticity they experience. In chapter 7. State and Cultural Elites is then researched in which ways the Indonesian State and the provincial government try to develop tourism as a method of multicultural domination. It is argued that the Indonesian state employs a process of museumification as to get the Sasaknese to enact their difference within the frame of Indonesian nationhood. Making them modern Indonesian subjects with only a tie to their indigenous culture as a form of heritage to be commercialized for tourists. The case study of Sade serves as example to substantiate these claims. The following chapter focusses on the 8. Local Actors: Combining Tradition and Modernity of Lombok and the ways in which they resist the top-down internalization of adat [traditionality] and museumification by the Indonesian state. Based on a case study of the Kampung Resort project in Orong Gerisak is argued that local actors resist the commercialization of their local culture as a form of heritage located in the past by the process of growing up. Growing up is the term they use for glocalization. It is then shown how glocalization is used as to create a grey area in which they can both be local and global. As such creating a modern identity –that of the Sasaknese-Indonesians- on the basis of aesthetic formations and as to satisfy tourist longings to imagine Lombok as a local tradition space of authenticity. In the final chapter 9. Conclusion: Unlike Bali? The previous chapters are brought together as to answer the question that governed my research. It is here that the argument made throughout this master thesis will be neatly summarized. A dichotomous model will be presented that is used by the Lonely Planet, tourists, and Indonesian state as to categorize space and the social environment within it. Finally the ways in which the Sasaknese- Indonesians resist this model and use it to build a glocal identity will be outlined, as well as the implications this has for the construction of authenticity within interactions between them and tourists.
8
2. Setting
Fig 2.1 – Map of Indonesia (Google, GBRMPA 2014)
The research laying the foundation for the master thesis you are now reading was conducted on the Indonesian island of Lombok. The area of Lombok is around 4740 square kilometers large and houses an active volcano (Rinjani), which is the highest point in Indonesia with exception of West Papua (Fallon 2001:483). Lombok, together with the island of Sumbawa makes up the Indonesian province of West Nusa Tenggara. The Wallace line marks the western boundary of this province (Indonesia.travel 2014). Historically the island of Lombok has had many colonizers; starting with the Balinese, then in 1894 Lombok was taken over from Balinese rule and brought under Dutch control. During the Second World War Lombok was shortly invaded by the Japanese, till their defeat by allied forces and the Indonesian declaration of independence in 1945 (Grace 2004). Fallon (2001, following Corner 1989) states that West Nusa Tenggara has the dubious honor of being one of Indonesia’s poorest provinces. According to Fisher et all (1999, following Corner 1989) this poverty is due to a combination of physical isolation, undeveloped infrastructure and scarcity of natural resources. As will be argued throughout this thesis these conditions make it ideal for tourists wanting to experience authenticity. Based on their own research Fisher et all (1999) conclude that being one of the poorest Indonesian provinces translates to one of the highest infant mortality rates and highest rate of illiteracy in Indonesia, with incomes that are two-third lower than the Indonesian national average. The
9 paradox is that, according to Cole (2007), this poverty is one of the key reasons that tourists spending their vacation and money in this sort of settings see them as authentic. But to remain authentic they have to remain poor, or perceived as such by tourists. Making Lombok, and its tourist-landscape in particular, a good setting for research into the construction of authenticity. While there are multiple definitions of tourism, this research will conceptualize it as an event in which different localities are meeting in cross-cultural exchanges of ideas, goods and cultures (Simpson 1993). This is in line with the United Nations approved International Recommendations that should be part of any national System of Tourism Statistics; the act of tourism is “…a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes (UNWTO.org 2014).” Key here is the emphasis on the movement of tourists to places outside their usual environment, indicating a certain form of global flows between these different environments. The ethnic group upon which this research focuses are the Sasak. The local Sasak indigenous group dominates the culture of Lombok as, according to the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok, a total of 90% of Lombok’s population identifies as such (Verberkmoes and Stewart 2007:285). The Other 10% consist out of Chinese and Balinese (Indonesia.travel 2014) According to the CIA World Factbook on Indonesia (CIA.gov 2014) a total of 1.3% of Indonesia’s total population is part of the Sasak ethnic minority, from which a large part is located on the island of Lombok. Grace (2004) states that before a massive wave of conversions to Orthodox Islam prior to the year 2000 the Sasak communities of Lombok where based around adat (customary law) and the Wetu Telu religion. The Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok identifies this local Sasak religion as compromised of traditional animistic beliefs mixed with Muslim and Hindu teachings (Verberkmoes and Stewart 2007:38-44). Grace (2004) states that in the aftermath of the failed 1965 coupe approximately 50.000 Wetu Telu Sasak’s where killed. After the violence calmed down Orthodox Muslims, together with the army, used force to convert Wetu Telu into Waktu Lima.
10
2.1 Fieldwork Information
Fig. 2.2 – Map of Lombok, Indonesia (Google 2015)
Upon entering my research-setting it became clear that my initial plan of focusing on the village of Sade, a village being promoted by the Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB) government and reviews of tourists on Tripadvisor.com as a setting of Sasak traditionality, was going to be problematic. Yes, as a tourist I was more than welcome to visit, but any attempt to move beyond mere, dare I say superficial, tourist-local interactions were thwarted by unwilling Sade tour-guides. Let alone my aim of arranging a meeting with Sade’s village head became impossible after he heard through the grapevines that I was no ordinary tourist. Thus, my original plan of spending a longer stint within the confines of Sade proved to be a dead-end. The other village I initially wanted to focus on, a traditional-handicraft village with the name Sukarara, proved to be too limiting for the scope of my research. While interesting in every aspect and the welcoming of tourists I witnessed and experienced there myself, it seemed that the place was just too far of the tourist-path for the aim of my research; interactions between
11 tourists and locals where minimal in Sukarara and thus basing myself there would mean missing a large part of the structures I find so interesting. So what to do instead? After this initial blow I decided to take a more pragmatic approach to selecting the locations of my research. I was already located in Kuta Lombok as it is close to Sade, thus starting here seemed the logical thing to do. In the end I decided to focus on the main tourist-hubs of Lombok’s five regencies as outline of my field. For this I used the tourism division of the island that was already made by the NTB government and the NTB and Lombok tourism board and that corresponded crudely to the five official regions of Lombok, namely: West Lombok, North Lombok, Central Lombok, East Lombok, and South Lombok. I decided to visit the main tourism-zones with the exception of North Lombok as the only notable tourism activity there is the possibility to climb Rinjani – attracting a type of tourist that I already covered by visiting the central and eastern part of Lombok as they do similar hikes up the mountain. After being in Yogyakarta, Java for a month to learn the Indonesian language I was ready to enter the field on the last day of August 2014. Flying to Lombok via Jakarta my first taste of Lombok was upon my arrival at (1) the newly constructed international airport which lies at the center of Lombok. The close by village of Praya serves as Lombok’s traffic hub, it is here that all main roads intersect. As such Praya poses an ideal location for the airport as reaching most of the main tourism destinations only takes up to thirty minutes from here. From the airport I took what I presume to be a taxi, being new to Lombok I of course overpaid, to the town of (2) Kuta – the main tourist hub in the South Lombok and part of the Mandalika tourist zone (Kuta, Sade, the Novotel Resort, and Gerupuk). Here I spend the first week of September 2014 trying to gain access to the village of Sade before refocusing on the surfers that flock to the south of Lombok for its waves. After unsuccessfully trying my hand at surfing I gave up and talked to surfers at Kuta’s home-stays, in the local warungs, and by visiting the Novotel Resort. In the middle of September 2014 I drove up to the west of Lombok as to observe and experience the Senggigi festival (a cultural festival showcasing Lombok traditional culture) in the resort town of (4) Senggigi. This is the main tourist hub of Lombok and all the international resorts can be found here. The Senggigi tourist zone consists of, naturally, Senggigi and Lombok’s Gili islands (where I spend four days in November). Here I spent my days talking to tourists visiting the Senggigi festival and talking about tourism with locals and expats working in Senggigi’s tourism industry. I observed the week-long festival on a daily
12 basis before returning to the Mandalika region to hang out with expats and locals owning (small) warungs on the beach and the main road through Kuta. The first two weeks of October 2014 where spend following tourists staying in Kuta to the traditional villages of Sade, Sukarara, and Loyok. As to see how interactions between these tourists and the local population took place. The second halve of October consisted of traveling around with my girlfriend that came to visit me, it is here that I found out about the kampung Resort. More importantly, and unfortunately for my girlfriend, most of these two weeks I was ill. I had a bacterial infection that resulted to two trips to the hospital in Mataram. In November 2014, after getting better, I drove my scooter up the shady track to (3) Orong Gerisak. A kampung that is part of the Tetebatu tourism zone located in the central (and east) part of Lombok. Here I learning about the local tourism development project called the Kampung Resort. A project which aims at creating social and economic upward mobility for all of the region through attracting tourists. During November 2014 I invested in developing in depth friendships with a purpose in the region of Orong Gerisak as to understand what makes tourism so attractive, the ways in which they see tourists, the ways in which they see themselves, and by following local tour-guides on their job and while waiting. The last week of November 2014 I was in the town of Sembalun located high up the mountain of Rinjani. Hir and Bram, two of my main informants from Orong Gerisak, took me here to meet the people behind the Sembalun Community Development Centre. Here I learned about the ways in which they try to develop tourism in the region and the ways in which they try to secure a better future for the young community through free English and tourism courses. A large part of December 2014 consisted of waiting, smoking, drinking coffee, and playing domino with the actors involved in tourism activities –tour-guiding, small business owners- at the Warung monkey Forest in Orong Gerisak or Warung Sasaak down the road in Tetebatu. The insight derived from this month of deep hanging out make up most of my theoretical insights concerning the Kampung Resort. The waiting and talking with the local population of the Tetebatu region was supplemented with joining these tour-guides on tours through the region with tourists and talking to tourists walking through Tetebatu and Orong Gerisak. Occasional trips to Kuta, Sade, Mataram, and Senggigi were made by me and Salman –a local journalist from Tetebatu and as such well-connected- to talk about tourism, adat, and local cultural practices with a range of interviews as result. The final month of my research, January 2015, consisted out of an extra focus on the young community of the Tetebatu region, learning more about local culture, helping in the rice paddies and gardens of my informants, and more interviews. The last month the
13 interviews focused on land-conflicts on Lombok, the construction of Sade as traditional village, and talking to Sasaknese academics. As such January 2015 served as a period in which I wanted to fill up gaps in the data I collected. However, after starting the writing process in February 2015 I have found out that I still have a gap in my data concerning the tourist type of holiday goer. I wish I devoted more time to this type of tourist as he differs substantially from the exploring traveler type of tourist.
2.2 Position in the Field The position I occupied in the field is one clouded in the construct of colonialism and its discourses. I am not only a Dutch white male visiting the state of Indonesia to study its subjects On top of this historical problematic power-relationship between these two nation- states I am a cultural anthropologist as well. I will be offending no-one when I state that the discipline of anthropology, as we now know it, indeed came into existence as part and parcel of the colonial context (Asad 1973:18-19 in Pels and Salemink 1999:5). Thus even before going into the field I had to be aware of the fact that me being a Dutch anthropologist in Indonesia, the “pure” scientific observer, placed me in relationship surrounded by post- colonialist tones with “my” native informants. For my position in the field this meant that I possibly had to deal with and negate (post-)colonial and classic-anthropological power- structures in moving around in the Lombok tourist-landscape. During my fieldwork “my” native informants and I where equals. Of course it felt like this for me in interacting with these new friends. but that doesn’t make the above statement true. When I take a more objective look at our interactions I must come to the conclusion that like the forgone dyadic image of anthropology the above “..view of the anthropological relationship ignored its situatedness in a history of global inequality, perpetuated by the unequal power relations between a universal anthropological subject and his ‘local’ coproducers of knowledge (Pels and Salemink 1999:3).” Indeed, the way I was treated by my friends and informants in Orong Gerisak now seems to be based in the history of global inequality and colonialism that we all share, albeit on different sides of the same coin. While for many Sasaknese -the majority that I only met hastily, irregularly or when I felt it was beneficial for my research to play with the roles I held in the field- I occupied the position of tourist and in some cases I was typified as a tourist plus – a foreigner that does more than drink, sunbath, and do the occasional cultural visit: but tries to experience the real Lombok. Even in the position of the tourist, maybe especially in this position, the situatedness
14 in a history of global inequality can be seen. Tourists vis-à-vis the Other that they visit on Lombok embody a position of power, almost a dominance over the local subject due to their whiteness, Westernness, wealth, and just by being born in nation-states that set out to colonize the Orient until recently. This is not to say that tourists, nor me during my stay in the field, enforce this relationship of power on purpose (or at all). However, many Sasaknese seem to enforce this relationship of power vis-à-vis the visiting Other. It’s almost as if the tourist is placed on a pedestal; he or she is invited to weddings as his whiteness seems to transfer some sense of status to the Sasaknese present, everything is done to ensure that the tourist enjoys his stay, the served food and the house one is invited into is referred to as simple and not up to Western standards. But maybe all this is because the local subject realized that tourism is where the money comes from, that serving the wishes of the tourist as best as possible is in his own best interest as well. No matter what position in the field you hold as bule [Westerner] you have to deal with these unequal power relationships that more often than not seem to be enforced by the Sasaknese. Who tend to place themselves in the dominated or lower position in these interactions. During my stay in Orong Gerisak I was able to negate most of these instances, at least so it feels like to me. I did my share of chores, helped in the rice field when possible, and joined in with the day-to-day activities. The Sasaknese where always enthusiastic when I did this, going wild when I once again slipped while walking in the rice field: adopting a grim outlook on these instances it can maybe be argued that it where occurrences where the white Dutch anthropologist lowered himself to the same position as his local informants, I opt not to take this road. I, however, cannot claim that my position as white, Dutch, and anthropologist –as the Other- in Orong Gerisak didn’t influence my position in the field. During the first evening in Orong Gerisak I was made to accept the role of consultant to the project I came to research. This role was awarded to me by the local men due to the position in the field I occupied in their eyes or so I think. In their eyes I was educated in a manner that was out of their reach and because of this they looked at me for advice. Thus, I became an unwilling consultant, I became a teacher, and I became respected by many in the village for skills that I have. Skills that up till now I considered as ordinary. Having people your own age move their head down to touch your hand as a sign of respect, hierarchy, and indication of your and their status is one of the weirdest feelings I have had to experience in my life. Thus, it is impossible for me to ignore that I held a position of power, or at least as placed in this position by my informants. I did not ask for special treatment, in fact I asked for
15 them not to do it. Yet I received it. In a sense this means that I was always an outsider in the field. At the same time it taught me a lot about the structure of the field. I am many things, but because of something that I cannot hide, my skin, I was always seen in a certain way - no matter what role or identity I tried to bring to the front stage in a given interaction. With this I do not necessary mean that I was seen as white but rather I was seen as rich, Western, and modern. My position in Orong Gerisak wasn’t one of worry. unlike the people there I didn’t have to worry about if I would be able to feed my family the next day, signaling once again my position as outsider. The moments I felt less like an outsider where the moments when I had to interact with journalists, intellectuals, and powerful government actors. At these moments I got to, it was even expected, discuss academic topics. It was at these instances that we really shared something that made us the same, something that was inclusionary. These moments of sameness however seemed to enforce my position of status outside these interactions: being able to talk with people of status as equals excluded me from the status-group many subjects of Orong Gerisak placed themselves in. In effect the inclusion I felt in the above mentioned talks meant that I was, in the eyes of the Sasaknese, positioned higher than my informants. In the end I can only hope that I gave the people I interacted with a sense of equality, as this is what all interactions for me have felt like. I know that while many regarded me as higher in status as themselves, I hope that me being the person that I am at least gave them the feeling that we were true friends and not in some post-colonial interpersonal relationship to each other. I would like to note that my informants and the people of Orong Gerisak where able to use my position of status in the field in their advantage: me staying in the Kampung Resort for over three months was used by my informants to foster further interest from the government in the project, their attachment to me meant that they have risen in status as well, and pushing me forward as a speaker at a tourism board meeting meant that their project got recognition and legitimized.
16
3. Methods
In the previous chapter I have outlined the setting in which I conducted my research and gave more in-depth information on what my fieldwork precisely entailed. Finally I discussed the position in the field I held as a white Dutch cultural anthropologist. In the upcoming chapter I will turn my eye to the ways in which I conducted my fieldwork. I will start by outlining how I hope I conducted my fieldwork on a more theoretical reflexive level concerning the practice of ethnography itself. Afterwards I will turn to the methods I have used during my fieldwork on Lombok and take a more practical reflexive stand as to determine the feasibility of these methods for what I in actuality did.
3.1 Reflexivity on the Production of Culture Trust me, I am an anthropologist so what I present to you in my thesis is real. Based on my fieldwork stint of six months I can state that I anthropologically prove the truth behind the interactional construction of authenticity. The real-ness of authenticity is proven due to my writings on the basis of my fieldwork and the subsequent analysis of data. I have lived it so you, the reader who can only imagine it on the basis of my writing, must believe that this is the reality. Or so it wrongly seems. Anthropology and its main method of “…ethnography is a written representation of culture (Van Maanen 1988:1).” But a representation of whose culture, of whose social reality, and of whose ideational norms and values? Which actors will this piece of writing represent? Does it represent my informants and their culture? That of the tourists visiting Lombok? Or does it simply represent me as anthropologist and the academic culture I so eagerly want to be a part of? Thus, who am I representing in this thesis? Now that I have to write about my data and informants I have this creeping feeling that all I really did was use them for my research. All the interactions are placed in the frame of data and that translates to me wondering if I really liked the talks we had, the drinks we shared, the secrets we told, or that I liked those moments because they gave me something I needed. I can’t stop to wonder if I pushed conversations in the direction of my research interests, if I would have been as caring for some stories if it wasn’t for their importance to me as researcher. And it drives me crazy. I cannot escape the feeling that I used the people I came to care for on Lombok for my own egotistical goals. That I went back home and have to write about them and they are still
17 there, living their life in poverty hoping for a better future. All the while I sit here reducing them to mere objects in my argument and analysis, mere words on paper. I can’t shake the last thing everyone said to me while visiting the houses to say goodbye, “you make good promotion for us.” Yet here I am writing something that analyses their dreams and longings, their most intimate wishes for a better future, and not something that promotes them as a tourist destination. In his book on the crisis of representation van Maanen (1988:126) states that “[r]ealism … remains a laudable and thoroughly respectable goal” for the social sciences. Indeed the account you will read in the upcoming pages is a realist one as it includes social scientific jargon, totalizing description, generalizations, native interpretation, and all-seeing narration (Marcus and Cushman 1982). What you will read is my vision of authenticity in the Lombok tourist-landscape, it is my reality that forms the basis for my argument, what you will not read is the absolute and unquestionable reality. I hope I will be, I know I have been, able to negate the traps of realism in the thesis you are reading now. Presenting you an account that is the sole version of the unquestionably truth is impossible. Geschiere wonders correctly “…whether the anthropologist’s personal experience suffices to chart all the ‘givens’ that set the terms for the ‘possible’ in the societies we study (Geschiere 2010:143). The answer is simple: No, personal experience over a six-month fieldwork period is not enough to do this. But I hope that I make a convincing case on the basis of the sample of ‘givens’ I witnessed during my fieldwork. In Abu-Lughod’s (1993) case the question of ‘givens’ becomes one of particularity: she succeeds in illustrating the ‘givens’ individuals deal with through her stories. Based on these narrative accounts that include the ‘givens’ Abu-Lughod is able to show how individuals on a particular, or group, level struggle to attain the ‘possible.’ It is not necessary for her to give all the ‘givens’ since the ‘possible’ is context dependent. Abu-Lughod found this “better” method in what she calls writing against culture and the ethnography of the particular ; writing against the dangerous fiction that the idea of separate essentialized culture poses for the construction of difference. As such Abu-Lughod argues for a methodology that recognizes the power of ethnography in making difference and otherness a hierarchical relationship between essentialized and homogenized cultures (ibid.:10). This is my aim as well. As such the methods I have used to gather my data serve the purpose of giving the reader the tools to achieve an understanding of the context in which the particular experiences of the actors take place in the descriptions found in this master thesis. In the case study of the Kampung Resort I will outline the ‘givens’ that make up their world,
18 that drive their strive for upward mobility. Based on the terms they use themselves for this process, growing up, I will try my best to theorize about the ‘possible’ -as to truthfully write about their act of growing up within the local context of glocalization. I hope to show how the global flows that make up the particularity of Lombok through the actions of its local actors, the tourists that visit it, and the Indonesian state are examples of the ‘givens’ I ame across and not the one universal reality. I Hope I show on the basis of the ‘givens’ that are given to me what is the ‘possible’ for the actors I write about within a glocal world made up out of various cultural flows and the closure of identity that accompanies it. Yet, completely escaping from the hierarchical homogenization Abu Lughod (1993) writes against proves difficult. As the actors presented in this thesis make these distinctions themselves as to create an dichotomous model of authenticity. I hope I have moved beyond their essentialized hierarchical view of difference and otherness as to illustrate the process that lies behind it. I, myself, am guilty of homogenizing groups of actors in the work you read now, as portraying each and every ‘given’ on an individual level proves to be near impossible when writing about multiple groups of actors in multiple spaces. Please be reminded that there are always exceptions to the structures I pose and that this account does not give the only ‘possible.’ The real-ness of authenticity thus isn’t proven, but rather comes into existence due to my writings on the basis of my fieldwork and the subsequent analysis of data. I can only hope to do my informants justice; to have written something that represents them as much as it does me.
3.2 Methodology My ethnographic research and the data collected during fieldwork will be crosschecked and substantiated through the practice of triangulation.1 As outlined above I have visited multiple location within the context of Lombok. As such this thesis spans across four locations of which two case studies are presented in the following pages – those of Sade and the Kampung Resort. Data collected in these particularities has yielded interconnected information concerning authenticity and adat, how these notions are constructed and by whom. Before my arrival on Lombok a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been conducted. Through a
1 Triangulation made it possible to crosscheck findings and to build a stronger theoretical case concerning one interpretation of the social practises that where given. Through triangulation and thus by breaching out horizontally to different locations it is assumed that a higher level of external validity is achieved, since this multi-sited approach enables me to find common aspects among multiple cases (Burawoy 1998:19 and Salazar 2010:190,191). In the end making better theorization of authenticity on Lombok possible since micro and macro are better relatable. 19 critical analysis of the discursive practices present in various versions of the Lonely Planet guidebook- one of, if not the travel guide for Western tourists visiting Indonesia- an initial conceptualization of the field has been made, which informed the initial focus during fieldwork proper.2 Straussian Grounded Theory (SGT) poses the methodological backbone of my master thesis, as constant comparative method it is the framework within which all my sub-questions are related to one another.3 The data collected during and before my fieldwork has been constantly analyzed and compared as to arrive at theoretical conceptualizations that move past mere descriptions and into the realm of theory (Strauss and Corbin 1998:274). The main method I have used to gather data is the ethnographic method of Participant Observation: being an active participant in the setting and its performances while analyzing social practices and interaction that take place within that particular setting as a form of data. Participant observation has been utilized in every site included in this research. To understand what tourism and the discourses surrounding it in the Lombok tourist-landscape mean to Sasak actors living in its touristic particularities the method of deep hanging out has been used – drinking coffee, smoking, talking, and playing domino where an important part of my fieldwork experience. This method has also yielded information on possible discrepancies concerning the depiction of their “authentic way of life” in the tourist-landscape and their everyday experience of life away from the tourist gaze. Following Becker (1996:630 my aim has been to grasp the lived experience of those actors I followed around. Looking back now I wish that I had given more attention to the holiday goer type of tourist and the ways in which they spend their time on Lombok. Embodiment: During the initial stage of my fieldwork many of the local actors on Lombok did identify me as being a tourist. For me as a researcher of precisely those interactions this posed an opportunity to use this identification as a way to experience firsthand the construction of the Lombok tourist-landscape and its discourses. This is in line
2 The CDA is conducted on the basis of Fairclough Discourse and Social Change (1992). Due to CDA’s focus on not only the discursive practises in texts but to the social reality as constitutive and constituted by these processes with CDA it becomes possible to offer a explanatory critique of discourses and their construction of underlying asymmetrical power relations (Jorgensen 2002:88). Based on my fieldwork data the CDA will be completed through the inclusion of the importance of social practises on the discourses at hand. 3 The form of grounded theory followed is that as stipulated by Strauss and Corbin in Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (1998). The SGT methodology focuses upon the micro-sociological level of cultural analysis and social action within this perspective (Kelle 2005). As such SGT is the method par excellence for relating the empirical findings of my fieldwork on authenticity and the authentication of Lombok tourist-culture to larger theoretical and abstract notions of the construction of authenticity in a modernizing globalized world in which Lombok becomes more and more included through the rapid growth of its tourism industry. 20 with Csordas’ (1990) conceptualization of embodiment as a phenomenological method in which meaning is constituted within and through the body; it intermediates between external structures and internal subjectivities. Thus, the embodiment of a tourist identity has given me firsthand experience of what it means to be seen as tourist in the Lombok tourist-landscape and the possibility to see how front and back regions are constructed by local actors vis-à-vis visitors in material, discursive and performative sense. Through this embodiment, well in actuality my whiteness, I found the key case study for this thesis. Adi, a tour-guide in Orong Gerisak, saw me and my girlfriend driving around the region and asked if we needed a tour (see fig. 3.1). Adi became one of my key informants for my thesis. I myself love to travel and to find those local spaces aay from the beaten path, as such I embodied what drives the tourists I analyze in this thesis. In the end I understand the longings that drive my love for travel better through this thesis. Informal Interviews are included to make a more in-depth understanding of the views of the actors present within the field possible. While through triangulation between multiple sites an improved focus on external validity is achieved, semi-structured interviews serve as method of vertical scaling. Thus, the inclusion of informal interviews achieved a deeper understanding of the case studies at hand and a more in-depth knowledge of historically contextualized and geographically situated practices (Salazar 2010:190). The practices that have been inquired into depend on the actors but range from questions on background, meanings and cultural displays and what certain discourses mean for these specific actors. These informal interview where conducted whenever possible. While waiting with tour- guides for tourists to show up; with tourists while enjoying breakfast at our home-stay; while hiking through the rice fields with a small tour-group; after being called by one of my informants that tourist sat down at the local warung. My only regret is that I haven’t recorded as much interviews as I would have liked, forcing me to work from field notes. Deviant Cases: To ensure a better-rounded body of data interactions outside the standard tourism-setting have been researched during my time on Lombok. My aim was to find out why certain practices do (not) adhere to the “authentic” and why this is the case. Through focusing on social practices and interactions that create friction between the local view of Lombok and that of tourists I came to understand my research better. Examples of these deviant cases are the ways in which capitalist logic and authenticity” intertwine in a given setting - as is the case in Sade and the newly build Sasak style villas of the Novotel Lombok- and the views tourists and local actor have concerning them. My aim to understand the glocal art form of Ale-Ale started as a deviant case but as my analysis progressed it
21 became clear that the glocal character of this art form was incorporated into the dichotomous thinking by tourists, guidebooks, and the Indonesian state as a zero sum game: you are either modern or pre-modern. There is no space for glocal practices in the thinking of these actors, while local actors use it as a means to construct a more modern identity.
Fig 3.1 – My first tour with Adi through the Kampung resort region
22
4. Theoretical Framework
In the upcoming pages I will outline the theoretical framework for my thesis on the construction of authenticity within the Lombok tourist-landscape. Throughout this thesis I argue that the construction of authenticity is a relational endeavor in which various views of various groups of actors collide within the same setting, which in the case of my thesis is Lombok. To trace is process it is important to understand the main theories and concepts that have guided my thinking while writing this these. In the follow pages the basis on which the discourses found within the setting are constructed are explained. The framework presented in this chapter forms the basis on which actors construct and move within the setting of tourism on Lombok.
4.1 Authenticity While many authors working within the anthropology of tourism see authenticity as a reason for tourists to visit other localities (for a complete list see Wang 1999) they are skeptical about the existence of such a phenomenon in the empirical reality. They refrain from using the term authenticity, but instead opt form terms such as staged authenticity (Esperanza 2010, MacCannell 1973), re-enactment (Soguk 2003), infinite rehearsal (Cross 2006), existential authenticity (Wang 1999), they refrain from using the term authenticity altogether except to indicate the tourist’s desire for encountering the Other as such (Bunten 2008), or to show that it is constructed by powerful actors to make culture seem authentic to the tourist gaze (Philp & Mercer 1999). All in all authenticity seems to be nothing more than a construction that tourists hope to encounter on their vacations, a depiction of the Other that offers them a mirror for their own lives; a fantasy that informs their desire to travel (Bunten 2008, Esperanza 2010, Simpson 1993, Teo & Leong 2005). Tourism is thus informed by imagination, by the longing to travel to imagined worlds that are still inhabited by a noble savage. These tourists want to experience the (hyper)real -an experience of reality that is born out of fantasy and desire (Appadurai 1996, Bunten 2008, Bruner 1991, Spracklen 2011). In this sense for certain types of tourists traveling has become a search for authenticity, for a journey towards the experience of authentic culture and otherness. The focus of this thesis is upon the ways in which authenticity becomes constructed within interactions between actors, culture and difference and sameness. For this reason the
23 theoretical approach to authenticity is focused upon its constructiveness, its subjectiveness and the ways in which authenticity is something mad-made. It thus can be stated that objects and cultural aspects are not authentic because they are original but because they are constructed as symbols of such authenticity by its consumers (Wang 1999). An addition is needed here, I assume that the producer constructs them as such symbols as well. This ‘constructed authenticity (Wang 1999)’ in the Lombok tourist-landscape takes place within the exchange of objects and ideas between the Indonesian and local government, the local actors of Lombok, and the tourist across makeshifts link of difference and distance. As such the “authentic” objects and culture produced by the Lombok Other regain value, not because they are real and original, but because they are part of the real experience the tourist is after (Appadurai 1996, Bunten 2008, Bruner 1991, Spracklen 2011). Tracing the way in which this process is formed on, and forms, Lombok will ultimately yield insight in the ways in which authenticity is constructed and sought after.
4.2 The Front- and Back- Stage of the Lombok tourist-Landscape Te tourists discussed in this thesis try to gain access to “real” authentic experiences at the destinations they visit. As such the Lombok tourist-landscape is the setting where the construction of authenticity takes place relationally and symbolically. Following MacCannell’s (1973, 1976) adaption of Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) I to argue that any tourist setting, in this case the Lombok tourist-landscape, is characterized by front- and back-regions based upon a subjective understanding of what entails an authentic social structure in culture and even society at large. MacCannell (1973, 1976) sees the front- and back-region distinction as a six stage continuum in which the extremes are “real” and the middle four stages are in one way or another staged for tourist consumption. The mystified front region, or the fake back region, breathes an aura of authenticity, which according to MacCannell (1973) is staged. Thus, for the authenticity seeking tourist “[i]t is always possible that what is taken to be entry into a back region is really entry into a front region that has been totally set up in advance for touristic visitation (ibid.:597).” This means that it is possible that the producers of a certain touristic setting have staged the front stage, what the tourist is able to see and experience, in such a way as to give tourists the impression that they have entered an authentic back region, thus mystification is used by these actors to give a “show” on the front-stage that gives the tourist a sense of “real” reality (ibid.:591). MacCannell states that “[s]ightseers are motivated
24 by a desire to see life as it is really lived, even to get in with the natives, and, at the same time, they are deprecated for always failing to achieve these goals (ibid.:592).” While I have to agree with MacCannell (1973, 1976) that tourists are fueled by a desire for authentic life, their constant failure of experiencing this authenticity is overstated by him. The model presented by MacCannell (1973, 1976) for understanding the difference between front- and back- regions is very structuralistic and is a perfect illustration of his idea that there is an objective authentic dimension to culture that we as researchers can pinpoint, but which is unachievable for shallow superficial tourists. It is here that the concept of constructed authenticity (Wang 1999) becomes problematizing for MacCannell’s staged authenticity in front-stage, which are disguised as back-stage, regions. If we follow the tenets of constructed authenticity (Wang 1999) it can be stated that front stages arranged to appear as back-stages, or anything based on this continuum really, can be authentic, albeit in a subjective sense. The question then is; makes the unoriginality of this staged authentic encounter the overall experience inauthentic? In the end MacCannell’s (1973, 1976) model of staged authenticity in front stages is a useful way for thinking about the construction of authenticity and the manipulation thereof, but his insistence that those settings are inauthentic because they are staged in some form or another unrightfully presupposes that there is some universally static, objective, and natural form of authenticity in the world. If we look at authenticity as subjective, the manipulation of becomes much more complex and realistic in the man-made world of social interaction and its constructions.
4.3 Forms of capital and the language of the elite actors It should be clear that there are imminent power-relations present in the construction of, and argument over, authenticity. Authenticity, as a discourse on and over Lombok thus incorporates forms of political, cultural, social, and religious capital through its symbolizing character and the contestation thereof. It can be argued that authenticity is a resource that is mobilized and constructed through and by the actors in the Lombok tourist-landscape as a way to claim, resist, desire, and dream about the political, cultural, social, and religious capital it symbolizes. The reasons for this differ from group to group, even from actor to actor. Wang (1999) already discussed this subjectivity and the fluidity of the symbols its begets. In the end how authenticity becomes symbolized and constructed in the Lombok tourist-landscape informs us about the norms, values, and desires of those actors that are
25 entangled in its structures and the power it yields. Tracing the construction of authenticity tells us what the Real Lombok is, and if there is only one version of this reality. The construction of authenticity, and the symbolization thereof, is thus based on ideas surrounding various forms of capital and more importantly so on the exchange of these ideas through language. As always there are groups of actors that are more profound in utilizing the language surrounding these forms of capital and in structuring their ideas as the dominant ones. Thus these dominant actors are better equipped at constructing which spaces, objects, and ideas are to be seen as authentic and as symbols of it. While others, with lesser capital, are placed within the structure the discourses of the dominant actors have created through language. This is not to say they are powerless, they express their agency and their claims over these forms of capital by resisting, defying, and appropriating the elite language used to express their own assertions over what is authentic and why. Language -when seen as an expression of cultural, social, political, and religious capital- is thus able to structure and relocate objects, symbols, and subjects into the canon of culture, heritage, and finally authenticity. As such language is able to structure and restructure social practices and locations The above is what Adinolfi and Van de Port (2013) call museumification. what Adinolfi and Van de Port (2013) set out to illustrate that museums are not only places where experts relocate objects into a canonized form of culture, rather they argue, we should see museum-like qualities as an expressive elitist language that endows objects with a sense of prestige; it lifts the object from the ordinary and gifts it special abilities, it makes the object extraordinary (ibid.:287). I would like to add to this that objects and subjects relocated through the use of this elite language thus become symbolic repositories for the expression of cultural, social, religious, and political capital and ultimately the symbolization of authenticity in the Lombok tourist-landscape. While not explicitly about tourism the article by Adinolfi and Van de Port (2013) touches upon one of the main theme’s in the tourism literature, namely the objectification of heritage and tradition. My understanding of Adinolfi and Van de Port’s (2013) argument is that the museumification of the most famous Candomblé priestess’ living quarters offers visitors an insight into the Goffmanian backstage of public life that remains hidden for most outsiders. For the Candomblé the museumification of the living quarters thus gives them a mechanism through which they can take the creation Afro-Brazilian heritage in their own hands by means of appropriating the language of the Brazilian cultural elites. Rather than the iconizing gaze perpetuated upon the Candomblé culture by museums at large the priestess’ living quarter
26 now becomes an empowering act in which they take the representation of their own culture into their own hands (ibid.:301). They continue on to argue, based on an analysis of reviews of those who visit such heritage sites, that this museum-like backstage enables visitors to perceive an intimate encounter with the aura of the person who once lived there; it enables them to imagine an encounter with what is “really real” (ibi.:285). It offers the visitor a way to overstep their fantasies and to see the everyday reality of the objectified site, to see the “authentic” back-stage. This view allows Adinolfi and Van de Port’s (2013) a way out of the objectifying qualities of museumification. In the end the article allows us to see the objectification of culture in a more positive light, it shows us that the elite language of the museum can serve dominated subaltern people to protect their traditions, culture, and space from outside objectification and as a safeguard against the iconization of small portions of a culture. While Adinolfi and Van de Port’s (2013) paint us a picture of a group with the power to construct their own depiction of heritage towards visitors vis-à-vis the power of state and cultural elites, one remains to wonder what about those groups that aren’t as endowed with agency as the Candomblé? What about those groups of actors on Lombok working in the tourism-sector that are dominated by state and cultural elites of Indonesia and Lombok itself. How can they control their depiction to the outside world? In this thesis two opposite case-studies will be used as examples to show the difference between museumification through state and cultural elites, in which the local population of Sade is placed in the canon of Indonesian Otherness, and the process of self-museumification, in which the actors of the Orong Gerisak Kampung Resort take matters in their own hands and position themselves in a position of power vis-à- vis the political and cultural elites.
4.4 The Construction of Authenticity (and Other Discourses) Through Language For the reasons discussed in the previous paragraph it is important to use a model of analysis that incorporates this elite language of the museum and the discourses surrounding the expression and construction of cultural, social, religious, and political capital. To use a model that has confined in its own language a method to explore the meanings of objects, subjects, and the construction of culture and heritage as symbols of authenticity. Such a model that focusses on how reality becomes materialized through interaction is found in Ter Keurs’ Condensed Reality: A Study of Material Culture (2006). Ter Keurs himself worked as the curator for Indonesian collections at the ‘Rijksmuseum voor Volkerenkunde (National
27 museum of Ethnology)’ in Leiden, the Netherlands. As such Ter Keurs is fluent in the elite language of the museum and can be said to write based on the elite discourses surrounding it when tracing the meaning of objects and the canonization thereof. Ter Keurs himself states that:
“… my own position as a museum curator probably influences my views on material culture. Material culture is certainly not the only valuable entry to culture. I do not want to advocate a neglect of other ways of looking at culture since I still consider language, social structure, politics, religious and /or cultural norms and values to be very legitimate entries for research (Ter Keurs 2006:201,202).”
For this thesis, this view is of great importance as Ter Keurs outlook on culture focusses on the relocation of objects in the canon of culture and heritage, while at the same time using the power-dynamics that can be found in the symbolic construction of authenticity and its contestation through his focus on the object. Thus, in the fashion of museumification as described by Adinolfi and Van de Port (2013), Ter Keurs sees objects as repositories of meaning -a cultural elite view of the process. Ter Keurs however leaves open other possibilities for research. In this thesis not only what museumification is will be included, but more importantly how language is used as to endow objects and subject with certain meanings. As can be read above Ter Keurs writes based on the tradition of the museum, thus using the elite language it uses, meaning that his focus is more on the object itself then on cultural phenomena surrounding material culture. While the focus of this thesis is more on the cultural phenomena and the material construction thereof through language and discursive practices. Using Ter Keurs his model, uncritically and without placing the symbolization of cultural phenomena) at its center, will give a very one-sided view of the construction of authenticity, the view of the cultural elites - as if the one true reality and the materialization thereof can be known. Ter Keurs seems to see reality as straightforward and absolute, as only existing out of one possible outcome. As such I will be using a modified model based on his work, a model that incorporates reality as consisting of cultural, social, religious, and political capital and the contestation thereof by different groups of actors. Ter Keurs (2006:58) puts forward a model for the study of material culture in which the object is placed in an assemblage-like process in between the ideational construction of
28 reality. Reality is dynamic and a changing subject influences the object as an idea-matter-idea process (ibid.:64). Ter Keurs conceptualizes this assemblage in the following way: “with material evaporation we indicate the process of deriving meanings from physical objects, and with material condensation we indicate the process of materializing already existing meanings in objects (ibid.:59).”
The object itself and the meanings derived and instilled in it thus form what ter Keurs calls a material complex, which is never a pure material thing; the objects matter and the subjects meaning collide in the entity of the material complex. Ter Keurs thus wants to “…search for ideas or concepts that have been materially condensed and for meanings that are derived from the objects (ibid.:133).” Time, place and context influence the material complex since intentions, choices and strategies of producing and consuming subjects the consumer change. The illustration above shows that Ter Keurs (2006) develops a model which enables us to comprehend the world of objects and its relations with the world of ideas, to see how material objects with subjective elements construct material and social reality (ibid.:58,70). This is similar to the aim of this thesis; to see how material objects, or symbols and space in this case, construct and are constructed by material and social realities. Only in this thesis there is not only a focus on materiality, but a broader focus on the language, discourses, and power of actors that construct and change what is authentic and why. Thus, based on an adaption of Ter Keurs (2006:60) schematically illustration of the creation of material complexes in interaction between producers and consumers, it can be stated that “[t]he processes of the construction of meaning [authenticity] and the change of meaning are processes that shift from idea to matter [symbol] and from matter [symbol] to idea (ibid.:60).” This is in line with what Wang (1999) calls constructive authenticity as an the
29 exchange of symbols and ideas between the productive Other and the tourist consumer across makeshifts link of difference and distance based on language, discourse, and the capital of various actors within the setting.
4.5 The Analysis of Existing Discourses Present in Language It should be clear by now that the construction of authenticity is based in interaction and that these interaction are grounded in the position actors have within society and the setting, the cultural, political, religious, and social capital of these actors, and the overall power-relations present in language. Thus the construction of authenticity is related to modes of power. Based on the adaption of Ter Keurs (2006) his model it is now possible to trace the construction of authenticity and its symbols in language, at least the interaction that actors use to construct these symbols. However, a theoretical backbone to analyze the discourses that are expressed in language and the power-relations that are part of it is still needed to supplement this endeavor. To analyze and substantiate the impact of the social practices created in the Lombok tourist-landscape and the power-relations that are part of it Critical Discourse Analysis as conceptualized by Fairclough (1992), with underpinnings from Jørgensen & Phillips (2002), will be used. I will be tracing the:
“… overall progression from (i) analysis of discursive practises, focusing upon the intertextuality and interdiscursivity of discourse samples; to (ii) analysis of texts (plus ‘micro’ aspects of discourse practise); to (iii) analysis of the social practise of which the discourse is a part. These three dimensions of analysis will inevitably overlap in practise (Fairclough 1992:231).”
Fairclough (1992:225-227) defines his version of discourse analysis as an interdisciplinary undertaking in which the textual production and consumption of the text are related to power relations inherent to the social practices to which the analyzed discursive practices correspond. Based on an analysis of the popular travel guides from Lonely Planet I will analyze, through the use of critical discourse analysis, the social and cultural impact the discourses communicated in guidebooks have on the Global South. Plus I will trace the discourses that are present in the social practices of the political, cultural, and religious elites, the actors working in tourism, and the tourist. This method of analysis will provide “…a
30 detailed example of the way in which existing, macro-level power structures are replicated at the micro-level of discursive practice (Thompson 2004:103).” Fairclough argues that it is only possible to explain why the discourse practice is as it is through analyzing and specifying the social practices of which the discursive practices form a part (Fairclough 1992:237). This contextualization is needed to understand the two foregoing dimensions of the critical discourse analysis in its broader social light (Jørgensen & Phillips 2002:86). This contextualization has three parts, namely: 1) the order of discourse – the relationship between social practice and discursive practice on the basis of interdiscursivity (Fairclough 1992:237-238, Jørgensen & Phillips 2002:86). 2) The social matrix of discourse – “… the aim is to map the partly non-discursive, social and cultural relations and structures that constitute the wider context of the discursive practice (Jørgensen & Phillips 2002:86 on the basis of Fairclough 1992:237).” 3) The ideological and political effects of discourse – what are the effects on systems of knowledge and belief, social relations, and social identities (Fairclough 1992:238)? Based on the analysis of modality “… the discursive practices upon which [the text] draws [are] identified, and linked to the underlying power relations which may be reproduced by the interaction (Thompson 2004:108).” As with the model of Ter Keurs (2006) this form of Critical Discourse Analysis focusses on the relation between matter and idea -on the relationship between the partly non-discursive practices, the structures present in the setting, and unlike Ter Keurs (2006) has an eye for the underlying power structures that make up reality and the discourses itself. There is a direct relationship between the construction of reality and the discourses that are part of this reality. Based on the analysis of discourses we should look at these realities, then back at discourses. It can be stated on the above sections that the construction of authenticity moves from idea or discourse, to symbol, object, or reality, back to idea or discourse and as such changes depending on the change of the context: there is a move from language or text such as the Lonely Planet, to the reality of forms of capital and power structures of Lombok, to language. Thus to understand the discourses present in the Lombok tourist-landscape, and the construction of authenticity through these discourses, one first has to understand and specify the social practices, the contextualization of reality, of which these discourses are part. As such we first have to understand the actors, their place, and their roles within the Lombok tourist-landscape before we can understand how authenticity is constructed in interactions between these actors. The following chapters will focus on contextualizing the actions of these actors, their role within the tourist setting of Lombok, and the power structures they
31 produce and try to influence. Thus to understand the construction of authenticity and its symbols first we have to turn to the social environment in which they are enacted and structured.
5. The Lonely Planet
To understand the construction of authenticity in the Lombok tourist-landscape the major players in the setting have to be explained. For many tourists the first contact take make with their destination, or what to do the next day in a certain region, is through travel guide books. For this reason we turn our attention to representations and discourses communicated in travel guidebooks and their role in tourist-networks as mediator between destination and tourists, and between touristic imagination and reality (Tegelberg 2010:492,494). Based on an analysis of one of the popular travel guides from Lonely Planet I will analyze, through the use of critical discourse analysis, the social and cultural impact the discourses communicated in guidebooks have on the Global South. This analysis will provide “…a detailed example of the way in which existing, macro-level power structures are replicated at the micro-level of discursive practice (Thompson 2004:103).” Before turning attention to examples of the discursive practices of the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok the contextual background of the highly popular travel guide has to be considered. The productive conditions underlying Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok are based on independent travel, affordability, and responsible travel. Based on the trope of editorial independence. Lonely Planet argues that their guidebooks constitute trusted advice from a trusted source (Lonely Planet Online 2014a). Through this discourse the text of the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok becomes presented as reality as it really is, thus adding an authoritarian voice that presents the descriptive text as the true and only version of Bali and Lombok. The discourse of authenticity presented in the text is constitutive of, and constituted by, the discourse of otherness, un(der)development, and adventure; they influence and strengthen each other. It should be added that the popularity of the Lonely Planet and its enthusiasm for the locations they write about help to the further development tourism and as such with the overall modernization in the region. In a sense the Lonely Planet is thus destructing the existence of these settings as they present them in their guidebooks. These discourses, in relation to the inclusion of post-colonial references, constitute the citizens of Bali and Lombok as truly a homogenized race of welcoming and friendly
32 traditional people that simply long to please and serve tourists. An in-depth critical analysis of selected discursive examples for textual modality reveals that the interpretative descriptions in the text are presented as undisputable, universally true, and objective statements, but in reality these claims are disputable. The high affinity expressed in these statements, through the inclusion of categorical and objective modalities, reflects and reinforces the power and authority of the Lonely Planet discourse for the interpersonal functions of language (Fairclough 1992:159, Jørgensen & Phillips 2002:84). The social relation constituted in the text, through the discursive practices included in the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok, is thus one of power in which the producer, and to a certain degree the consumer, of the text are able to position the object of the text, the subaltern subject, as Other in multiple ways. This indicates a relationship of domination mirroring colonial practices. Concerning the control over representations of reality, it should be clear that the discursive practices of authenticity, as well as those of Otherness and colonialism, are constitutive of, and constituted by, a representation of reality based on Eurocentric orientalist social practices. Orientalism, present here as a social and corporate institution, is thus “… a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient (Said, 1978:3)." The text of the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok is thus placed in a long tradition of domination over the orient and its subjects through the inclusion of discursive practices that authorize and describe Western interpretations of Bali and Lombok as factual and objective descriptions that are universally true. It can be concluded that while the productive conditions of the Lonely Planet seem to promote a socially responsible way of tourism, it actually reproduces and produces an orientalist image of authentic otherness that charms tourists from the global North (Tegelberg 2010:493).
5.1 Representations of and Discourses About Lombok In the previous paragraph an oversight of the key discourses present in the texts of the Lonely Planet and the productive conditions that are the basis for it is given. In this section these discourses are further substantiated through examples derived from the text of these guidebooks. The key discourses of the Lonely Planet are nicely summed up in the following paragraph of the Lonely Planet Indonesia (2007):
“And then there are the micromoments, equally exquisite but entirely unexpected; impromptu English lessons with school children, instant friendships in crammed
33
bemos, lending an ear to your becak rider… In Indonesia there is plenty of cause to pause, except when dodging hurtling traffic – but that’s all part of the adventure. (Vaisutis et all 2007:4)”
Here the writers focus on the details, the unexpected run-ins with the authentic. Authenticity isn’t sought after, it is encountered. They position the Indonesian population as a homogenized group of friendly and noble Others that want to learn from you, the western tourist. But above all the key discourse is shown, a discourse which has been seen through the above pages in various forms, namely the discourse of adventure. The Lonely Planet Indonesia 2007 positions the tourist as an explorer that is about to discover a brand new world, a place unvisited by other westerners, in a time much different from home.
Fig 5.1 – the shady track discussed by the Lonely Planet guidebooks Now let us turn to a couple of examples concerning the town and surrounding area of Tetebatu, Lombok. In the upcoming pages the discourses present in the Lonely Planet guide books discussing this region of Lombok will be outlined. Concerning the sights and activities in Tetebatu the Lonely Planet Indonesia 2007 and the Lonely Planet Bali & Lombok 2007 states the following:
“Taman Wisata Tetebatu A shady 4km track leading from the main road just north of the mosque heads into Taman Wisata Tetebatu (Monkey Forest) with black monkeys and waterfalls
34
– you will need a guide to find them (ask at your losmen). Alternatively, you could take an ojek from the turn-off.
Waterfalls On the southern slopes of Gunung Rinjani National Park are two waterfalls. Both are accessible only by private transport or on a lovely 1½-hour walk (one way) through the rice fields from Tetebatu. If walking, even in a group, be sure to hire a reputable guide (ask at your losmen). Locals believe that water from Air Terjun Jukut (Jeruk Manis, Air Temer; admission 2000Rp) will increase hair growth. The falls are a steep 2km walk from the car park at the end of the road. Northwest of Tetebata, Air Terjun Joben (Otak Kokok Gading; admission 2000Rp) is more of a public swimming pool, so less alluring. (Vaisutis et all 2007:523, Ver Berkmoes and Stewart 2007:318,320, my emphasis )”
In this except the key discourses used by the Lonely Planet writers in the text on Lombok (and Indonesia) can be analyzed. The except starts off with pointing out that to reach the Monkey Forest located in the kampung of Orong Gerisak the traveler has to go off the beaten path: they have to leave the main road and follow a shady track (see fig. 5.1). More so, to find the waterfall you will need a local to help you. The need for a tour-guide, for a helping local, seems to infer that the tourist is about to undertake something that has not yet been streamlined for easy tourist-consumption. The need for a tour-guide coupled with the hardship it takes to go of the main road and take the less traveled (by tourists) path seem to refer to a discourse found throughout the Lonely Planet, and in conversations with actual tourists for that matter: the discourse of adventure. The desire, longing, or even dream of tourists to discover the tourist destination they are visiting as if they are the first white men to set afoot this beautiful mysterious place, to do something away from the (other) tourists and uncover what only the local population - that’s why you need the guide- is able to see. Sharing this experience with the tour-guide enables the tourists to see, feel, and smell the real Indonesia, the real Lombok, or/and the real local life. The ideas of discovery, hardship, adventure, and real local life invoked in the text of the Lonely Planet serve as symbols for the discourse of authenticity, that by going off the beaten track you will be able to experience the Real Lombok – to see what Lombok really is,; to see it as the local population sees it; to see it through the lens of the Other.
35
Again, in the next paragraph of the above excerpt, the discourse of adventure is invoked through the hardship it takes to get there and the fact that once again the tourist has to get of the main road full of tourists and off the beaten path, as getting there requires a walk on small elevated paths through the rice fields surrounding Tetebatu. Finally, once again the need for the assistance of a local tour-guide is invoked. This indicates a somewhat neo-colonial relationship in which the local is subdued to the position of servant ordered to assist the dominant white explorer on his adventure for natural authenticity. The above assumptions are further strengthened by the claim of the Lonely Planet writers that the local population up till the present day still belief in the folklore surrounding the waterfall. The idea that the local tour-guide, as all the other locals, beliefs in the myth of the waterfall aiding hair growth adds a dimension of otherness to the adventure with power- relations that mimic colonial practices. During my time in the Tetebatu region I asked the local tour-guides about the myth of hair growth surrounding the waterfall, what I got in return was heartfelt sardonic laughter and that maybe a long time ago people might have believed such things but in the present day they didn’t know anyone that ever mentioned that myth.4 The Otherness seems to signify a romanticized image of the local population that can be found throughout the Lonely Planet in different forms. Thus, further aiding the orientalist practices employed by the Lonely Planet. The paragraph finishes with another statement, again using infrastructure as metaphor for adventure and ultimately the Real Lombok or Indonesia - thus authenticity. In order to reach the waterfall where the otherness of the local population and the real local life collide the tourist not only has to go to ‘the end of the road,’ but even further: the tourist has to go off the beaten path. Thus the backstage, the real local life full of otherness, beliefs, and tradition can be found where it takes hardship to go to, away from well-developed infrastructure and away from the (other) tourists. The last paragraph of the above excerpt focusses on a waterfall the Lonely Planet writers deem less alluring due to the fact that it is more of a public pool. Based on the previous paragraphs and the analysis there-off it can be argued that this can have several reasons. First of it can be argued that once again infrastructure plays an important role in the discursive practices of the Lonely Planet: the waterfall that is more of a public swimming pool -consisting of several small waterfalls a basis reinforced with concrete and am actual swimming pool- indicates that a ‘newer’ infrastructure has been built, it is so to speak not off the beaten path, but can be found in many touristic areas. This ties in with the second reason:
4 However, some of these tour-guides were quick to mention that they would use this newfound piece of information in future tours. 36
Otherness. The modernization of infrastructure can be argued to diminish the view of Otherness surround the local population and landscape. In the end the local population becomes less characterized by Otherness and more by sameness due to infrastructural progression and what it symbolizes: the reduction of poverty and modernization. This ties in with the final reason the waterfall turned public pool might be less alluring: authenticity. Due to the infrastructural development, the modernization it indicates, and loss of poverty the authenticity seems to be diminished, making it a less alluring place to visit. The Lonely Planet Bali & Lombok published in 2013 has the following to say about the sights and activities in Tetebatu:
“A shady 4km track leading from the main road, just north of the mosque, heads into the Taman Wisata Tetebatu (Monkey Forest) with monkeys and waterfalls – you’ll need a guide.”
Waterfalls On the southern slopes of Rinjani, there are two waterfalls. Both are accessible by private transport or a spectacular two-hour walk (one way) through rice fields from Tetebatu. If walking, hire a guide (125,000Rp) through your hotel. A steep 2km hike from the car park at the end of the access road to Taman Nasional Gunung Rinjani leads to beautiful Air Terjun Jukut, an impressive 20m drop to a deep pool surrounded by lush forest. (Ver Berkmoes and Skolnick 2013:278, my emphasis)”
The first thing that it noticed is the absence of the heading still present in the 2007 version. The text itself still starts off with invoking the discourse of adventure by referring to a shady track one has to follow, once again focusing on the quality of the local infrastructure and the possible hardship it entails on behalf of the tourist. Thus pointing to otherness in economic, societal, governmental conditions. Instead of needing a guide to find the waterfalls and monkeys the 2013 version of the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok simply states that a guide is needed. No further information as to why. In a sense this moderates the trope of the Real Indonesia and Lombok. What is noticeable is the lack of the latter part of the paragraph when compared it to the 2007 version of the Lonely Planet Indonesia. A reason for this might be that the ojek has largely disappeared from the Lombok streetscape due the ever growing
37 possession of scooters. Maybe this progression shows the sameness between tourist and local in materialistic sense as well. The paragraph on waterfalls still focusses on the infrastructure and the adventure of going off the beaten path. The walk itself has been updated from a lovely 1,5 hour walk to a spectacular two-hour walk. There is a larger focus on natural authenticity and the beauty of nature. This might be due the absence of the sentence focusing on the local beliefs concerning the waterfall, instead of the discourse of Otherness based on tradition the Lonely Planet now again mentions the natural authenticity of the place through saying how beautiful the waterfall is and how lush the forest surrounding it is. A move to a more indirect form of Otherness is thus present in the Lonely Planet: an otherness related to the infrastructural development of Lombok compared to the already modern infrastructure tourists are used to. Thus effectively placing Lombok lower on the continuum of progression, development, and modernity. Without actually writing it this might indicate the location of locals in the past compared to the writers and readers of the Lonely Planet. Further it can be claimed that the focus on natural authenticity, the pristine quality of the nature, also indirectly refers to Otherness as it indicates a landscape other from the home society. Finally the mention of the not so alluring waterfall turned public swimming pool has been suspended, one can only guess why. Until September 2014 the listing for Air Terjun Jukut on the Lonely Planet website stated that
“Locals still believe that water from Air Terjun Jukut will increase hair growth. So if baldness frightens you, wade over and let the frigid cascade rain down on your man-scalp. It’s a 2km walk from the car park at the end of the road. (Lonely Planet Online 2014a)”
In the online version there are some similarities and some major differences. First off the reference to infrastructure is still present. The discourse focusses still on adventure and the focus on getting off the beaten path and exploring what comes after the end of the road. However, the word steep has been omitted from the description of the walk. What is unlike the other versions is the use of the word still in describing the presumed believes of the local population. They do not simply believe, but rather these locals still believe in the mythical powers of the waterfall. This not only indicates the otherness of these locals but indicates that the Lonely Planet writers see these locals as stuck in time and place, as a unchanging group of
38 subaltern Others stuck in a static culture. It indicates a far going romanticism and a very orientalist thinking about the tourist-landscape they are writing about. In defense of the Lonely Planet this citation has since then been deleted from the website and the same URL now displays a message stating that “this listing for Air Terjun Jukut has been removed.” The reasons behind this removal are not known, it however is an indication that perhaps the negative connotation of the far going romantism and orientalism where realized by the Lonely Planet staff. The overview webpage of Tetebatu linking to the above citation has also changed, instead of displaying similar information as can be found in the hardcopy versions of the Lonely Planet on Indonesia or Bali and Lombok, it now displays the following message (see fig 5.1) prominently on the top of the webpage:
Fig 5.1- Gone off-the-beaten-path? (Lonely Planet Online 2014)
Once more the text of the Lonely Planet refers to infrastructure, or un(der)development. The sentence is posed as a question as to indicate that one is no really going on an adventure. One is no longer a tourist traveling the main road, one has become an explorer trotting away from the beaten track in search of the fulfillment of his desires and fantasies. The explorer goes to the untouristic really authentic places of local life, the places where the development of tourism and the modernization it brings in the form of new roads has not yet begun. It is here, off this beaten path, that the tourist-turned-explorer encounters the otherness vis-à-vis his home society: the traditional opposite the modern, the undeveloped versus the developed, and poverty set against his own wealth. Concerning Tetebatu the Lonely Planet Bali and Lombok 2013 mentions that “The internet has yet to colonise tiny Tetebatu. The closest connection is in Kotaraja, 5km away. Ver Berkmoes and Skolnick 2013:278)” Throughout the text the Lonely Planet writers invoke
39 the discourse of colonialism in one way or another. In the above fragment they place colonialism in line with the discourses of development and progression. Once again this development and progression are related to the infrastructure. It almost seems as if the writers try to communicate to the reader that these pure static subaltern Others are still not under the control of the dominant, all destroying, western modernity: they are still free. When the colonialization takes place they as well will swallowed whole by the forces of modernity and its global connections. The internet has become a dominant presence in the lives of many around the globe, yet tiny Tetebatu remains static and free of almost any form of infrastructural development and modernization: they remain characterized by otherness. In a sense the development of infrastructure seems to indicate a loss of this otherness, a sense of change in the Lonely Planet view of the tourist-landscape. The writers seem to communicate that modernization indicates sameness
5.2 Lombok’s time is now So do the writers of the Lonely Planet always position Lombok as a place of Otherness, traditions, pre-modern, and in the end a place of adventure? No, not always. The writers are trying to show that Lombok is becoming more and more the same as the home societies of western tourists, and they are trying to do this in a as positive way as possible. Yet they fail miserably, consider the following excerpt:
"There is though still a concept of village life under it all in that people are part of a greater group beyond their immediate family. This is important as women are finding much to do outside of the home, whether it’s work or even cultural activities. Childcare becomes an adult responsibility, not just a family or maternal one. In the end, an air-conditioned mall fills in for the village banyan tree as a meeting place for many (Ver Berkmoes and Stewart 2007:38).”
The statement that "There is though still a concept of village life under it all in that people are part of a greater group beyond their immediate family (ibid.:38)" creates a sense of Otherness for the consumer located in a late capitalist consumer society. As Comaroff' and Comaroff (2000) state "we" have seen a move from a inclusionary system based on kinship (blood-ties and village as organizational principle) to a consumer society (based on consumer preferences as organizational principle). Inherently making any form of social organization on the former
40 principles Other. The statement that "This is important as women are finding much to do outside of the home, whether it’s work or even cultural activities. (ibid.:38)" somewhat undermines the discourse of authenticity as a popular view of the pre-modern is that of the binary opposition between nature and culture. The women are related to the house and nature, while the men are related to culture and the public sphere. The move of women from house to public sphere signals a changing culture and undermines the feeling of otherness for tourists living in modern societies. However, due to the first statement it becomes clear that those Others are merely same in some aspects, but largely remain different from “us.” The final statement that "In the end, an air-conditioned mall fills in for the village banyan tree as a meeting place for many (Ver Berkmoes and Stewart 2007:38)" however pulls the Other back into the zone of authenticity. Since present day life is still infused with authentic aspects of a traditional life in which the village square was the space in which the organization of social life takes place. Even statements referring to a changing way of life for the other on Bali and Lombok remain infused with the discourses of authenticity and Otherness of culture; it focuses on traditional aspects in modern settings and more often than not on modern aspects (such as mobile phones) in traditional settings. Throughout the Lonely Planet remarks concerning these developments can be witnessed, as stated in the Lonely Planet Bali & Lombok 2013:
“For years Lombok has been touted as Indonesia’s next hot destination. Finally, the reality seems to have caught up with the hype, and with a new international airport and renewed interest from around the globe, Lombok’s time is now. (Ver Berkmoes and Skolnick 2013:258)”
Lombok is seen as the next big thing in Indonesia by the Lonely Planet and now, due to infrastructural developments, the reality matches the description. Lombok has caught up and instead of its location in the past, with its traditions and local’s unwavering beliefs in the mythical powers of waterfalls for hair growth, Lombok’s time is now. Lombok has finally started to join “us” in the modern present. They are less Other and becoming more the Same. As the not yet colonized tiny Tetebatu shows not all of Lombok has joined the writers of the Lonely Planet in the now. There are numerous mentioning’s of this colonialization by infrastructure and time:
41
“Beaches just don’t get much better: the water is warm, striped turquoise and curls into barrels, and the sand is silky and snow-white, framed by massive headlands and sheer cliffs that recall Bali’s Bukit Peninsula 30 years ago. Village life is still vibrant in south Lombok as well, with unique festivals and an economy based on seaweed and tobacco harvests. The south is noticeably drier than the rest of Lombok and more sparsely populated, with limited roads and public transport. But, with Lombok’s new state-of-the-art international airport now operating, flights have already increased and change will surely come. Soon. . (Ver Berkmoes and Skolnick 2013:278)”
The writers start of by invoking the discourse of natural authenticity and beauty in relation to Lombok’s location in the past, as if Lombok’s place on a continuum is thirty years before Bali. This focus on the transgression of time and Lombok’s location in the past is continued through stating that the south of Lombok still has a vibrant village life. As opposed to what? Bali’s present village life compared to that of thirty years ago? That the vibrancy of village life diminishes with the modernization of society? The writers even go one step further and solidify Lombok’s otherness through its uniqueness and its economic focus on products different from the farming practices in the west. Lombok has been set as a place of otherness located in the past, at least thirty years before Bali’s time. The writers paint an image of an un(der)developed infrastructure as well, once again cementing the otherness of the place and appealing to the desire of adventure and discovery of tourists, and likely themselves. As in the previous citation the paragraph ends with indicating the limits of this otherness: (infrastructural) development. Change will surely come if we have to believe the writers of the Lonely Planet and rather sooner than later. The transition to the present, the modernization of Lombok, is coming together with better infrastructure and if you do want to experience Lombok’s otherness, traditions and authentic local life you better come now or you might be too late to experience the past.
5.3 Summary In this chapter is shown that the Lonely Planet guidebooks focusing on Indonesia and Bali and Lombok propagate a description of Lombok as a place of 1) adventure –an un(der)developed still somewhat untouristic place to be discovered. A place of 2) Otherness – Lombok is inhabited by a friendly local population that still bases its everyday life on age-old traditions,
42 and collective social life, and myths while at the same time not yet being completely modernized. Thus giving room for a romanticized view of this local population that homogenizes them on the basis of orientalism. And finally 3) authenticity – an overarching discourse that includes the other discourses and isn’t named in the Lonely Planet. However it is present in all of its descriptions to referring to the realness of the otherness and adventure Lombok and Indonesia pose to tourists.
6. Tourists: Relational Authenticity
In the previous chapter the discourses present within various versions of the text of the Lonely Planet Indonesia and the Lonely Planet Bali and Lombok have been analyzed. The key discourses present within the text of the Lonely Planet are those of authenticity, otherness, adventure and on a related note un(der)development. In this chapter the existence of these discourses in the actual social practice of tourism will be traced, as will be any differences and additions. But first a description of the two main types of tourists within the setting of Lombok is in place.
6.1 Holiday Goers and Exploring Travelers Do all tourists actively set out to find, and create, spaces and symbols where their desires and imagination of such discourses are confirmed? No not all of them; among the tourists visiting Lombok are those I would like to call holiday-goers. This type of tourist is on Lombok to have a relaxing, and somewhat luxurious holiday in paradise – whatever that may be: surfing, sunbathing on the beach, or simply sitting at the pool of your resort. It can be stated that holiday goers aren’t necessarily in search of authenticity, they are on Lombok for a relaxing vacation instead of backpacking and travel. These holiday goers are not found in the locations of the beaten-path, rather they stay in luxurious resorts: this type of tourist stays on the main road and will not even see the shady track leading up to the Real Lombok. They experience Lombok in a different way, they experience Lombok not as a local space of traditions but rather as a modern setting in which patches of tradition are found. This chapter, as my thesis, focusses not on this type of tourist, but rather on what I would like to call the exploring traveler – this on the basis of their actions as wanting the adventure of discovering new and
43 other places, because in the end they set out to confirm the existence of their romantized idea about Lombok and the discourses of the Lonely Planet. Yet, many of the tourists I spoke to do not only go to Lombok; these exploring travelers often start out on Bali and then make their way to Lombok, planned before the vacation or unplanned because they do not find on Bali what they are searching for. In this sense there is a relationship between Bali and Lombok. It is with the latter type of tourists that the longing for the real becomes a central part of their time on Lombok. Throughout my fieldwork, and even after during small talk in bars here in Amsterdam, I have heard Lombok being described as the Real Indonesia and as a place where the Real local life could be experienced. This touristic longing for the Real seems related to two intertwined ideas. First, a place is real in as much it is other – as much as it is still authentic. Second, a place is real in as much it is undiscovered and untouristic. It can be stated that the Real Indonesia is thus a place away from mass tourism, with a lot of poverty, and a traditional way of life. Thus, seen as a symbol of authenticity by the tourist. With a longing for, or when in luck an actual visit to, the real Indonesia the tourist gains, or thinks he does, access to the the back-stage of Indonesia, or Lombok. So the Real Indonesia is that part where the tourist can really experience the authenticity of the setting, away from the buzz of mass tourism and sameness. In this back-stage, MacCannel claims, the tourist gets “…to see life as it is really lived, even to get in with the natives, and, at the same time, they are deprecated for always failing to achieve these goals (MacCannel 1973:592).”But can it be claimed that these tourists fail to visit the real, the back-stage of a society, when in their own subjective experience they have seen the Real Indonesia? No, I don’t think so. Even when the authenticity is staged the experience doesn’t become less real. As such authenticity, as any discourse, is experienced by tourists in language, in interaction, and above all relationally.
6.2 Bali versus Lombok In my conversations with exploring travelers about Lombok there often was a reference to Bali. As if one could not exist without the other, or better yet, as if Lombok would not hold the same meaning in their search for the Real Indonesia, discovery, and otherness without their visit to Bali. The exploring travelers I spoke during my fieldwork on Lombok al seem to invoke a form of dichotomous thinking to make sense of the setting they visit. Observing authenticity and its symbols within the context of Lombok seems to be based on a zero sum game: you are either this or that – there is no in-between. Lombok is seen as untouristic, poor,
44 undiscovered and as such a place of otherness – actively mimicking the discourses found in the Lonely Planet. While Bali is seen as touristic, capitalistic, discovered, and as such a soace of sameness – a setting which can be experienced anywhere in the modern world. As such exploring travelers deploy an relational, and dichotomous, way of thinking about authenticity and Lombok. Based on these dichotomies one thing becomes clear: the discourses people hold concerning Lombok, and the construction of authenticity that follows these discourses, is invoked through a comparison between two locations. These discourses, and above all authenticity, or not based on an objective and absolute reality but rather on the move between different realities and the ways in which these actors experience the settings and the difference between them. As such authenticity is relational. This insight can be found in the writings of Wang (1999) as well:
“By constructive authenticity it is meant the result of social construction, not an objectively measurable quality of what is being visited. Things appear authentic not because they are inherently authentic but because they are constructed as such in terms of points of view, beliefs, perspectives, or powers. This notion is thus relative, negotiable (Cohen 1988), contextually determined (Salamone 1997), and even ideological (Silver 1993). It can be the projection of one’s dreams, stereotyped images, and expectations onto toured objects (Bruner 1991; Silver 1993). In this sense, what the tourist quests for is symbolic authenticity (Culler 1981). …. In such a liminal experience, people feel they themselves are much more authentic and more freely self-expressed than in everyday life, not because they find the toured objects are authentic but simply because they are engaging in nonordinary activities, free from the constraints of the daily. (Wang 1999:351,352, emphasis in original).”
Thus, Wang (1999) argues in the above citation that, authenticity is not an objective quality that is possessed by a place, object, or even subject. But rather authenticity is a relative and subjective construction that actors can project on certain things on the basis of their desires, ideas, and dreams. Wang sees the touristic experience as a liminal one based in personal and intersubjective interactions make up the meaning of the experience itself. As such experiences, interactions, and activities that fall outside the normal scope of experiences feel and are more authentic: these non-ordinary experiences are quintessentially other.
45
On the basis of this argument the dichotomies exploring travelers make concerning Bali and Lombok can be explained. What can been seen when looking at the differences in describing Lombok and Bali –and sometimes touristic places such as Senggigi, Lombok- is the difference between the ordinary and the non-ordinary, between what exploring travelers can experience in their home society and in the tourist-landscape. Look at Bali, the exploring travelers describe it as a place of individualism, a place of capitalism, as located in the present, and above all a place that feels the same as what they can experience in their daily lives. Lombok on the other hand is a place of otherness, an island where one can still engage in non-ordinary activities, where the local still has his traditions and where community life still means something. Let’s consider some examples:
“I like it here [Kuta Lombok], it’s nice. … It is easy here, the locals are friendly, the life is simple, with a steady pace. It’s like when you respect the people they respect you; we didn’t pay for the room and the scooter for the first 3 weeks. We could’ve just got up and left. … It’s not like Bali here; No big cities and you are treated as a human being and not as a walking cashpoint. … it’s like paradise here: good waves plus its cheap. … we went here for a week between good waves on Bali, but we never left. It is better here than in Bali, we like the pace and the locals. It’s even better as home, no rush, community, and a lot of trust. No such thing in Scotland anymore.. still a paradise here mate! (Transcribed from field notes)”
This Scottish surfer with a knack for the cultural defines Lombok on the basis of Bali. It can be argued that Bali becomes a stand in for how this surfer sees Scotland– Bali symbolizes sameness, the ordinary, and to a certain degree the inauthentic. Lombok on the other hand is defined as free from these constraints the Scotsman faces on Bali and in Scotland – Lombok is still a paradise, still made up out of friendly locals that are not as economic minded as most people, but above all it is located in the past. This actor can experience something on Lombok long lost in his home society and even in Bali. Thus, Lombok becomes a place of authenticity because its otherness; its place away from the ordinary. This Scotchman is not alone in this imaginations, the following couple from the Netherlands tells us a similar story:
46
Translated: “[It [Bali] is very touristic! Wherever you go you just know that hundreds tourists have already been there that same day … it just feels like a zoo there. … You go to look at the animals and you take some peanuts with you as to feed them, but rather than peanuts you take money with you. … Yes, since we are alone here [Tetebatu] it is possible for us to relax and do fun stuff. … Well, on Bali it was way too busy, but when we went to waterfall here [in Orong Gerisak] we were alone. There was nobody except us two, that why we were able to really enjoy it. Superb! On Bali w went to a waterfall as well, but while walking towards it we already encountered so much tourists that we became afraid of what we would find. With all these people it felt so busy at the waterfall. Here it was just us, there we couldn’t even take a picture without people in it.]” Original: “Het [Bali] is zo toeristisch! Overal waar je bent zijn die dag al honderd toeristen je voor geweest. … Net een dierentuin daaro. … Nou, je gaat gewoon aapjes kijken, maar met geld in plaats van pinda’s. … Ja, omdat we hier [Tetebatu] de enigen zijn kunnen we ten minste ontspannen en leuke dingen doen. …Nou op Bali was het zo druk, toen we hier naar de waterval [in Orong Gerisak] gingen waren we de enigen, er was niemand behalve wij twee, daarom konden we echt genieten. Super. Op Bali gingen we ook naar een waterval, maar toen we er heen liepen kwamen we al zoveel mensen tegen dat we bang werden voor wat we zouden aantreffen. Het was zo druk met z’n allen bij die waterval. Hier waren we alleen, daar konden we niet eens een foto maken zonder mensen erin! (Transcribed from field notes)”
But rather than making a comparison between Bali and their home society this couple focusses on the negative aspects of tourism they experienced on Bali. They construct Bali as a symbol of mass tourism, a place similar to going to the zoo. A place so busy that they couldn’t enjoy themselves. These people want to discover a waterfall, and hiking to it with a horde of other tourists isn’t really an adventure in their eyes. They want to experience the natural authenticity, to witness the beauty of the waterfall in an untouristic setting. Yet, the place is already marketed to tourists and it is so touristic that they can’t even objectify the setting without other tourists in it. For these two people their imaginations and longings remained unfulfilled during their time on Bali, but once they came to Lombok they believed themselves to be the only tourists. Thus making the discovery of the setting possible.
47
Let us consider a different example that shows the relational dimension of discourses and authenticity in particular. The following was said to me by a Belgian couple traveling from Bali, to Sumba, and finally to Lombok, before flying home from Bali.
Translated: “Man: Sumba is the most authentic. Bali really isn’t part of Indonesia anymore, but Lombok is sometimes authentic – like here [Orong Gerisak]. Kids run away from you [on Sumba], the whole village comes out to look at you while we are walking through it.” Women: “Sumba was really authentic, the most authentic of the three. The people [on Sumba] are not yet used to tourism, there isn’t a single tourist present. Here [Tetebatu region] it is sort of authentic but they people already have stone houses, there is a sense of community however. People still work together here [referring to the construction of the mosque], that’s different from home. Sumba, and here, are very authentic. But very poor as well. Those two things seem to be connected.. unfortunately. Here the people still have a sense of togetherness and tradition. In Sengiggi it is everyman for himself and all about oney, money, money.” Man: Walking here [Tetebatu region] meant drinking coffee everywhere, taking pictures with the people, feels really authentic: we become part of the traditions that the people share among themselves. How did you find Tetebatu? Man: “A Belgian hotel owner recommended it to us as place that we really needed to visit as to witness the real authentic Lombok.” Women: “He was sort of correct, but they are more used to tourist here than on Sumba: people don’t look at you funny because you are a tourist.” Man: It [tourism] is slowly staring, you notice this when you walk around here.” Women: “There are more places to sleep here, warungs catering to tourists, guides, and not as poor.” Man: “Like we said before now it feels less authentic for us here, but still the real kampung life of course.: Women: “”I would say less traditions… they don’t life like they used to do in the past, or like Sumba.” Man: “Especially since you see tourists everywhere now, wherever you are on Lombok. Women: “” we were talking about it this morning, the youth is wearing the same style of clothing as back home.” Original: Man: “Soemba is het meest authentiek. Bali is eigenlijk geen Indonesië meer, maar Lombok is soms authentiek - zoals hier [Orong Gerisak]. Kinderen lopen voor je weg [op Soemba], hele dorpen lopen uit als we aan het wandelen zijn.” Vrouw: “Soemba was echt authentiek, de meeste authenticiteit van de drie.
48
De mensen [op Soemba] zijn nog geen toerisme gewend, er is daar geen toerist te vinden. Hier [regio Tetebatu] is het ook wel authentiek maar de mensen hebben al stenen huizen, maar de gemeenschap is wel aanwezig. De mensen werken nog samen hier [gaat over bouw moskee], anders dan thuis. Soemba, en hier, is erg authentiek. Maar wel erg arm.” Vrouw: “die twee lijken hand in hand te gaan.. jammer genoeg. Hier zijn mensen nog traditioneel en samen, in Senggigi is het iedereen alleen en geld, geld, geld. ” Man: “Het lopen hier [regio Tetebatu] was overal koffie drinken en op de foto met mensen, voelt als echt authentiek: we worden opgenomen in tradities die mensen hier ook onderling hebben.” Hoe heeft u Tetebatu gevonden? Man: “Werd aangeraden door Belgische hotel eigenaar als plek die we echt moesten zien om het echt authentieke Lombok te vinden.” Vrouw: “Dat klopt wel, maar ze zijn hier wel meer aan toeristen gewend dan op Soemba: mensen kijken je niet meer zo raar aan als toerist.“ Man: “Het[toerisme] is hier nu langzaam aan het opstarten, dat merk je wel als je hier rondloopt” Vrouw: “Er zijn hier meer plekken om te slapen, warungs voor toeristen, gidsen, en niet zo arm.” Man: “Zoals we al zeiden het lijkt hier nu minder authentiek voor ons, maar nog wel het echte kampung leven natuurlijk” Vrouw: “Minder tradities zou ik zeggen… Ze wonen niet meer zoals vroeger, of Soemba.” Man: “Vooral omdat je nu overal toeristen ziet, waar je ook bent op lombok” Vrouw: “Waar we het vanochtend nog over hadden is dat jongeren de zelfde kleding dragen als thuis” (Transcribed from field notes)
Once again authenticity is relationally constructed and appointed on the basis of the ordinary. But this except from our conversation shows that authenticity is not only constructed on the difference between Bali and Lombok. But rather that authenticity is based upon the symbols of one’s desires and dreams that are encountered in every setting. Bali, again, is inauthentic, this couple even goes as far as stating that it can’t even be considered as Indonesia anymore.5
5 This isn’t the first time I was told a similar sentiment. A man staying at Bram’s Indah homestay in Orong Gerisak told me that “Westernization is like Kuta Bali and Senggigi, we don’t want to go back there but have to for our visa. But that place could be anywhere in the world where tourists go, it has no character of its own. Here there is character, people are friendly and they didn’t want any money for the food we ate yesterday when we sat with you. We got right in the middle of local life.(Transcribed from field notes)” Once a place becomes touristic and the economic development that goes along with it starts a location becomes less part of the Real Indonesia –there is less otherness 49
It is my assumption that this has to do with how real the place feels – how Other is is and how undiscovered it feels. Sumba feels as most authentic for this couple, and when we look at the Bali/Lombok dichotomy written out above it becomes clear that they experience Sumba as most tourists that go to Bali and Lombok experience Lombok: as a place of Otherness, untouristic, located in the past, and poor. Lombok is placed in-between Sumba and Bali as it is getting more touristic, people are less poor, and there is modernization among the local communities -i.e. stone, instead of bamboo, houses. In the end the experience of the non- ordinary, the experience of otherness as I call it, can be stated to influence and construct authenticity. Not only authenticity is experienced relationally, it seems that most discourses are constructed vis-à-vis something other, or same. In the upcoming pages I will consider examples taken from conversations with exploring travelers during my time on Lombok. These examples will show how the Lombok tourist-landscape, and the authenticity that veils it, become constructed through dichotomies.
6.3 The Condition of Infrastructure as Symbol of Development In the previous chapter examples from the Lonely Planet where used to show that the condition of infrastructure is a means to locate Lombok in the past, as pre-modern, as a place of otherness, a place away from mass tourism and of the beaten path, and as a place where because of these reasons the exploring traveler can experience the trope of discovering said area. Tourists hold the same ideas concerning the condition of infrastructure, if this is based upon the Lonely Planet or vice versa is difficult to pinpoint- what came first, the chicken or the egg? However, it is interesting to trace why infrastructure comes to symbolize their imaginations and desires concerning Lombok and the reason they are there. With infrastructure I do not only refer to roads and cables, for the sake of convenience I include the construction of houses, homestays, and resorts as well. In the previous section the Belgian couple can be seen linking the construction of stone houses to a loss of authenticity, of an essence that makes the subjects of their gaze less Other. The following except is taken from a conversation that took place in Orong Gerisak, the kampung near Tetebatu, and can be considered, on the basis of tourist accounts, as a prime place for the experience of authenticity. Let’s see why:
and not any longer located in the past- and more a part of the globalized capitalistic reality that can be experienced throughout the world. 50
“What we have seen of this village is really nice. You could say it’s a flavor of the real Lombok: feels authentic I guess, and no westernization. This is the first time in Indonesia (Java, Flores, Bali, and now Lombok) we get to experience real village life: it’s still rough around the edges, but that is a good thing I suppose. It makes it authentic, no westernization here yet . For example the road up here, our initial feelings about the place would be different if there would be a good road. … Would make it more a touristy place already, I guess it has to do with that authentic feeling, it [a better road] would make it more accessible.(Transcribed from field notes)”
This man equates the condition of the road up to Orong Gerisak with his view of the kampung as a flavor of the Real Lombok and his experience as one symbolizing the real local way of life. But why is this? It seems as if the man sees the condition of infrastructure as directly linked to westernization, as such modernization, and the rise of tourism. Due to the mud road leading up to the kampung this man still gets to have the feeling of discovering the place, away from the beaten path as the Lonely Planet writers would describe it: it still takes hardship and adventure to reach your destination. It shows that the kampung is not yet catered to mass tourism and the marketing of culture that comes along with it. It is because Orong Gerisak is “still rough around the edges” that it becomes authentic and a space of otherness. Due to having to get off the main road and endure some hardship, the idea is given that one is moving away from the touristic areas – away from the front-stage that is no longer “rough around the edges” but well managed. This man feels that he gets to experience the real back- stage of Lombok because the setting is still poor, untouristic, and one of otherness due to a lack of westernization. It really doesn’t matter if objectively speaking this is the real back- stage or not, his subjective experience of it is what counts. Would this man still think of Orong Gerisak as the real back-stage when the infrastructure of the kampung improved? Let’s consider another example. Bram sits down with us and proudly tells the tourists that they have to come back next year as they will have improved the infrastructure and the rooms for tourists tremendously by then. The man, and his girlfriend, are quick to respond:
“Don’t change it too much you know, don’t make it like Kuta because then you lose the character: it’s great the way it is. The girl interrupts: “Now it’s still special,
51
don’t make it like all the other places!” “Yeah don’t change to much, you don’t want to be like the people in Senggigi: they have nothing left! They are just like employees now, no culture and all their traditions have been replaced by resorts and the attitude that comes with that.” … They are just employees, not real persons anymore: they are just there to do stuff for the tourists.(Transcribed from field notes)”
It can be stated that these tourists want Orong Gerisak to stay static, free from (infrastructural) development as they see it as a loss of local culture, of a loss of traditions and a way of life that make them so interesting to tourists. They seem to say with becoming more westernized and capitalistic you lose that part of you that makes you human and not just another employee in a globalized world. It can be interpreted as if change means moving away from the Real Lombok way of life and merely becoming indigenous servants in the front-stage of mass tourism. They will lose what makes them special in a westernized, capitalist, and global world. Maybe a desire to be free from those constraints speaks out of the words of these exploring travellers, maybe their longing for the real back-stage is informed by a longing for otherness, of being free from the daily constraints they have to face in their home society. In this sense the development of infrastructure is seen as bad by many tourists, they equate it with mass tourism, the loss of culture, and a modernization of Lombok. They see this as bad because this entails a disruption in what they now see as the dichotomies they have constructed concerning the differences between Lombok and Bali. Once these changes happen, Lombok will become like Bali seems to be the idea of these tourists. This sentiment is mimicked a lot in speaking with tourists on Lombok, the Scotsman from the previous section told me that it is “…good that we came here now: we heard that they are building new resorts here [Kuta region], now it is still paradise. ten years from now this place will be a shithole.(Transcribed from field notes)” Indeed, these type of tourists want to experience the cultural otherness and the economic poverty that comes along with it. The Real back-stage is one of poverty away from the beaten path of mass tourism in an un(der)developed, dare I say pre-modern and local, setting. 6.4 Lombok is Located in the Past It can thus be stated that these tourists, the exploring travelers that are the main focus of this thesis, imagine and experience a discrepancy between the time and place of their home society and that of Lombok. As is shown above throughout the last chapter these tourists see a relationship between the un(der)development of Lombok, with how traditional it is, 52 accumulating in the authenticity and otherness of the setting. In the first section of this chapter the Scotchman talks about his experience of Lombok compared to Bali, yet he not only makes a relational connection between Bali and Lombok. Rather, these type of tourists on Lombok make a connection between what Bali and Lombok symbolize: the modern and the pre- modern, thus creating otherness when traveling to Lombok. This Scotchman, discussing the discourses he holds concerning Lombok, states that he doesn’t have those things anymore in Scotland. A local guide from Tetebatu summarizes what tourists always tell him, this tour- guide states that “they [tourists] say: ‘we don’t have this anymore back home, we love it! Back home we don’t even know who lives in our street.’ (Transcribed from field notes)” There is a transgression of time in which this tourist, through flying to the other side of the world, can experience the social environment he imagines to have existed in his home society in the past -i.e. a more collective identity. At least until Lombok becomes the next big destination, or a “shithole.” This tourist is not alone in this. As shown above the same discourse can be witnessed in the Lonely Planet; through the local traditions that are still alive today, the feeling of community present up till this day, the un(der)development of the island, and the fact that Lombok now is like Bali thirty years ago. A retired German couple made a comparable statement. According to them, after having visited Bali thirty years ago, Lombok and Bali are different, since “Lombok now is like Bali was thirty years ago; just small and bad streets, but now not even as many tourists here as on Bali thirty years ago. (Transcribed from field notes)” Once more tourists refer to the untouristic aspects of Lombok compared to Bali, once again there is a focus on the quality of infrastructure, and once again the present time for Lombok has already been experienced by different places in the past; Lombok seems to lag behind in time compared to other places. It can be argued that Lombok is placed on an evolutionary continuum and compared to other places in time. I cannot stress this enough, for these exploring travelers Lombok is located in the past. A Spanish girl I was showing through the kampung of Orong Gerisak because Bram, the owner of the homestay the girl was staying at, was busy in the field told me the following when asked what she thought about Lombok and the region of Tetebatu:
“The situation is the same, the conditions are different … well, like home [Spain] there is a big gap between rich and poor and both are still underdeveloped, here it might be just undeveloped. It seems that there is no work either, here like in Spain. But it’s here like the 1940tie in Spain, at least that’s what I think when I compare it
53
to the stories my grandmother told me about her life back then. (Transcribed from field notes)”
This girl places Lombok at the same time as Spain during the Second World War - undeveloped and poor. Authenticity, and the transgression of time that seems to be part of it, are thus once again relational. Throughout my fieldwork tourists have told me the same thing over and over; being on Lombok is like being in the past, being in a setting where the local actors live and behave in a way that we have lost. The following statement by a Dutchman traveling with his wife hits a similar vein when speaking to me about the region of Tetebatu as a location in which there still is a sense of community, the difference with the Netherlands, and the lack of other tourists:
Translated: “It is like a picture postcard here: it feels like we went back in time. The Netherlands isn’t any way like this anymore, it’s like our airplane was a time machine. …. It’s so special since, we were just saying to each other, it is as if we are in an museum about the ways in which our lives used to be. But for them it is the now.” Oiginal: “Het is hier dus echt een plaatje; alsof we terug in de tijd zijn gegaan. Dit is allang niet meer zo in Nederland, net alsof ons vliegtuig een tijdmachine is. … Het is dus zo bijzonder omdat, we zeiden net nog tegen elkaar, het is alsof we in een openluchtmuseum lopen van hoe ons leven ooit was. Maar dit is voor hun nu. (Transcribed from field notes)”
Again there is a transgression of time, Lombok becomes related to the past that the tourist can experience in the present. This has to do with the relational character of authenticity and the dichotomous way of thinking exploring travelers deploy when making sense of Lombok. As the setting they are in is away from their ordinary experience it becomes one of otherness in which authenticity can be seen. To construct the ways in which it is out of the ordinary a relational and dichotomous thinking is used. Lombok is as such located in the past – out of the ordinary- as it is a setting in which tourists see poverty, un(der)development, traditions, and community life. Things that they have “lost” themselves in their own contemporary setting. This is positioned in opposition to Bali –as a marker of the ordinary. Bali, and their home society, is a place of wealth, modernity, a lack of traditions, and individuality. As such it is located in the now.
54
6.4 Development of Tourism: Investing in Lombok Many tourists experience this romanticized imagination of Lombok as land of dreams, otherness, authenticity, or whatever their vision is. Yet most of these tourists that come to Lombok can never fully leave their modern and capitalistic identity behind – going fully native is difficult. In a sense the back-stage may indeed never be achieved since the structures and norms that are the foundation of your social being are different from those that you visit. That doesn’t mean these tourists hold on to these romanticized ideas and came so entangled in the otherness of Lombok that they decide to go live there. Sylvia, the Spanish girl from the previous section, tells me about her reasons for coming to Lombok. She saved up over the years and to go travel and find:
“…my little paradise. …I visited Java, but I don’t like the beach there, Bali was too busy and too expensive: I was told that I should go to Lombok and see. I want to find a beach with no tourists, good blue water and no garbage in it. When I find it I want to buy some land there and start a small bed and breakfast. Just for ten years I want to find and live in my little paradise. That’s why I am going to Gili Kondo with Bram, I think that’s my paradise after seeing the pictures he showed me. And no tourists there, so good. … it’s my paradise, I don’t need much money. I only want three rooms and tourists will come that want the same as me.(Transcribed from field notes)”
Sylvia wants to fulfill her wishes and desires, she is on a quest to find the perfect symbolization of what paradise means to her. So far she wasn’t very lucky, and as far as I know she has yet to buy her dream land. It can be argued that Sylvia wants to find on Lombok what many are searching for, something radically different from their home society. Yet this is based upon a romanticized image of what Lombok is, but as far as subjectivity goes it is real. Not every tourist looking to buy land on Lombok is setting out to find paradise, most of them simply want to invest, make money, and surf or dive. In Kuta Lombok alone I know of six business owners that started out as tourist on Lombok. In a sense they are living their dream, yet they see it as investment and most of them will sell for the right price. Land and villas are being widely marketed to tourists at the moment, with prices quadrupling over the past two year and in some places even more, it is the ideal time to sell or buy. Many tourists spending a longer time on Lombok have thought about it, even if it is only because land is 55
Fig. 6.1– a realtor sign offering the possibility to “own your dream land in paradise with surf at your doorstep.” being offered to you on an almost daily basis by the local population. The photographs above (see fig. 6.1) reads as following, the one on the right states that: “Own your dream land in paradise with surf at your doorstep.” Thus this Australian realtor, that moved to Kuta Lombok for surfing and economic reasons, knows how to trigger tourists like Sylvia. By invoking dream, paradise, and surf this realtor pinpoints three important discourses Surfers hold concerning the coast of Lombok, smart marketing. This sign illustrates the change Lombok is undergoing, it shows that Lombok’s location in the past is becoming something of the past: Lombok is catching up with the home society of the tourists. Many tourists see this as negative as it means a loss of authenticity and they worry about how these investors have claimed the lands they are selling. At the moment there is a lot of money to be made of tourists buy realtors selling them land. John, a regular visitor of Lombok because of the great waves for surfing if I have to believe him, which I do, has decided to buy land near Kuta Lombok. John tells me that he met
56 the realtor while “… surfing, he’s [the realtor] a great surfer, even carves his own boards, when we were in the lineup we were talking and he said he had a good piece of land for me. That’s how business is done here mate, in the water waiting for the waves. He showed me the land on the way back from Gerupuk and I loved it, good view of Kuta beach and nothing blocking the view and the price was exactly what I was looking for.” The realtor moved from Hawai, after “making a fortune selling real estate in Hawaii” according to John, to Lombok as the realtor, once again according to John, sees Lombok as “the next big thing, he thinks it will really take off here within the next 5 years.” I ask him if that is the reason he bought the land:
“Well.. yes, it’s a good investment opportunity and I can come here to surf whenever I am not touring.” So it is mainly surfers that are going to come here? “now yes, but I think, Kioni told me, that when there are enough villa’s and the new roads are finished families and retirees looking for peace are going to come here as well. (Transcribed from field notes)”
Kioni, the realtor from Hawaii, thus hopes for infrastructural development as this would mean an influx of new tourists. John, hoping to get a good return on his investment, longs for the same. For these type of actors Lombok is simply an investment opportunity, or as the Lonely Planet states “Lombok’s time is now.” It can be argued that due to these investments and the buzz that is surrounding Lombok over the last couple of years, which the Lonely Planet is eager to point out, are going to change the type of tourist that is visiting Lombok. With the development of infrastructure, villa’s, and overall modernization the exploring travelers that are now visiting Lombok for it being of the beaten path, a place of otherness ,and authenticity are going to lose interest as they can no longer fulfill their desires and dreams. As the tourism industry grows bigger, the infrastructure to bring tourists to destination Lombok grows better, more and more holiday goers looking for relaxation and leisure are going to come. The exploring traveler is then left to find, colonize, and construct the next big tourist destination. The circle starts all over again.
6.5 Summary In this chapter the discourses uncovered during the critical discourse analysis of the Lonely Planet where traced to the social practice of which they are part. It can be concluded that
57 tourist construct authenticity relationally on the basis of discourses. These tourists view the development of tourism on Lombok as negative as they think that this will diminish the authenticity they experience. Lombok is constructed relationally and dichotomously to Bali, and to a certain degree the home society of these exploring travelers. Following Wang (1999) statement that the construction of authenticity is related to an extraordinary experience is shown that the location of Lombok in the past serves this goal. Lombok as setting is away from the ordinary experience these exploring travelers have when not traveling, as such Lombok becomes one of otherness in which authenticity can be seen. Lombok is as such located in the past – out of the ordinary- as it is a setting in which tourists see poverty, un(der)development, traditions, and community life. Things that they have “lost” themselves in their own contemporary setting. This is positioned in opposition to Bali –as a marker of the ordinary. Bali, and their home society, is a place of wealth, modernity, a lack of traditions, and individuality. As such it is located in the now. Exploring travelers often experience Lombok as a museum or/and as located in the past. In the next chapter this experience will be coupled to the forcibly museumification of certain spaces on Lombok.
7. State and Cultural Elites
So far the discourses underlying the consumption, and production, of Lombok as tourist destination have been discussed for the Lonely Planet and tourists – especially the exploring traveler type. It has been shown that discovering an untouristic local space is the central longing that guides their experience of Lombok as a space of authenticity based on an encounter with the real local life. Finding a space in which tradition and local culture exist as if untouched by tourism and other outside influences. A key indicator of discovering such a un(der)developed location is the state of modernization – i.e. infrastructural conditions. In this chapter, what is constructed by the Indonesian state as, such a local traditional space of authenticity is discussed: the traditional village of Sade. It is important to understand that “[t]he Indonesian state perceives culture simultaneously as heritage that should be looked after and as tourism capital to be exploited (Picard 1997 in Cole 2007:950-951).” Sade is such a space of culture turned heritage to be commercialized for the tourist gaze. This is done through the process of museumification – in which aspects of the space are endowed with
58 extraordinaire qualities as to lift them from the mundane. As such Sade becomes a state legitimated form of indigenous difference through making it part of the canonized form of Indonesian culture. Sade thus offers visitor the promise that they can overstep their fantasies and see the everyday reality of the objectified site, to see the “authentic” back-stage. The example of Sade will be situated within the Indonesian state’s act of multicultural domination – in which indigenous groups have to enact their differences within the framework of the Indonesian state. This is not only done through internalizing its discourses in the mind of the Sasaknese but rather through the materialization of these discourses within the setting of Lombok. Sade is one of this villages that has been part of multicultural domination through museumification and has been given the adat marker, as such they have to enact their difference to visitors. In this chapter I will outline this process as to find out how authentic Sade really is in the eyes of tourists and locals alike. I will finish this chapter with a focus on more modernized spaces within the Lombok setting. But first let use trace the process of multicultural domination.
7.1 The Indonesian State: Multicultural Domination In the next pages the process of multicultural domination will be outlined as key practice for the inclusion of indigenous difference within the limits of the Indonesian nation-state. This process serves to make indigenous actors above anything else modern Indonesian subjects located within its nation. Let us trace this process. After Indonesian independence from its colonial oppressor the Netherlands, the new found Republic of Indonesia reappropriated three colonial institutions of power –the census, the map and the museum- in order to imagine its new found freedom and cultural heterogeneity as a national community through the inclusion of “…the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry (Anderson 2006:164)” in the homogenizing national canon of identity. The interlinking between the census, the map and the museum in the Republic of Indonesia mirror the Dutch colonial state’s form of thinking about domain, it enabled the new-found Indonesian state to classify anything under its control, it enabled the state apparatus to construct the parameters of national belonging and inclusion (ibid.:184). Ultimately the total surveyability of the domain under scrutiny made the imagining of a national community possible with as outcome that in due time the map and the census “… shaped the grammar which would … make possible … ‘Indonesia’ and ‘Indonesians’ (ibid.:185).” As such language plays a key role in the construction of space and the control over it. 59
Two other forms of institutionalized power can be included in the method of the Indonesian state to foster the Indonesian domain as an imagined modern national community: technology and education. Kathleen Adams (2006) argues that “[r]ural electrification programs, begun in the 1980s, in tandem with [a rise in national BNP], have made television sets commonplace in [Indonesian] villages (Adams 2006:7).” This advancement in technology widened the reach of government programming as a method to install and reinforce Indonesian nationalist sensibilities (ibid.:7). Through the television Indonesian citizens became able to imagine their heterogeneous nation in a modern and nationalized fashion; cultural differences, shown in cultural programs on television depicting traditions of ethnic groupings within the Indonesian state, became reappropriated as national Indonesian values and difference itself negated (ibid.:7-8). Adams (2006), following Keyes (1991) line of thought on the role of schooling in fostering a sense of national identity, argues that the growing stress in the 1980s and 1990s on compulsory education embedded Indonesian youths within the (imagined) framework of the Indonesian state (ibid.:8). Through mandatory classes on Indonesian citizenship and history, schoolchildren become more and more aligned to the Indonesian national ideology (ibid.:8). This alignment was further advanced through a process of nation building based on the aestheticization of indigenous cultural traditions (Adams 2006:141 on the basis of Acciaioli 1985 and Bruner 1979). The cultural displays of groups within the Indonesian state became embedded with the affecting presence of the dominant Indonesian discourses of nationhood and independence (ibid.:140-143). Thus, the imaged-ness of the fictions of the Indonesian state are materialized in tangible displays of cultural identity reappropriated to include national ideology. This line of argument mirrors Birgit Meyer’s (2009) addition to Anderson’s (2006) concept of imagined communities, in that in order to be felt as real the Indonesian national community’s “… imaginations are required to become tangible outside the realm of the mind, by creating a social environment that materializes through the structuring of space, architecture, ritual performance, and by inducing bodily sensations. .. In brief, in order to become experienced as real, imagined communities need to materialize in the concrete lived environment and be felt in the bones (Meyer 2009:5).” It can be argued that the Indonesian state’s aestheticization of local culture on a national level served to make the imagined national identity not only mentally present in its subjects mind but as well to create ontological presence in their daily lived lives; Indonesia and Indonesian-ness where no longer just imagined, but felt, seen, and touched within the limits of the Indonesian nation.
60
A great example of this process is “… Mini Indonesia Park in Jakarta. The park, conceived by president Suharto’s wife, was created as a monument to Indonesia’s cultural and ecological diversity, and displays a sampling of traditional houses and cultural arts from each of the countries provinces (Adams 2006:153). It is in this park that not only the imagined-ness of the national community is encountered but the tangible aesthetic formation needed for the successful creation of an imagined national identity as well (Meyer 2009). The Mini Indonesia Park, located at the center of the nation, symbolically includes the peripheries in Indonesia’s heartland, while at the same time transposing the Indonesian state’s ideological boundaries to include all of the domain under its rule. It is here that Anderson’s (2006) map and museum are brought together as method to aesthetically imagine the nation. It is in the process of aligning a heterogeneous material display of group culture with an overarching imagining of a homogenous Indonesian identity that the Indonesian state’s power to construct an all-including national structure is exemplified. While various different collective identities exist within the Indonesian state, those actors are first most made to feel a sense of belonging to the Indonesian nation as citizens, effectively including cultural and ethnic minorities in the category of Indonesian-ness. The process described in this chapter can be viewed as a form of “[m]ulticultural domination: the demand by states and majority populations that minorities –or indigenous communities in settler colonial states- perform and authenticate their difference within the moral and legal frameworks determined by those demanding agencies (Tambar 2010:652).” Thus, the aestheticization of Indonesian minorities in television programs, schooling and museums effectively ties these groups to the state, including these various groups as citizens. Removed from their local context, these minority displays of any form of culture enforce the discourses of nationhood by setting the parameters for inclusion through a de- politicization of communal difference (ibid.:663). For this de-politicization of communal difference to work the nexus of cultural difference has to be negated by the Indonesian state as elements belonging to the Indonesian national heritage (ibid.:657).
7.2 Top-down Traditionality The aesthetic formation of Indonesian nationhood in Sade is thus based on a move from ethnic cultural differences to their construction as Indonesian cultural displays of tradition and heritage, ultimately negated through a process of multicultural domination. Making it possible to refer to these cultural displays as objects located in the past, suitable for the construction of
61 national belonging across various ethnic groups. The framework, by which these minorities come to be related to the Indonesian state, and ultimately the Indonesian nation, is that of adat. A process in which local customs are endowed with extraordinaire qualities of the museum. Adat in the sense outlined in the following pages thus serves to give a setting a sense of prestige based on traditionality – it is a legitimatization of the authenticity and otherness of the space invoked by the state through aesthetic formations. As such adat, as marker controlled by the Indonesian state, is a form of museumification and a method to locate the space as heritage in the past. Cole (2007:957 on the basis of Wilkinson, Cooper and Mohammed 1963) argues that Indonesian social organization is constructed through three conflicting structures, namely, 1) the Indonesian state, 2) the religious system, and 3) customary law (a now very narrow definition of adat). However, the term adat is a complex construct made up of various meanings, originating in Arabic language the term signifies custom(ary law) and tradition (Adams 2006:220 and Cole 2007:948). Within the Indonesian nation the term adat can be conceptualized in many different forms, ranging from the view that it is above all a religious concept relating to social order on the basis of on unchangeable cosmic order (Picard 1996 in Cole 2007:947) to a view of adat as a folk-model whereby self-identity is maintained on the basis of an indigenous body of knowledge concerning traditional law and customs (Kling 1997 in Adams 2006:220). Tracing all the different meanings assigned to adat lays outside the scope of this paper, but it should be clear that adat as a social construct can, and is, strategically manipulated and negotiated by different actors (Cole 2007:948). Thus, based on the above outlining of the term adat, it is clear that adat is above all a concept with subjective dimensions that can be politically manipulated (Adams 2006:220). This is exemplified by the secularization of the term adat by the Indonesian state to denote the political category of “traditional.” The secularized form of adat is political in that the Indonesian state uses it for forms of tradition that are detached from state rules for life and religious structures (Cole 2007:947-948). The secularized form of adat is thus used by the Indonesian government to categorize the material aesthetic practices of Indonesian ethnic groups as form of heritage belonging to the Indonesian state, ultimately enabling Indonesian citizens to think of these adat objects, that lay outside the moral framework of the state, as signifying Indonesian pluralism within the structures of the nation. Adat, as propagated by the Indonesian state, must thus above all been seen as a top-down practice that includes aesthetic difference in the imaged national community; adat has become an inclusionary method for the construction of belonging by including different material life worlds in the canon of
62
Indonesian national heritage. The secularized form of adat thus diminishes particularity within the Indonesia state since the particular traditions of ethnic groups become all part of overarching Indonesian heritage. As such it should be seen as a form of multicultural domination since it is a form of forced integration, dare I say assimilation, into the imagined Indonesian community. The marker adat is often associated with tradition as a cultural form that can be commodified (ibid.:948). Aesthetic spaces given the marker adat, i.e. kampung adat (traditional village) or rumah adat (traditional house), are often given prime attraction status by the Indonesian state, meaning that these traditional spaces are seen as national assets that have to be preserved (ibid.:948-951). Many Indonesian villages, such as Sade, that have been assigned the status of kampung adat are thus “…documented as part of the national heritage under the 1992 Law No. 5, Pemeliharaan Benda Benda dan Situs Benda Cagar Budaya (Preservation of Cultural Sites and Objects) (ibid.:951)” by the Indonesian state. This is a method used by the state to integrate the material life worlds of Indonesian minorities I the legalistic framework of the nation-state. It follows that the properties of those minority groups living in traditional villages, now re-appropriated as national heritage, “… have [now] become possessions of the state, which has simultaneously become the custodian of their preservation (ibid.:951).” The construction of traditional villages is thus a state installed method of control for the process of multicultural domination. It should be clear that the appropriation of traditional villages as national heritage that needs to be preserved, with the state functioning as guardian of this now national asset, raises questions of ownership concerning these villages. The preservation of local and tradition space through the marker of traditionality locates these spaces within the Indonesian nation and as a space where heritage is to be enacted to tourists as located in the past. It should be clear that this inclusionary practice through museumification serves not only to preserve the setting. Above all it functions as method to commercialize difference and to exploit it as tourism capital – through the inclusion into the state this space now becomes taxed and the Indonesian state profits from its extraordinaire status (not to say that the state doesn’t invest in these spaces). As to ensure the continuity of this profiting the space is to remain static, located in the past, and to always enact its difference and authenticity to visiting tourists. Let us consider the example of Sade.
63
7.3 Sade: a Sasak Traditional Village?
Fig. 7.1 – Waiting for tourists to sell hand weavings to (Sade)
One of these places on Lombok that faces multicultural domination by the local and national government is Sade; through top down museumification this village has been made to stay static, pre-modern, and authentic for the experience of tourists. It is at spaces such as Sade that the otherness and authenticity of Indonesia’s indigenous tribes, in this case the Sasak, become tangible for tourists. Sade, as museumified space, is incorporated into the Indonesian canon of history as form of heritage. As such Sade should not be seen as a display of authentic Sasak culture but rather as a showcase of the power the Indonesian state has for including localities into its imagined nation as form of culture located in the past. The NTB’s Tourism and Culture department’ 6 guide-book has the following to say about Sade in its guidebook:
“Sade lies on the main road to Kute and is probably Lombok’s most renowned Sasak traditional village. Visitors can admire Sasak architecture including the
6 It should be noted that the Indonesian state groups culture rand tourism together as a ministry. This should be seen as a confirmation of Cole (2007) his statement that the Indonesian state sees culture, and heritage, above all as tourism capital that can be exploited. 64
prominent bonnet-shaped rice barns called lumbung with roofs made of alang-alang (elephant grass), woven bamboo walls and floors made from clay and dried cow dung. A range of souvenirs such as bracelets made from coconuts and hand-woven sarongs are on offer to tourists (NTB Tourism and Culture Department 2014:34, emphasis in original).”
The Tourism and Culture department, an official government organ, positions Sade as heritage and as traditional. While at the same time pointing out the commodification of the village and the possibility to buy some of these traditional made goods as souvenir (see fig. 7.1). It is through texts like this that state and cultural elites relocate Sade in the official canon of culture and heritage while at the same time showcasing the control they have over the representation of Sade as traditional, thus adat, and as a museumified space. Gaining access to Sade as researcher proved to be difficult, as tourist I was more than welcome but once you started to ask difficult questions about the history of Sade it becomes clear that you crossed a line. Wondering why this was the case I brought this up with a senior member of the Lombok Heritage Society (LHS). This senior member of the LHS society tells me that Sade is not traditional or in any way adat. But rather that, what I typify as museumification, Sade is a government project. Kuta, which is located a stone-throw away from Sade, started to experience its first economic growth related to the development of tourism in the 1970ties. The potential this brought for Sade, a village that is historically known for its economic activities in producing goods, did not go unnoticed by the local government: the government of central Lombok starts to support these economic activities and Sade is opened for tourists in the year 1975. The NTB government and the local regency then start to develop Sade as a tourist location. A government architect is brought in and the old traditional Sasak houses made from a mixture of mud and cow-dung that are spread out across the region of Sade and Rembitan, between the bamboo houses that are normal for that time, are demolished to be rebuild and added to what is now known as the tourist village of Sade. Sade has thus been reorganized to represent a more local ethnic Sasak location with the traditional houses now grouped together. Around this time Sade becomes typified as Kampung Adat by the government and part of Sade’s human resources are now re-focused on the activity of hand weaving, an economic activity which didn’t happen before government interference in Sade. What is at work in Sade is the process of museumification: giving a place cultural capital through endowing it with the elitist discourse of the museum, as to place cultural
65 aspects on display for visitors to gaze at as if these objects possess extraordinary qualities rarely seen outside the current prestigious context (Adinolfi and Van de Port 2013). The state and cultural elites have constructed Sade as kampung adat and the traditional Sasak houses as icons of local and authentic tradition. The state has relocated, in literal and figural sense, Sade in the canon of national Indonesian heritage to be enacted as tourist attraction. Sade experiences significant economic growth from this rebranding and the influx of tourism, as do the local levels of government due to taxes. For Sade and the government this can be seen as a win-win situation; the government earns more in taxes and Sade benefits from the rise in income due to tourists and yearly investments from the government for things such as infrastructure and renovation. To continue this mutual beneficial situation Sade needs to be seen as traditional, dare I say authentic, by tourists. Sade needs to be a place where authenticity and tradition are on display for tourists in a real setting: a real place where real people life according to real traditions in real age-old traditional Sasak houses. Sade is neither of these things as it is a museumified and commercialized space. Even the recently opened local Alfamaret minimart (see fig. 7.2) is built with some of the traditional Sade aspects added to the otherwise uniform look of the Alfamaret franchise.
Fig. 7.2 – “traditional” Alfamaret in Sade All is done to keep the illusion of authenticity and traditionality surrounding Sade intact, all is done to safeguard the way Sade is being showcased and displayed by the local government and tourism board in official brochures. Sade, due to its nature as cultural capital to be exploited for tourism, can never be this real place of authenticity and otherness. Since, as I argued in the previous chapter, for the
66 exploring traveler the Real Indonesia or Real Local Life consists out of a space away from the beaten path, with an untouristic attitude, and is seen as essentially other. Sade on the other hand is repositioned by the government architect to be right on the main road, as cultural capital to be exploited through tourism, and with an underlying modern and capitalistic attitude. As such Sade is a far cry away from being the real authentic space the government wants it to be through the museumification for profit. In the following paragraph I will consider the ways in which Sade is positioned as authentic by those local actors working in the museumified space.
7.4 Staging Adat [traditions]and Authenticity Walking up to Sade tourists are greeted by many waiting tour-guides, they do not flock to the tourist but rather they wait until it is their turn. As tour-guide of the museumified space that Sade is it is up to him to showcase the extraordinary qualities that are endowed onto the setting by the Indonesian state. It is the role of these guides to authenticate their difference within the framework of multicultural domination and the process of museumification. They have to be tokens of Otherness as that is what the tourist longs for when visiting Lombok. However, this does not imply that these tour-guides are to be passive actors in the construction of their villages as authentic, other, pre-modern, and un(der)developed by the Indonesian state and exploring travelers. The tour-guides at Sade are seen to actively prolong the implications of the state’s and tourist’s discourses through the process of, as Bunten (2008) calls it, self-commodification In the article ‘Sharing Culture or Selling Out: Developing the Commodified Persona in the Heritage Industry’ Bunten (2008) sets out to uncover the ways in which Native American tour guides in Alaska try to minimize the alienating effects that transforming their own culture into a simplified product for tourist consumption can have on their sense of Self and collective identity. Bunten puts forward a definition of self-commodification “…as a set of beliefs and practices in which an individual chooses to construct a marketable identity product while striving to avoid alienating him- or herself (ibid.:381).” Bunten states, on the basis of two years of ethnographic research, that the construction of a commodified persona should be seen as a form of identity politics through which the tour guide can construct an identity that fulfils the tourist’s desire for an encounter with the Other while retaining control over their own identity (ibid.:382). Cultural commodification thus becomes a cross-cultural exchange of ideas between the local actor and the tourist, in which the local enables the tourist
67 to meet an “authentic” local, based on what the local actor believes to be a representation of such an Other in the tourist’s eyes (ibid.:382-383,385,386). Thus, the commodified persona that the performance of the local tour guide offers the tourists becomes an illustration of a strategy “…of self conscious self-representation mediated by cross-cultural concepts of identity (ibid.:392).” Bunten (2008) offers an illustration of the ways in which tour-guides are able to fulfil touristic desires and fantasies, concerning an encounter with the Other, through a performance cloaked in authenticity and tradition. Based on Bunten (2008) it can thus be argued that tour-guides at Sade often stage part of their identity on the basis of discourses that are projected on these Sasaknese actors by the tourists. They act pre-modern, local, and traditional because this is what fulfills tourist desires for authenticity and earns them more money. Consider the follow0ing example of this practice I took when I joined Andrea, a tourist I already discussed in the previous chapter, on her tour through Sade. Adi and I followed the tour-guide and Andrea through the village while I wrote down what the tour-guide told in my notebook:
“Sade, the oldest Sasak village in South Lombok , has 150 houses and we are all one family. We marry with our cousins and not outside of our village. When we want to marry the boy kidnaps the girl and then they run away and elope. Then the boy pays dowry to the girls family. Now we still have the same traditions; we life traditionally here since fifteen generations ago and our life hasn’t changed. Our life is still based on Sasak culture, traditions and Wetu Telu religion . … Three years ago we got electricity here. … After the tour through the village we hope you can leave contribution for us. … Everybody here is a farmer, but only once a year. That’s why the women here do hand weaving. From ten year old the girls learn weaving. You want to learn weaving? [We move on when Andrea declines] Eighty percent of the people here don’t speak English: they only speak Sasak. … in this house we keep rice, some people say it is symbol of Lombok. That’s why some people build it as bungalow, or it can be seen at airport. … Five people life in this house, not like in Europe. The mother and father sleep in different rooms and still Cook with wood. They don’t sleep on soft mattress but on rolling mats. The water they use is from our well, we don’t have running water here. … I don’t know how old I am, no one knows here. Since we don’t have birthday or calendar. Not many tourist from other countries here, mostly Indonesians from Java. (Transribed from field notes)”
68
It is here that we see the commodified persona at work. As can be seen the tour-guide from Sade positions himself as essentially Other, so completely different from the tourist while invoking the ideas and imaginations most tourists have when visiting Lombok. Sade, being the commodified and museumified space that it is, id no longer bound to the traditions this tour-guide mentions, or all of Lombok for that matter. The tour-guide acts as a person characterized by otherness, as living in the real Lombok, still based on age-old traditions, as collective, and as not yet touched by modernity’s discourses. However, the tour-guide asks for money. After the tour is over Adi whispers in my ear that he doesn’t like Sade: “The guide was lying: I was here fourteen years ago and they already had electricity.” For the construction of Sade as it is to work the tourist needs to be given the idea that he is visiting the Real Indonesia, however, as argued above this is not possible. As such Sade needs to mystify the space and what tourists can see. Through the objectification of space local actors can control what aspects of “real” local life visitors can experience and what remains hidden from their touristic gaze. It is here that we encounter what MacCannell (1973, 1976) calls staged authenticity – the hiding of what is in essence the front-stage through giving it the appearance of the real back-stage, in this case done through endowing the space with the prestige of museumification. The tourist is not allowed to see the real back-stage of Sade, the tour-guide ensures that the tourist remains in the area set up for tourist consumption – the museumified area These tour-guides thus use the commodified persona described by Bunten (2008) as to stage the setting as one of adat and authenticity as to confirm tourist longings concerning the setting and to remain included into the Indonesian nation. The lion share of Sade is off limits for the tourist; seeing the real back-stage of Sade with its concrete houses and television sets, would point out the fakeness of the staged front to those tourists visiting it. But even the staged-ness of Sade is seen by many tourists I have spoken to. Andrea sums it up nicely when I asked her what she thought about Sade: “Very touristy and a bit of a rip-off, he [the guide] asked for 50000 rupiah for 15 minutes of walking around. (Transcribed from field notes)" The most of the Sasaknese I spoke to about Sade view it as a tourist-trap, as a place constructed for tourist consumption and not one of real traditions and adat:
"This is not adat. In our village [Orong Gerisak] you see real adat, now we have stone house but still what we do is based on adat. You see right? We can go to any house and drink coffee and eat for free, because we are one community. We are not
69
like the city: where everything is about money and no community. We work together for our village and mosque, like you did as well. That is real adat: we still life with our traditions. Too much money makes you like Bali and this place [Sade]: life becomes only about selling things to tourists. Which is not adat. But the government says that they [Sade] are kampung adat because they can make money for them. (Transcribed from field notes)”
The above sentiment is told to me by Adi after we visited Sade with Andrea. Adi mirrors Cole’s (2007) argument that the Indonesian state sees the possibilities for exploiting heritage through tourism. According to Fallon (2001, based on Kristiansen 1998) a reform from adat culture to marketable culture took of through Suharto’s second Five-Year Development Plan between 1974 and 1979, it is in this period that tourism became adopted as the prime vehicle for economic development. A process in which the Sasak indigenous culture is packaged for easy tourist consumption where Sasak poverty becomes equated with an authentic way of ethnic life (Shaw and Shaw 1999:78). Also Adi draws a distinction between the Real Lombok and the fakeness of Sade. Sade is already all about money and not about the community, thus to Adi, it is no longer traditional. Interesting enough Adi makes the comparison between Bali and Lombok as well and likens Sade to Bali as example of loss of local traditions and moving through capitalist motives for live. In the end Sade is a place of state control, staged authenticity and access to the front-stage, and above all a tourist attraction. As such me not gaining access to Sade doesn’t surprise me; a tourist looking at Sade’s front stage is one thing, it is the one thing that they want, a probing eye into the backstage that lies behind the façade of otherness, the past, and staged authenticity is another thing altogether.
7.5 The Local Government: Progression and Development So far in this chapter the focus has been on the ways in which the Indonesian state tries to include spaces on Lombok into the canon of national heritage and Indonesian-ess. Meaning that the villages on Lombok under its spell become frozen in time, museumified, and static spaces of tradition.. They are to be seen as localities located in the past through which tourists can experience their longings for otherness and authenticity in the present of Lombok as a global (or is it glocal?) space. This point will be further discussed in the next chapter. For now it suffices to state that localities on Lombok, such as Sade, are included into the Indonesian
70 nation-state through museumification and multicultural domination as localities located in the past due their local traditions and focus on adat. There is an alternative however. The focus in this paragraph will be on the NTB government and in part on its control over the Lombok tourist-landscape through local tourism boards. Rather than locating spaces in the past and forcing them to stay bound to its traditional aspects and local way of life as Indonesian heritage the NTB government focusses on including Lombok and its localities in the contemporary Indonesian nation-state as a space of modernity and globalized connections. It can be argued that the NTB government is aiming to move Lombok from Indonesia’s periphery, the heritage aspect of Indonesia, to the center of present-day Indonesian nation state as globalized and modern province, like Bali. An increase of tourism, as has been the case for Bali for over decades by now, means an increase in social, economic, and political power within the Indonesian state. Which will finally lead to the establishment of a steady middle class such as found at the center of the Indonesian nation – Java and to a certain degree Bali. In the remainder of this paragraph the focus will be on the ways in which the NTB hopes to achieve this inclusion in the center of present-day Indonesia and the aims it sets for the development of tourism. The ‘Regional Medium Term Development Plan of West Nusa Tenggara 2013-2018 (Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah Daerah Provinsi Nusa Tenggara Barat 2013- 2018)’ published by the Regional Development Planning Agency of the Province Nusa Tenggara Barat (Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah Provinci Nusa Tenggara Barat - BPPDNTB) focusses on, and outlines the key aspects of, (tourist) development in the NTB province. It outlines the aims of the provincial government for the years 2013-2018 as following:
“ Vision: To realize a religious, cultural. Competitive and prosperous NTB society
Mission: 1. Advance the realization of community identity. 2. Promote cultural and local knowledge for development. 3. Continuing the reform efforts for a more transparent bureaucracy, a just law enforcement, and strengthening security and stability. 4. Increase the competitive quality of human resources/ Increase the competitiveness of human resources
71
5. Improve the welfare of the community, accelerate the reduction of poverty, and develop regional advantages 6. Continuing the acceleration of infrastructure development and the inter region connectivity based on spatial planning. 7. Establishing a sustainable environmental management (BPPDNTB 2013:xiii)”
Summarizing the above mission and vision it can be claimed that the focus is on various forms of progression through development aided by the government. When looking at the bullet points one can see that the BPPDNTB aims to progress the inclusion of the NTB citizens within the nation through the further realization of a community identity- which I consider to indicate inclusion in the heart of the Indonesian nation-state as modern Indonesian subjects rather than as traditional Lombok objects of heritage. The third bullet point shows that the BPPDNTB aims for progression to a stronger state – meaning that the NTB province, and the Indonesian state, should be strengthened as modern forms of governance free from corruption. The fourth bullet point shows the progression towards a more competitive position for NTB’s citizens in the world and as such signals social mobility and economic development – the creation of a steady middle class in the NTB province. It signals as well the longing to make the NTB province more attractive for foreign investors seeking human resources that are competitive on a global scale. The fifth bullet point signals progression in the sense of upward mobility and economic development – a modern and well planned out infrastructure that can support an influx in traffic –ranging from roads to internet- related to NTB’s future position at the heart of the modern Indonesian nation-state. The seventh bullet point indicates the aim for the protection of NTB’s natural assets as this not only destroys the NTB nature, but it indicates a destruction of the tourism industry as well– thus the aim is to manage waste disposal in a more modern way then simply burning, burying, or throwing trash into the ocean. Based on the above analysis I would like to put forward the claim that the NTB’s goal is to establish the province as having a modern –in the sense of development, stability, and Islamic religion rather than local traditional forms of religion- and globally competitive culture that mirrors the ideals of the Indonesian nation-state. The aim is the creation of a modern Indonesian middle class. The following anecdote supports this claim. A family from Prague visited the Kampung Resort discussed in the next chapter of this thesis. After returning from there the family opted for a small break before continuing to the waterfall. Rather than
72 sitting in the warung they opted to drink their tea and water on the road in front of the banana- tree. Sitting here they looked very happy. when Mr. Patli saw this he asked if he could take a picture of them for promotion purposes. They didn’t seem to mind. When the family had left to go to the waterfall Mr. Patli told me that he is an adviser for the Lombok government on family planning and that the new ideal for the government is a two children maximum. This reminds me of the ideals of the American middleclass and the top-down internalization of those ideals by the American state and later on through the creation of suburbs. This idea is further strengthened by the reason Mr. Patli gave me for taking the picture: “I want to put the picture on a poster with a text that reads: ‘If you follow the family planning, your future can be like this!’.” Mr. Patli, as advisor to the Lombok government, sees the white nuclear family consisting of a mother, father, and two children as symbolizing the ideals of modernity and as reference to a better future. The idea behind it seems to invoke sameness –as sharing the modern and global space- with tourists. The poster seems to shout at the reader: with only two children you can become like the bules that visit you! The goal seems to install the reader with the realization that having only two children is what makes the tourist modern and in the end that those with two children will be able to go on vacation and do well in an economic sense. It can be argued that the NTB government creates friction in the Lombok tourist setting through the modernization, development, and progression it is striving for. Based on my analysis of tourist discourses in the previous chapter it can be stated that the NTB government hopes to achieve everything the authenticity seeking exploring traveler want to avoid when flying across the world. Based on the above outlined agenda I spectate that the NTB government isn’t interested in maintaining the steady flow of exploring travelers that visit Lombok. Since the exploring traveler wants to see poverty, un(der)development, and otherness in the form of local traditional life when coming to Lombok to fulfill their dreams and fantasies about encountering the authentic and the romanticized local that lives in it. Rather the NTB government hopes to attract the holiday goer type of tourist. As this type is focused more on the experience of luxury and leisure. As such the holiday goer spends more money on Lombok – i.e. this type stays in expensive resorts, eats in restaurants instead of warungs, doesn’t haggle as much, and gives a greater boost to the local economy. For the development of Lombok and the NTB province the holiday goer is the next logical step; the exploring traveler and the Lonely Planet have put Lombok on the map as tourist destination, ensured that a start was made in developing infrastructure –i.e. a new international airport and new roads- which can support an influx in traffic, and made Lombok ready for investments by
73 large multination resorts that hope to capitalize on this new tourist destination. It should be clear that economic progression of the province is the key goal. The vision of the NTB government is to make its province, and in particular the already upcoming Lombok, a globalized space with small local spaces that are not an indication of its contemporary status but an indication of its past as canonized form of heritage – i.e. Sade. Rather than it being a local space with small global spaces – i.e. resorts.
Fig. 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 – Experiencing commercialized traditional Sasak culture
The move towards the realization of this vision can already be seen in the annually held Senggigi festival. Every year around September a weekly festival is held to commemorate Lombok’s culture in the resort town of Lombok: Senggigi. Senggigi functions as local symbol
74 of modernity and globalization, and is often referred to by tourists and locals alike as “just like Bali.” It is in this area that multinational corporations have invested in resorts, expats have come to start western-style restaurants, and shady karaoke bars displaying their beautiful local employees conglomerate. Senggigi is Lombok’s international hub. The Senggigi festival main event, a parade on the main road through Senggigi, is visited by various officials and dignitaries of the NTB province, military, and even the Indonesian state. These dignitaries are seated on the front-row with hordes of tourists flanking them. The parade itself is a colorful procession in which villages from all-over Lombok display their Sasak culture – i.e. folklore clothing, dance, and music. If this spectacle shows one thing it is that local traditional Sasak culture is on display in a globalized space. As such the Senggigi festival, held in the modern and globalized resort town of Lombok, should be seen as a display of heritage and not culture. The act of stick-fights peresean (saee fig7.2, 7.3, 7.4) is enacted during the Senggigi festival. While many tourists flock to this the locals I spoke about it say it is a show - performance done for tourists. To see the real peresean one has to goaway from the tourism zones. It functions as a method to position traditional culture in the past by legitimizing it through museumification: the parade lifts the culture on display out of the ordinary and displays it to holiday goers. The Senggigi festival indicates the Indonesians state and the NTB governments aim of creating a global modern space. It is here that holiday goers go to experience authenticity, as it is just a stone throw away from their resort. This is not a showcase of traditional culture but rather a showcase of Lombok as globalized space in which heritage can be easily experienced by tourists. It shows Lombok’s modernity to the Indonesian state.
7.6 Summary In this chapter is shown how the Indonesian state employs a process of museumification as to get the Sasaknese to enact their difference within the frame of Indonesian nationhood. Making them modern Indonesian subjects with only a tie to their indigenous culture as a form of heritage to be commercialized for tourists. I have typified this as multicultural domination. A process that ensures, through aesthetic formations, that heterogeneous material displays of indigenous become aligned with the imagining of a homogenous Indonesian identity. The Indonesian state focuses on incorporating difference, in this case Lombok, in the past as national heritage. The NTB government however focuses on incorporating Lombok in the present by showing it is a global modern space. In line with state practice the NTB
75 government relocates local culture as heritage to be enacted to tourists. The NTB aims for the better inclusion of the cultural group identity of the Indonesian state through capitalist social mobility. As such it showcases Lombok as global space to investors, dignitaries, and state elites during the Sengiggi festival. A global space where local culture is subdued as capital to be exploited for tourism. Either way local culture becomes complete commercialized through packaging it as heritage and staging authenticity to further monetize it. These practices seem to indicate that Sasaknese actors are either local –and as such will be asked to enact your difference as heritage for tourists- or global –and as such leave behind local culture as form of heritage located in the past and focus on making money. There is no in between. This is what the Kampung Resort discussed in the next chapter changes, they intertwine local and global aspects within their setting and identity.
8. Local Actors: Combining Tradition and Modernity
Fig. 8.1 – The “shady track” leading through the Kampung Resort
In the previous chapter the discourses, motives, and control of the Indonesian state and the NTB government over Lombok where shown. In this chapter the focus will be on the local
76 actors of Lombok and the ways in which they resist these elite discourses. At the heart of this chapter lie the lives of those local actors involved with the Kampung Resort (see fig. 8.1). The Kampung resort is a grassroots project started by the inhabitants of a small kampung (around 300 inhabitants) with the name of Orong Gerisak, only five minutes up the Rinjani mountain from the more known village of Tetebatu. The village of Tetebatu is already more developed for tourism and has around fifteen accommodations for tourists, ranging from your basic bamboo home-stay to resort like stone rooms with bamboo details. Tourists staying in Tetebatu came, and still come, up to Orong Gerisak by hiking through the rice fields and rainforest with a guide. As the area cannot be covered in one day these tourists make multiple daytrips from Tetebatu up the mountain. This is where the idea for the Kampung Resort started, rather than the tourists hiking up and down to Tetebatu the local actors behind the project hope that these tourists will now stay in their kampung. But the Kampung Resort should be seen as more than a mere way to develop tourism in the village. It is a way to resist the global/local dichotomy perpetuated by the Indonesian state and the NTB government. As I have shown in the previous chapter the state either sees you as local or global, as traditional or modern, this is what the Kampung Resort changes. As shown above the development of tourism, in local and global space alike, leads to the complete commercialization of local culture, which now has become packaged as heritage – i.e. the traditional kampung of Sade that is staged as a space of authenticity or the displays of local culture in the globalized Sengiggi. The Kampung Resort however offers the local actors an alternative through what they call Growing up –a form of glocalization as I will argue. Growing up is still focused on upward social and economic mobility but it resists the staging and complete commercialization that seem to go hand in hand with the development of tourism on Lombok. As such Growing up, the glocalization of Orong Gerisak and its surrounding area, seems to offer an alternative by combining local traditional culture and aspects of global modernity in such a way that tourists still view them as authentic and the NTB government still includes them into the modern Indonesian nation as is –thus, not as form of Sasaknese heritage through museumification.7
7 I have scribbled down in my field notes a statement by Mr. Sadli –the “leader” of the Kampung Resort about this very thing. Late at night during one of our palm wine sessions I asked him about the way they would advertise the Kampung Resort. The answer was straightforward “To people [tourists] as authentic. To the tourism board [Tourism and Culture department’] as creating a better economy [economic development].(Transcribed from field notes)” Mr. Sadli is well aware of the different motives of different groups and through the Kampung Resort they have found a way to negate both. 77
I came across Orong Gerisak like so many tourists do, I met Adi. Adi is seen by many as the best tour-guide of the area. If have written down in my notebook many words of praise by jealous tour-guides for Adi’s abilities to “sniff if there are tourists around.” When I met Adi he had only just –around six months- returned from working as a tractor driver on a Malaysian palm oil plantation for twelve years. Like many men in Orong Gerisak and the surrounding area of Tetebatu he went to Malesia to save up so he could afford marrying, buying farmland, renovating his house (and those of his family members) with stone instead of bamboo, and to hopefully invest in tourism when he returned. Here another important reason for the Kampung Resort is seen; through developing tourism the hope of the local actors is that these young men no longer have to go abroad to save up enough money to do these things. Rather, through the Kampung Resort, they should be able to stay at home, get better schooling, and to stay on Lombok with their families.
Fig. 8.2 – Traditional detail from Kampung Resort
78
To return to the task at hand. While visiting Tetebatu with my girlfriend Adi saw us. We were driving up the shady track giving so much attention to in the Lonely Planet. Adi turned his motor around and yelled at us. He wanted to know if we needed information. Of course we did. Following Adi up the shady track to his house for coffee he told us about the Kampung Resort and the beautiful scenery that we could hike through. It was here that I realized what I had encountered: a prime village to conduct fieldwork in. The next day after hiking through the rice fields to the waterfall we sat down at the only warung in Orong Gerisak: warung Monkey Forest. It is t this warung, where I would come to spend most of my days during my four month stay in Orong Gerisak, that I met Bram, Hir, and Ron. The four of them are in large part what made this master thesis possible. Adi, Bram, and Hir gave me insights in the lives of tour-guides and the waiting that comes along with it. Bram opened up his house for me and gave me the opportunity to see how he developed his own small home- stay. Hir, being only a view years younger than me, became my companion on trips to the barber, and introduced me to the young community. While Ron, Hir’s uncle and the owner of Warung Monkey Forest, welcomed me with open arms and was always willing to talk with me about things related to my research as long as he could practice Dutch with me. R. It is at his warung, located right next to the shady track, that I spend most of my time with the local tour-guides talking and playing domino’s while we waited for tourists to show up. If I wasn’t there and tourists would show up Ron would call me or send Hir to get me. Upon my official relocation from Kuta Lombok to Orong Gerisak I was welcomed by the men of the village that are involved with the Kampung Resort. After many rounds of palm wine and explaining what my reason was for wanting to stay in Orong Gerisak for four months I was bombarded to ‘Foreign advisor’ to the Kampung Resort project A role which legitimized me being in the kampung for so long and a role that set me apart from the exploring travelers hiking up to see the surrounding area. Through this role I was able to talk to the locals freely and they felt at ease talking with me. Accepting this role meant that I was at the heart of the development of tourism in the kampung, a great place to be for an anthropologist interested in the relationship between tourism and authenticity. It however meant as well that I was asked for input about the things I wanted to study. I cannot promise the reader that I didn’t influence my field of study, all I can say is that I tried to intervene as less as possible and to position myself in such an ambiguous fashion that I merely guided the discussions about the Kampung Resort. I feel like my true acceptance into the local community came the day I helped the local community in the construction of the mosque. Orong Gerisak and the surrounding kampungs all came together to pour the concrete floors of the mosque –an activity that has to be completed in one
79 sitting. After helping out I was well known in the area and not only was I greeted in Orong Gerisak but everywhere I went within a ten kilometer radius, I became known as the helpful social bule with a red beard. In this chapter the local actors of Lombok will be analyzed with a special focus on Orong Gerisak and the Kampung Resort. I will start of by giving an explanation about tourism in Orong Gerisak and First I will turn to the description of two overarching discourses that show the reasons behind the actions of these local actors very well. Based on the description of these discourses the ways in which tour-guides do their jobs will be explained and how traditional culture becomes transformed into marketable culture. This will be done based on the case of the Orong Gerisak Kampung Resort, a tourism development project in the center part of Lombok where I spent four months, and their process of self-museumification. The following pages will extensively focus on my time in Orong Gerisak and the interactions with the local population I had during my time there. Tourism has become the vehicle for the realization of social mobility for the inhabitants of Lombok: a way out of poverty and on to a better future.
8.1 Kampung Resort: The birth of tourism in Orong Gerisak The Kampung Resort is a mixture between the local (kampung) and the global (resort). As such the Kampung Resort is a space where the multicultural domination and museumification of Sade meet with the modernity and global character of Senggigi. As will be shown through this chapter the aim of the Kampung Resort is to be included into the contemporary Indonesian nation, not as heritage but, as modern Indonesian subjects that can Identify both with local Sasak culture and the ideal of modern, middle class, and globalized Indonesian culture as found at its heartland of Java. But first let’s consider how the Kampung Resort came to be. Following in the footstep of Abu Lughod (1993) I will first give word to one of my best informants and friends, Salman. Salman, far more knowledgeable as culture is an embodied experience, is able to tell the story of tourism in Orong Gerisak with more vigor then I ever could:
“The Story of Tibu Topat Written by : Salman Hafiz Abdussamad
80
( Tetebatu Guide Association / Local Journalist )
The Sasak tribes in actuality have great respect for women. They believe that women understand the power of the soul completely. As women are capable of full and honest love and caring, peace, understanding, and sharing. In old Sasak mythology women are mentioned as proud, honest, beautiful, wisdom, moral insight, and as highly ethical. One of these myths is the legend of princess Mandalika, a princess of Southern Lombok. This princes is said to have thrown herself into the sea of South Lombok and to have turned into the Nyale worm upon her death to drowning. She came to this act to stop a war from happening between the three kingdoms of Lombok. The princes of the other two Kingdoms of Lombok both wanted to marry princess Mandalika and where ready to go to war with one another and the father of Mandalika as to claim her for themselves. By drowning herself princess Mandalika ensured peace and stopped the spilling of blood. Moreover up till now some of the Sasak belief that the leader of the spirit kingdom which is guarding over all of Lombok is a queen, the soul of princess Mandalika. They call this spirit Dewi Anjani. The spirit kingdom is located at the top of Rinjani. Even in the North of Lombok –Bayan, Gumantar, Sembalun, and Bumbung- they believe that the origin of the Sasak comes from the spirits located there. Dewi Anjani is the one said to have changed fourteen spirits into becoming the first Sasak people. These are the true Sasak ancestors according to the mythology. The waterfall in Orong Gerisak is the place where the old Sasak women of Orong Gerisak bath and swim together. Also in between the two waterfalls there is a rock that has a hole in it that shows similarities to a vagina. So these women started to call the waterfall Tibu Topat. Since tibu means pool in Sasak and topat means ‘cover for rice’ as well as vagina. In Sasak philosophy vagina means a holy as well as dirty body part. It is almost consistent of two meanings: good and bad. A vagina, a women, can grow up to become a good thing, but also grow up to become a bad thing. The vagina is also believed to be the symbol of life and the beginning of life. Women, according to the philosophy of the Sasak, are therefore great creatures. Because the God has given them the window that connects the two cosmoses. The window is a connection between the world for birth and after birth. The vagina carries in it the world for human seeds, which is created by God. Women negotiate between God and the life that is about to begin.
81
Tibu Topat then becomes popular and is now the tourism icon of Orong Gerisak, which is nowadays called Kampung Resort. This shows similarities to the Sasak philosophy related to the vagina and women as the beginning of life: Tibu Topat is the symbol for the beginning of tourism in Orong Gerisak. I consider this view to be true as the local people here know about the history of Tibu Topat and it is managed by the local community. Because of this tourists visit Orong Gerisak and the waterfall is now popular. The Kampung Resort project is now about to launch by the local community in collaboration with the ‘Tourism and Culture department’ of the East Lombok regency and the [NTB] government. Tibu Topat opened four years (2010) ago and visits to it where maximized by local people, the trips where organized by the Sudjono hotel guides Mr. Ron and Mr. Bram. Who now help with the management of the Kampung Resort project. Only in Kampung resort there is Wi-Fi (internet) available before rich men get it. Now they also have bungalow, warung, homestay, and local people also receive tourists at their home – for tourists who want to live in local style.”
Thus, what Salman can be argued to say is that the waterfall, as metaphorical vagina, gave life to the kampung of Orong Gerisak through the tourism. The waterfall birthed tourism in a sense and allowed Orong Gerisak to grow up to adulthood – to become the Kampung Resort. Taking Salman’s story one step further it can be said that the waterfall negates between two worlds, like a vagina. It is the symbol that connects that what was before – the local- with that what is to come –the global. The management of the Kampung Resort, in Indonesian Badang Pengelola Kampung, is the development group that is the driving force behind the project. The former Kepala Desa [village head] of Orong Gerisak is chairman of this group. Mr. Sadli, the chairman of the Kmapung Resort and the former Orong Gerisak village chief is one of the wealthiest men in the Tetebatu area as he inherited his father’s construction business. The chairman oversees various departments within the Kampung Resort structure. At the time of writing there is the information department run by Ron and Bram – aimed at promoting the Kampung Resort to tourists. There is the Security department run by Mr. Ali – focusing on the safety of tourists and their valuables. There is the tour-guide department run by Adi – this department focuses on who is suitable to guide tourists. There is the Youth department (see fig. 8.3) run by Buton – this is focused on gaining the interest of the young community in tourism and the Kampung Resort project (i.e. by teaching English that is useful in interactions with tourists). And finally
82 there is Mr. Patli – a former village chief of the neighboring Tetebatu- as advisor. All these departments have volunteers working for them and can be called upon when needed. As such the Kampung Resort is a community driven project.
Fig. 8.3 – The young community planting flowers alongside Kampung Resort’s “shady track”
However, there is still friction in the management of the Kampung Resort. Mr. Patli tells me that:
“The leader of the Kampung Resort is always busy thinking and wants to talk about everything. But no decisions. People in kampung tell me they are ready, we [nods to those sitting with us: Bram, Adi, and Ron] are ready, Kepala Desa wants to start and even the tourism board [East Lombok regency] calls me every day asking when we can open and how everything is going. (Transcribed from field notes)”
It seems as if Mr. Sadli, the leader of the group behind the Kampung Resort, has his reservations about launching the project. When I press Mr. Patli further on the issue he states that:
83
“They are still thinking, thinking and talking. Mr Sadli is worried about the people, if the people will still like him when the kampung Resort is open. That’s why he keeps thinking and no action. I don’t care about what some people will think; I care about what is best for the community. We need to grow up and this [the Kampung Resort] is way we need to do it. (Transcribed from field notes)”
It is here that we encounter the reason for the friction: Mr. Sadli is worried about what some of the locals will think. The reason that he worries about this is because a minority of the older generation, those that grew up in the jungle according to Adi, have expressed discontent with the Kampung Resort. They are worried that their way of life will change due to tourism, as Adi once translated for me from a conversation at the domino table: “That we lose what makes us Sasak.” A minority of the older generation in Orong Gerisak is afraid that the local life will be lost if the global world is let in through tourism. In this case Mr. Sadli seems to worry about people being happy on the individual level, while the rest of the Kampung Resort seems to focus on the community level. Mr Sadli, due to inheriting his father’s company, might not have to worry about upward mobility as driving force behind the development of tourism in the kampung. Because of this Mr. Sadli might be able to sympathize more with the older generation of the kampung that seems to worry about a loss of tradition due to tourism. However, with not only interest expressed by the NTB government in the project, but now with actual investments from the Tourism and Culture department of the Lombok regency there is no stopping the Kampung Resort. In the end the Kampung Resort becomes legitimized by the state as truly worthy of the market adat and as such authenticity while retaining their local culture as basis for their contemporary identity. The Culture and Tourism office will pay for the guide permits to make the local guides officially employed as tour- guide. The homestays in the kampung are given free permits as well and the project is given 10.000 Euro for development from the NTB province. Even the road will be renewed. It can be stated that “their new identity, (re) created through tourism, has given the local groups new political (and economic) capital to manipulate (Cole 2007:956).” The Kampung Resort community has created enough political, cultural, and economic capital to leverage the state into legitimizing their project and taking an interest in the development of the region. It can be concluded: there is no more possibility to stop Onrong Gerisak growing up.
84
8.2 Transforming Tradition into Marketable Culture
Fig. 8.4 – Advertising the Kampung Resort as an experience of authenticity
In the previous paragraph I outlined the origin of tourism in Orong Gerisak and how it led to the development of the Kampung Resort. In this section I will focus on the ways in which the Kampung Resort developed during my time there and what the Kampung Resort aims to do for the local community of the Tetebatu region. As I have shown in the chapter on tourist discourses the type of tourists attracted to the Tetebatu region and especially the Kampung Resort are exploring travelers. These exploring travelers are attracted to the Kampung Resort and the region of Orong Gerisak as it poses an adventure and as such the promise of enacting a longing for discovery and authenticity (see Fig. 8.4). Orong Gerisak is seen by these exploring travelers as off the beaten path, literally as the only road leading up to the kampung is a dirt road that floods occasionally – making the trip up to the village a true adventure. As such exploring travelers view it as a space away from modernity -something which the infrastructural conditions indicate to them- and therefor as a local space where Lombok’s real –authentic- traditions and culture can be experienced. The traveling explorers view of Orong Gerisak as one of authenticity is further strengthened by the poverty they face once entering
85 the village: they have truly discovered a real local space as it is not yet commercialized by tourism. They found a pristine location where people still act based on local customs and not on the basis of the values that the global flows of tourism bring to wherever they land. Exploring travelers stumbling upon Orong Gerisak seem to position it as a space of uniqueness. It is a far cry away from the mainstream and already globalized Senggigi or the commercialized tourist trap of staged authenticity that is Sade: Orong Gerisak is the Real Lombok. The above discourses exploring traveler hold about Orong Gerisak and its place in the Lombok tourism-landscape can be seen in my encounter with one of the writers of the Lonely Planet. I met this man and his wife at Warung Monkey Forest by pure chance, resting after the hike up from Tetebatu he tells me the following:
“with the hardship it takes to get up here I bet you see a different sort of people. … Well the type that wants to experience the real Indonesia and Lombok: see the reality of these places and not just some pre-packaged-dream. … Walking here we see that the kids still do this [makes waiving motion with his hand’ and not this [holds his hand up as a give-me-money-gesture]. Here the people aren’t destroyed by tourism.(Transcribed from field notes)”
This writer for the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok says the same as so many of the exploring travelers I spoke at the warung. Going to Orong Gerisak is an adventure where you discover the Real Lombok. Once again the condition of infrastructure, how modern the space is, seems to indicate its authenticity. These exploring travelers employ an dichotomous thinking: if a space is not modern and globalized (through tourism), it must be pre-modern, local, and traditional. With an increase in tourism to the village -often exploring travelers hiking up with tour-guides from home-stays Tetebatu, sometimes adding up to forty tourists a day- came the realization that Orong Gerisak could offer something which not many other places in Lombok could offer: the experience of discovering what exploring travelers deem the real, and as such authentic, way of local life. From this realization the Kampung Resort was born. The local community began to invest in Orong Gerisak as a touristic destination. As such these actors responsible for the development of the Kampung Resort started to exploit their traditionality and natural resources. Creating the kampung as a touristic destination means where they can achieve upward economic and social mobility on the basis of exploiting the only capital they have: their traditions and kampung as a space of locality.
86
The following was said by Mr. Patli to a journalist from the magazine ‘travel weekly.’ This journalist was on Lombok as to write about what tourism on Lombok entails at the moment and how travel organizations can “tackle Lombok” as the next big destination.
“In the Kampung Resort you get the chance to experience the real local life; you get to eat with the people, drink coffee with everyone in the village, help on the field if you want, and to see what it means to life here…. we offer them [a possibility] to see the real traditions of the kampung.(Transcribed from field notes)”
What Mr. Patli does is interesting; he markets the Kampung Resort as a location where tourists are able to experience the real local life of Lombok and that tourists are able to be included in these real traditions. Mr. Patli offers tourists the possibility to experience the back-stage of Lombok, the authentic way of life that often remains hidden from tourists – without the need to stage this back-stage as the Kampung Resort is not a complete commercialized tourist destination. Thus, it can be argued, that the developers of the Kampung Resort are using the discourses of tourists and the Lonely Planet vis-à-vis the region of Tetebatu to endow the Kampung Resort with a sense of prestige: they are lifting the Kampung Resort out of the ordinary and are relocating it into the canon of authentic culture. As such these actors are in the process of self-museumification: as is the case with the self-museumification of the Candomblé priestess room described by Adinolfi and van de Port (2013) these actors are using the elite language of the museum and its discourses to position themselves as special and extraordinary Through invoking the trope of the museum to refer to their village life the actors producing the Kampung Resort are placing themselves in a position of uniqueness and specialty. The use of this elite language to refer to their own setting thus gives them a mechanism through which they can take the creation of their own locality in their own hands by way of reappropriating the language of the Indonesian cultural elites. Rather than the iconizing gaze perpetuated upon the local culture by the state, as is the case in Sade, the commodification and objectification of the space now becomes an empowering act in which they take the representation of their own culture into their own hands (ibid.:301). The locals of Orong Gerisak control what aspects of their locality become commercialized and more importantly they control what aspects of culture become frozen in time through the museumification and which parts of their culture remain dynamic.
87
It can be stated that the local community realizes that their strength to attract tourists – the exploring traveler type- lies in their traditions. These traditions are in part being transformed into marketable culture as to profit from these exploring travelers as to become upwardly mobile. As such it becomes clear how the global impact of tourism becomes embedded within the local context of ideology and traditions. This mirrors a similar insight by Simpson (1996) an a family of mask makers in SriLanka Simpson illustrates that changes brought on by the emergence of the tourist market are incorporated by active local agents into the production of culture through the active participation in the manipulation of material products to make these traditional artefacts fit for tourist consumption (ibid.:165). This active participation in reforming tradition has an impact upon the social and conceptual organization; by transforming authentic masks fit for healing ceremonies into tourist kitsch the Berava caste members become economically upwardly mobile (ibid.:165,180). Here the dynamic aspect of culture is encountered, while some may see it as the destruction of traditional authentic culture, I would argue that the transformation of culture taking place in this context should be seen as the creation of new forms of culture to include the exploitability of traditional cultural and economic capital on the basis of a modern capitalist logic. The same transformations Simpson (1993) witnesses in Sri Lanka can be seen in the Kampung Resort and Lombok’s traditional villages at large; in the Sasak context a simplification of culture has taken place as to make it marketable for tourist consumption. It is in this active manipulation of tradition and Sasak culture that its effects are most disruptive for the tourist setting. It is in this inclusion of a modern capitalist logic in the rebranding of traditional goods that the Sasaknese can lose his Otherness, it is in Sasak upward mobility that tourists may come to see local actors as not so Other anymore. More often than not however, it seems that the Sasak seek modernity while tourists experience tradition within the same setting. Because of this Cole (2007) relates tradition to poverty, living in poverty becomes equated to not being economically-minded and this stands in contrast with the home-society of tourists (ibid.:953,955). Commercialization thus becomes equated with the inauthentic, with the spoiling of traditional culture (ibid.:952,953) and becomes a reason for tourist to look for poorer, and thus more authentic, “traditional” villages
88
8.3 Sameness and Friendliness: The Limits to Commercialization
In the previous section was shown how the local actors of Orong Gerisak commercialize their local traditions into marketable culture. This drive for social mobility may lead to the diminishment of poverty and as such to the loss of authenticity in the eyes of exploring travelers visiting the Kampung Resort. Yet the complete commercializing of their village leads to a loss of local traditions as well. This since their local traditions become rebranded as heritage to be enacted for tourist consumption. The actors of the Kampung Resort aim for social mobility while keeping aspects that undelay their identity as Sasak intact. As such they don’t aim for complete commercialization, as they want be unlike Bali. An indication of this aim for social mobility without complete commercialization that the local actors of Orong Gerisak cherish can be seen in the following statement by Adi – which he told me after out visit to Sade:
"Sade is bad: it is onlyabout business. People say it is like Bali here[ in Sade]. We don’t want to be like that in Tetebatu. more tourists are good but we don’t want to be like Bali, which is only about money. We[the Kampung Resort] want to make friends as well, life not only about money. (transcribed from field notes)"
The above statements show what discourses drive the locals of Tetebatu and Orong Gerisak. While they are driven by upward social mobility they don’t want the complete commercialization of their culture in which traditions are to be enacted as tourism capital. Rather they want to earn money from tourism while making friends as well, this indicates a perception of sameness between those actors commercializing Orong Gerisak and the tourists that visit them. After all, in the words of Ron, we are all one people. This indicates a more cosmopolitan identity in which not difference between them and those that come to visit them is central but its sameness. However many tourists still position them as other , pre-modern, and sometimes even as servants. When this is the case the local actors of Orong Gerisak do employ a method of full commercialization: money is asked for everything and the aim becomes to profit as much as possible from these exploring travelers. However when the exploring travelers treat these actors on a basis of mutual respect, friendliness, and to a certain degree sameness the local population of Orong Gerisak returns the same attitude. As can be seen in the following statement by Adi concerning his activity as tour-guide: 89
If guest are friendly we like them. That’s when we don’t need to make money. We don’t need business from them. Wwe love it when people are friendly and don’t act if they are better than us. Right Ron, Like the Australian?”
This was said by Adi after I asked him why he was smiling. As it turn out when he dropped of a Spanish couple he was guiding for three days through the region the girl cried and kept thanking him. The girl cried because Adi helped the Spanish couple out when their creditcard was blocked by the bank. Adi drove them to various ATM’s and when that didn’t work he explained that the lunch and part of the tour was free because they needed what little money they had left before going to the airport. Adi did this because during the harvest they ate food in the rice field and the Spanish girl said that it was a really great moment. Adi feels sameness with this Spanish couple and rather than just showing tourists around as a form of work he experienced it as friendship.8 Ron, in response to Adi’s question about the Australian tourist, says the following about making money from tourism: “Yes, if tourists are friendly I don’t charge them for coffee and sometimes they even eat free. If they act like we are the same I like them; we are all one people. (transcribed from field notes)”9Thus indicating that rather than the full commercialization of the setting the actors of the Kampung Resort try to focus on the sameness with tourists. They focus on sharing with family and friends, as they would do with those local actors living in the kampung itself. Yet this is not to say that there isn’t an aspect of commercialization present in the Kampung Resort and in the practices of the tour-guides working in the region. Adi also often uses the same type of ‘commodified persona(Bunten 2008)’ as the tour-guide from Sade is seen using. However, Adi positions himself as the friendly and noble savage – an identity in which he can still put a lot of his real persona: Adi focusses on the sameness of all people and bases his judgement on how friendly tourists treat him. Of course these interactions are
8 The same girl that cried said the day before the here discussed incident that they “… start to like it here [in the Kampung Resort] more and more, but we have to leave tomorrow: we fly back to Mallorca. The people are so nice and Mr. Adi showed us such a good time and showed us how they life here. We even had to eat on his floor and his wife made such a special meal! We saw some villages, but this is the first time we are showed the way people do things here. (transcribed from field notes)” This is further indication that Adi sees his time with this couple on the basis of sameness and friendship rather than work. 9 Ron got in a small verbal fight with this Australian tourist because the tourist says Ron was asking to many questions instead of serving him. 90 characterized by otherness as well, but rather then it being the foundation of an unequal power relation it appears to be the basis on which a cultural exchange of ideas (and goods) takes place. Usually these interactions are started by local tour guides looking for a day of work and as such the sameness and friendship serves an economic goal as well, but I do doubt if these economic incentives are the basis for their idea of sameness. Adi is always waiting at the minimart in Tetebatu for tourists, he is seen by the others in the kampong as the best at “getting” to guide tourists and making money this way. It seems like a tactic of the local guides to make the encounter seem unplanned, as if it wasn’t so much Adi’s goal to pick up tourists but that he just happened to run into them. It makes the offer less threatening, not so much that the local is trying to make money of the tourist but that he genuinely wants to help them and asks a small donation in return. It poses the local as a noble savage, as a do-gooder that is only there to help without an ulterior motive. This might be part of the reason that the local tour guides say “pay me as you see fit.” It keeps the tourists experience of Otherness intact and makes the meeting seem as one of chance, one where they just happen to run into a local that speaks decent English and just happens to have enough time to show them around. When I asked Adi about this he told me that he acts like that since money isn’t the first thing they need to talk about, it’s about making friends as well. The logic behind this seems to be sameness. While at the same time when the initial encounter takes plce on the basis of friendliness and not a work-like relationship tourists are more likely to hire the tour-guide again for the next day. Not having a set price means for the tour-guides that the tourists “sometimes … pay less, sometimes more. But doing this way I always make more money than with a set price because now it’s up to the tourists to pay me as they want to. (Said by Adi. Transcribed from field notes)” In the end the tour-guides make more money by not fully commercializing their setting as tourists pay them more for the tour then they would earn when asking for a set price, as overpaying is a way to express gratitude for these tourists. A set price for a tour around Orong Gerisak by guides affiliated to the homestays of Tetebatu would be around IDR300.000, around 20 Euro, while Adi earns between 10 and 20 Euro depending on the length of the tour. However, through not asking a set price more tourists take a tour with him as it is cheaper then the tour from the homestay. In the end do these tour-guides at Tetebatu commodify their persona to a certain degree. They have a drive for social mobility and often work within the discourses of tourists while remaining true to their own identity. As such, as Bunten (2008) argues concerning the practices of tour-guides, Sasak villages offer tourists an encounter with local actors that have transformed Sasak traditional culture into marketable heritage. Often simplified forms of
91 traditions are offered up for tourist consumption, thus still satisfying the tourist imagination while retaining control over what becomes objectified. The basis for the encounter is one of sameness and friendship rather than the full on commercialization of the setting as is the case in Sade.
8.4 Growing up
Fig. 8.5 – A busy day at Warung Monkey Forest in the Kampung Resort
As I have shown throughout this chapter social mobility is key to the life of the Sasaknese actors I interviewed, lived with, and shared experiences with. Living in poverty many of them can only dream about a better life and the social mobility it entails. Too busy with surviving on a day-to-day basis to actually break free from what is keeping them down. The tour-guide Hir, around 24 years old and discussed above, is one of these people. Hir went on a two-year work stint in Malesia and returned home to Orong Gerisak at the end of 2013. Sitting at warung Monkey Forest 9see fig. 8.5) sharing a cigarette Hir tells me that he wants “…to go to Australia for a year to work, any work, so I can start a small business and can stay with my family.” When I ask him why he doesn’t go back to Malesia Hir tells me that the company he worked for scammed him out of a lot of his earnings. They promised to deposit the lion’s
92 share of his earnings once he was safely back in Indonesia, instead they only transferred eight million IDR to him for two years work. With the distance between them and no way to go back to Malesia without the companies consent Hir feels he has no recourse to get the money that is rightfully his. For this reason he rather wants to go to Australia or Europe as he thinks the hourly wages are good. Hir tries to work as tour-guide whenever possible, but with the economic situation of Lombok as it is now and only the alternative being the informal sector this unstable form of income he will never earn enough money to even buy a plane ticket to either. Hir is aware of this fact and proclaims that “here is low” and that there is “nothing to do here.” With almost no formal options for employment and not to many tourists visiting the Kampung Resort Hir seems to reluctantly accept the fact that “sit all day, smoke, and drink coffee. That’s my life.”Hir is not alone in this sentiment, yet Hir seems more troubled by this than most of the others I have spoken to in the kampung. Hir has a simple dream, he wants to “..start a small warung a bungalows” as part of the Kampung Resort While spending another day playing domino and talking at Warung Monkey Forest with Hir, Adi, and Ron, Mr. Patli showed up with a group from Prague: consisting of a family of four and a friend of the father. Mr. Patli had showed them the rice fields going up from the Mountain Resort in Tetebatu towards the Orong Gerisak kampung. Rather than doing the walk through the monkey forest himself Mr. Patli had opted to bring them first to the warung for a fresh banana shake. This as to introduce them to Hir, a promising young tourist-guide with in-depth knowledge of where to find the black monkeys hiding up in the forest. Mr. Patli took the place of Hir in the domino game and told the group from Prague that Hir would be taking them to find the black monkeys instead. After finishing their banana shakes the group got up and together with Hir continued their tour up to the mountain. For Hir, who had been sitting with me at the warung for a couple of days now without guiding tourists and thus without earning money, this meant a welcome break from the monotone waiting. After the group and Hir left I turned to Mr. Patli and asked him why he introduced the group from Prague to Hir instead of doing the complete tour –consisting of a walk through the rice fields, monkey forest, and waterfall- himself. The answer Mr. Patli gave was straightforward: “I think it is important that we do like that, we need the young community to grow up. This way Hir gets some money. (transcribed from field notes)” Time after time I am shown that the group surrounding the Orong Gerisak Kampung Resort sees “growing up” through tourism as a collective effort that needs to include the youngsters of the kmapung as they are its future. It is not enough for a view individuals to benefit from the development of tourism, rather
93 tourism is seen as a method to ensure the progression of the community as a whole. I understand growing up also to mean that the young community needs to see that tourism poses a viable source of income on an island characterized by unemployment and poverty, by including them in the development of tourism through work and English classes –as a way to show them how to communicate with tourists- they become aware of the benefits that tourists can bring to their community and to the betterment of their future. During the visit of the Romanian tour group John and I were sitting on the side of the road enjoying the food served for the circumcision ceremony of his cousin. When we saw the group from Romania walk back through the kampong John turned to me and said: “I read that they [Romanians] were poor like us, but now they come here as tourists.,Maybe one day we can go to their village and be like them. If they can make their dream [come true], so can we! (transcribed from field notes)” It can be claimed that John makes a connection between growing up, his dream of social mobility (which he expressed in an interview as starting up a small hiking and camping company and through this providing for his family), and the fact that people from Eastern Europe are now able to visit the kampung as tourists. It can be argued that he sees the Romanian groups ability to travel and visit faraway places as a confirmation that his dreams of growing up can come true as well, since they were able to escape from poverty and be tourists now, so can he! In the Kampung Resort, and for that matter throughout all of Lombok, there is a continues focus on social mobility. This focus on social mobility transcends the individual level; the Sasak tend to focus on the social and economic progression of the whole community. It is here that these Others confirm the dreams and desires concerning a collective society projected on them by tourists. But rather than being dominated by the structures imposed on them by more powerful groups these Sasak never give up on dreaming of a better future, of upward social mobility, or as the Sasak call it themselves of growing up. Growing up thus means to install the involved community with the realization that only dreaming about owning a small warung, homestay, or touring car won’t be enough to actually realize these dreams. To grow up means to realize that progression from poverty and to achieve social mobility means working hard and often. As such growing up means to install the understanding that actors are in control of their own future in the minds of the young community; that sitting around and doing nothing but complaining about a lack of formal employment options isn’t going to realize their dreams but that they have to actively work towards their dreams and goals. The development of tourism and getting the community on board with this idea seems to be the method to achieve this: it shows the Sasaknese actors that
94 there are options to create work for themselves and that doing so as a community can elevate the community as a whole from the current situation they find themselves in. With enough input from the local young community the community as a whole can make steps towards a better future, whatever that future may be. Taking it one step further growing up can been seen as to refer to time, a transitional phase from childhood to adulthood in which the child learns the rules, norms, and values of society. Thus, growing up in the Sasak context can be argued to mean their transition from un(der)developed region towards a more developed region that understands the rules, norms, and values of globalized connections of capitalism and modernity: a move from otherness to sameness with those that come to visit them. It can even be argued that, as the Lonely Planet and tourists presuppose, the Sasak are located in the past and through growing up they find their way to the now – a symbolized journey to adulthood, the present, and modernity. This growing up, is always a hot topic, be it talking about dreams and desires, or money. The goal always seems to be upward social mobility and the escape from poverty. This daydreaming, the dream of a better future, is almost a collectively shared dream. It doesn’t matter with which of the Sasak men you speak sooner or later they will tell you about their dream of owning a small touring car to drive tourists, their hopes of one day owning a small homestay of their own, or will offer you great investment opportunities and cheap land. There is a constant dreaming going on and the longing for upward social mobility, not only for themselves but for the community as a whole. But there are limits for the Sasaknese to what they want to accept in return for their dreams of a better future. Social mobility no matter the cost isn’t something they are willing to accept: “we do not want to become a second Bali” is an often heard sentiment. This since these Sasaknese want to retain their traditional local values, while at the same time benefitting from a cosmopolitan identity. However, what they do not want is to lose these traditions and, as Adi can be said to say in the section about Sade, make life “..only about selling to tourists.”
8.5 Glocalization: Thinking Global but Acting Local Growing up, as explained in the previous paragraph, is thus the Sasak way of expressing the ideal of, and dream about, upward social and economic mobility. Yet, there is another aspect present in growing up, one that was shortly touched upon at the end of the previous paragraph. While growing up seems to be aimed at becoming more and more included in the globalized world and the modernity it represents to the Sasak there are limits to the level of 95 inclusion they aim at. Yes, these local actors strive towards a more cosmopolitan identity and social mobility through tourism: to sameness with those tourists that visit them. Although at the same time what can be witnessed in the practice of growing up is the detainment of local, and often traditional, values in a more global, modern, and cosmopolitan outlook on life. This becomes evident when one analyzes an often expressed sentiment: we want to be unlike Bali. Let’s consider the following citation to unravel what the above statement means.
“We want to make Tetebatu Arts festival in august of this year: with traditional dancing, food, mystical dance, and stick fighting.So people here can celebrate their culture and show tourists what it means to be Sasak! We want to make a traditional house where we show our history, so people here can realize how proud they should be and tourist what our history is. We don’t want to be like Bali; Bali has forgotten their own traditions and history, they don’t own their own island anymore. We need to develop tourism as a group. We need to make this dream come true not for just ourselves but for the future of our community, for our children: so they can go to university and do what they want to do with their lives. So they have time for education and don’t need to help in the field (transcribed from field notes).”
What Salman is saying in the above citation mirrors the sentiment of most local actors I spoke to on Lombok. Yes, tourism needs to be developed as it will lead to a better future for Lombok and its inhabitants. No, we will not develop tourism at all costs. Salman makes a reference to Bali as a setting in which the local actors do not have control over its structure anymore: they have lost their traditions to tourism and forgot the history that shaped them as Balinese. As such Bali is seen as the antithesis of what most Sasak ant for the development of Lombok: it is a globalized space where the local traditions and culture have been museumified. Bali is now included into the modern Indonesian nation-state where difference - the Balinese local culture and tradition-, are to be enacted as heritage and as not part of contemporary modern Indonesian culture. Salman, as many with him, wants Lombok to be unlike Bali: yes to the global connections that tourism brings but without the complete loss of the local way of life. No full on commercialization of the island and selling out of tradition but rather a compromise where global aspects are introduced into the local culture. Talking about what Salman considered the impact of tourism he told me that “we [Sasaknese] welcome tourism but we must realize that we are Indonesians, we are not
96
Europeans. (transcribed from field notes)” What Salman is referring to here is a more commonly seen and heard sentiment around the Kampung Resort. The Sasaknese I spoke to tend to focus on the sameness between them and tourists, as Ronny once said: “”we are all one people.” While at the same time stating the importance of their traditions and the value they have for their identity as Sasak. Especially the group of people focusing on tourism, and the young community growing up around tourists and global pop culture appear to have is very cosmopolitan outlook of life. However, as told to me by several university educated Saknese liberal intellectuals, nowadays the aim is to “think global, act local.” To be proud of your traditions and heritage, but to have a more cosmopolitan outlook on life. It can be stated that growing up, because of this focus on thinking global but acting local, up should be seen as an aspect of glocalization. But what is glocalization? Robertson - seen as the academic godfather of the term glocalization- and White state that:
“[t]he problem that precipitated the introduction of the concept of glocalization was that concerning the relationship between the global and the local. Indeed, to this day it is not at all unusual to find the local being regarded as the opposite of the global. .. [T]he alleged problem of the relationship between the local and the global could be overcome by a deceptively simple conceptual move. Rather than speaking of an inevitable tension between the local and the global it might be possible to think of the two as not being opposites but rather as being different sides of the same coin. (Robertson and White 2007:62)”
Robertson and White thus claim that there is no local/global dichotomy –a view not only still held by some academics but as well persistently present among the tourists I encountered on Lombok- but rather a consistent intertwinement of the local and the global in a given context. In the case of the Sasak and their practise of growing up this view holds true. Robertson and White (XXX) continue with their explanation of glocalization through a focus on how it takes place in a given setting:
“Inherent in much of the discussion of globalization is the old sociological and anthropological concept of diffusion. …. In sociology, the concept of diffusion has involved concentration upon the ways in which ideas and practices spread (or do not spread) from one locale to another. … Broadly speaking, diffusion theory
97
thus anticipated what we now call glocalization in very important respects. (ibid.:62)”
Thus, according to Roberson and White, glocalization takes place through the process of diffusion – the move of ideas and practices from one setting to another. While I agree with this statement I would like to add that rather than a simple copying of complete ideas and practices from one locality to another these processes and actions become indigenized Appadurai (1996) –altering global flows as to make them fit the local environment- by the local actors adapting them to their locality. In the case of the Sasak, as will be shown later in this chapter, this entails the intertwinement of the local traditions and more modern aspects as to construct their locality. In the case of growing up, as form of glocalizing,, local traditions still constitute the basis for an identification as Sasaknese. But the multicultural domination by the Indonesian state, in the form of museumification, is circumvented by installing in these local traditional practices aspects related to global and modern cultural practices. Through this the Sasaknese are neither complete modern Indonesian subjects –indicating the transformation of local traditions into forms of commercialized heritage as to be included into the Indonesian nation- nor complete local and traditional Sasak subjects – holding on the age-old traditions and remaining frozen in time (a form of museumification in itself). Rather they are glocal. It is here that we encounter Robertson and White (2007) their claim that the global and the local are two different sides of the same coin. For the Sasaknese that where the objects of my study growing up through glocalization thus entails finding an inclusive group identity based on local and traditional values in a setting which has become increasable determined by the global flows of tourism and the Indonesian’s state internalization of modernity. While paradoxily nitpicking global and modern aspects that they would like to incorporate in their Sasak identity. This process is best described by Geschiere and Meyer (1998) in their article on globalization and identity:
“Closely related to this paradox is the precarious balance between `global flows' and `cultural closure'. There is much empirical evidence that people's awareness of being involved in open-ended global flows seems to trigger a search for fixed orientation points and action frames, as well as determined efforts to affirm old and construct new boundaries. … It is therefore important to develop an understanding of globalization that not only takes into account the rapid increase
98
in mobility of people, goods and images, but also the fact that, in many places, flow goes hand in hand with a closure of identities which often used to be much more fuzzy and permeable.” (Geschiere and Meyer 1998:602)
It is here that we see the act of ‘thinking global but acting local’ in a more academic form. Geschiere and Meyer (1998) state that the process of glocalization is constituted by the two opposing forces of global flows and cultural closure. They argue that with an increase in global flows -being incorporated in the modern and global world at an increasing rate- comes in increase in cultural closure – setting limits to the aspects of local culture and identity that global flows are allowed to penetrate and constructing new boundaries for the cultural aspects that have been allowed to be penetrated by these flows. In other word: indigenization of global culture. It can be argued that the process of glocalization thus allows the local actors of Lombok to self-determine the limits of the intrusion of global flows; to set limits to the control and domination over their island and culture by the Indonesian state and tourists. Rather than fully adapting global culture -which they consider the Balinese to have (forcibly) done- or the transformation of local traditions into heritage –a process of state induced museumification which forces local actors to merely enact their culture as authentic thing from the past while having to hide their cosmopolitan outlook on life from visiting tourists- the Sasaknese have closed of some aspects of their culture for global flows while allowing others to penetrate these boundaries as to allow for social and economic mobility. The act of glocalization in the Sasak context is thus constituted by limiting certain global flows by cultural closure, an act they themselves call growing up. Let’s consider two examples of Lombok as a glocal context: the Ale-Ale and the Novotel Resort Lombok.
8.5.1 Ale-Ale: Modern Traditions The cosmopolitan outlook on life that still retains the importance of local life and it values, as discussed above as a form of glocalization, became a full social force among the Sasaknese young community over the past decades and has found its way into popular culture, the arts, and especially music. The music genre of Ale-Ale first emerged in Lombok in 1999 (see fig. 8.6). As art form Ale-Ale was born from a modification of two traditional performance arts local to Lombok, and “…where modified in such a way that they could fulfill what was required by the current era (Alfarisi 2014:67).” This means, in the words of Alfarasi during our personal conversations that, Ale-Ale as an art form “…combined local ideology with
99 global ideology:” Sasaknese traditional performance art forms where placed in a process of synthesis with modern instruments. No longer there were only traditional instruments on stage, the bass guitar, keyboard, guitar, and drum set joined the ensemble while being amplified by mobile sound systems.
Fig. 8.6 – Ale-Ale band coming through the Kampung Resort as part of a wedding
The newly emerged music genre of Ale-Ale can thus be seen as a symbol of the new intertwinement of traditional values local to Lombok and a more cosmopolitan outlook on life by the Sasaknese. This lead to an ideological contestation between these two varying outlooks on life as parts of the traditional Lombok cultural structures and symbols -those of the Gendang Beleq and Cupak Gerantang art performances related to the traditional cultural values of adiluhin- became reappropriated by some of the Sasak as method of cultural resistance against the power structures of strict religious ideology - the conservative Islam- and the related cultural ideologies of the Indonesian cultural and political elite (ibid.:78- 100
84).In more broad terms this act of glocalization should thus be seen as installing global flows in local forms of culture as to that illustrate that Sasaknese culture is not located in the past as heritage but still alive and part of contemporary culture and identity. Lombok’s highest religious leader –the Tuan Guru-, and as such maintaining a powerful position within the traditional Sasak cultural system, “…desired that the arts developing in the community should always refer to the Islamic teaching (ibid.:83).”As such, Alfrasi tells me, the Tuan Guru and the cultural and political elite of Lombok do not consider Ale-Ale to be art since “…the artists involved … neglected the authentic arts and made the boundaries between Islamic teachings and freedom in art creativity vague (ibid.:”83).” Indeed, this new form of music became the mantra of those willing to think global but act local: it incorporates traditional aspects authentic to Lombok while stripping it of those processes imposed on them by the religious, political, and cultural elite. As such the glocal cultural form of Ale-Ale seems to pinpoint the limits of the multicultural domination through museumification enforced by the state and the modernization strived for by the NTB government: contemporary Sasak culture is not commercialized heritage to be enacted as part of Indonesia’s historical canon for tourists but alive and well in modernized form: Showcasing that the contemporary Sasak are both included in traditional local values and the global cultural values propagated by the Indonesian state. As such Ale-Ale became a symbol of freedom, a freedom to express their desires away from the dominant cultural system of conservative Islam and the structures that position Sasak culture as heritage located in the past. Because of the resistance Ale-Ale symbolizes Lombok now knows spaces where the cultural elite and the Tuan Guru do no longer have a hegemony over the production of cultural and religious ideologies and the art it produces. Ale-Ale has become a symbol of freedom and of egalitarianism. But what freedom? Above all a freedom from the top-down installed discourses of the religious, political, and cultural elite of Lombok and Indonesia. For the Sasak Ale-Ale symbolizes the freedom from strict rules concerning the divide between local values and a global identity enforced by Indonesia’s religious, cultural, and political elites. It made the act of thinking global but acting local possible in the eye of forced top-down traditionality through the museumification of certain cultural aspects. As such Ale-Ale should be seen as a grassroots movement that expresses the limits of religious, cultural, and political control over the ways in which Lombok and Sasak culture is to be developed in the eye of increasing global flows. The aim is for a glocal setting in which not the museumified traditional focus of the Indonesian state or the conservative Islamic teaching
101 are central but the discourses of “…modernity, life style, and consumerism which should also be accepted as the new realities in the Sasaknese community (ibid.:85).” This divide between the focus of the religious and cultural elite on the authentic forms of art and the freedom expressed in Ale-Ale becomes evident when visiting wedding ceremonies. When I visited the wedding of a family member of the owner of three homestays in Tetebatu the music being performed was that of the, according to the cultural elite, authentic Gendang Beleq while the weddings I was invited to in the kampung where accompanied by Ale-Ale bands, showcasing the difference in position in the Sasak society. This observation is further strengthened by the fact that all the guests at the Gendang Beleq wedding came by car and drove from the wedding to the bride’s house after while at the weddings in the kampung the guests came by scooter, foot or fully packed bemos and walked from the ceremony to the bride’s house. The Tuan Guru has forbidden the performance of Ale-Ale for tourists and during official ceremonies and festivals, this means that during the Sengigi festival –visited by tourists and the cultural elite- only the authentic art forms where performed while ten minutes away in the kampung surrounding Senggigi the Ale-Ale was played. It should be noted that for tourists the difference between Ale-Ale and the authentic art forms is lost. Each time tourists were invited to the kampung to join in a wedding ceremony they expressed their happiness over being able to see authentic music experiences. Thus Ale- Ale is seen as an encounter with the authentic by tourists as it symbolizes the otherness they are longing for. Ale-Ale includes a lot of authentic traditional elements as described by the Tuan Guru, yet it is seen as an inauthentic art form as it undermines the discourses imposed by the religious and cultural elite through its focus on a modern and cosmopolitan identity, no longer respecting the traditional cultural system of the Sasak but with a more egalitarian Westernized view of society.10
10 Another instance of a more glocal music genre is Sasaknese-Indonesian reggae. In this indigenized form of reggae English, Sasak, and Indonesian lyrics are combined that praise the culture of Lombok as one of modernity. 102
8.5.2 Resorts: Global or local space?
Fig. 8.7 – a “traditional”style Sasak bungalow at the Novotel Resort Lombok
In the previous paragraphs of this chapter I have shown in what ways glocalization fuses global aspects with local and, in the case of Lombok, often traditional culture. This however isn’t always the case. Unlike the example of Ale-Ale, where global aspects where introduced in a local setting, this paragraph will focus on the instances where traditional aspects are introduced to a global setting on Lombok. Let us turn to the example of resorts on Lombok, especially the Novotel Lombok Resort and Villas. The Novotel website lists the following information about its 102 room resort on Lombok:
“Treat the whole family to a fun-filled holiday in traditional Sasak style at Novotel Lombok Resort & Villas. Located only at 19 km from airport, this 4-star luxury hotel is also ideal for a blissfully romantic getaway for two. Whether you dream of total relaxation or activities galore, you are sure to find everything your heart desires during your stay here at Novotel. … Come enjoy superb Sasak architecture, our white sand beach and 5-star complete facilities, along with a full program of free cultural activities and weekly local entertainment. Everything has been designed to provide ultimate comfort and luxury. (Novotel Online 2015)”
103
The above information listing makes one thing abundantly clear, this resort focusses on the holiday goer type of tourist that is in search of relaxation, comfort, and luxury more then he or she is in need of experiencing authenticity. This is not to say that the holiday goer spending his vacation at the Novotel resort has to do without some authentic details as, seen in the above advertisement, the resort itself offers the tourist this experience by mimicking the ‘superb’ and ‘traditional’ Sasak style architecture. What the above statement makes clear is that on the premises of the Novotel resort on Lombok the local, the traditional Sasak architecture, encroaches on the capitalist and luxury minded global culture. Walking around the premises of the Novotel resort one encounters multiple luxurious bungalows, most of them with private Jacuzzi and always with air-conditioning (see fig. 8.7). These are the bungalows the Novotel boasts about as being built following traditional Sasak architecture. It is here that we see how local aspects are intertwined with the global culture of the resort itself. Yet only certain local aspects are accepted in the global space. Driving up the ten minutes from Kuta Lombok to the Novotel resort one encounters a long asphalt drive way that ends at a security checkpoint that only allows bules, or very rich looking Asians, in.11 It can be argued that while the Novotel Resort is located on Lombok it doesn’t form part of its locality; the main gate represents a border that separates the global, the resort, from what they see as the local (what I would like to call the glocal). The employees of the Novotel Resort are required to take a dirt road that ends next to the resort, out of the main entrance’s view and away from where the tourists arrive. Walking into the resort one notices immediately that the local population working at the Novotel has been reduced to servants: there are bows, other signs of respect, and a complete unwillingness to discuss anything critical about the resort and those holiday goers that dwell there. It is here that the condition modernity and the process of globalization rule: wealth, consumerism, and capitalism are what is dominant within the
11 Susi and Thom, the owners of a homestay in Kuta Lombok, told me on multiple occasions why they hates the Novotel resort. The story is as follows. Susi starts of by stating that bules can walk right in and are greeted by the security at the entrance while locals aren’t allowed in, no matter what they say. Tom continues the story: “We decided to have a drink in the Novotel after I came back from surfing as it is right in the middle [from gerupuk and kuta]. The waves where bad so I decided to go to the Novotel an hour early. I could walk right in with my surf clothes still on [which are really shabby], there I got to talk with a guy I met the day before out [in the sea]. Susi didn’t show up at all, 30 minutes after we should have met I checked my phone and saw that I had fifteen missed calls from Susi [laughs]. They wouldn’t let her, and my son, through security even while she told them that she was there for a drink and that her husband was waiting for her inside, they just didn’t believe her even while she was wearing good clothes she bought in California. I had to go to the front gate and get her, otherwise they wouldn’t have let her in.” 104 confines of the resort. Those without it, those that are local, glocal, and traditional, are to be kept out. Or to be let in as employees, thus constituting a clear hierarchical order that finds its basis in a clear economic divide that is expressed in racial undertones. Even those locals that work at the Novotel as employees do not completely belong there, they are allowed in. It says to the Sasaknese: You don’t belong here. At the same time the Novotel resort should be seen as, not only a global space with local aspects but, a globalized aspect in a local space. The Novotel resort, a stand in for globalization, wealth, and modernity, transforms the local space around its premises for the Sasaknese living near it. For the local actors of the Kuta area the Novotel resort represents employment in a poverty struck area. It means becoming part of the formal economy with job security: the road to upward social mobility and a way to a better future. It as well signifies the wealth, modernity, and cosmopolitan way of life these actors dream about. Novotel is one of these globalized spaces with local aspects that can be found in the glocal context of Lombok.
8.6 Being One Thing While Seeming Another Throughout this chapter has been shown that the members of the Orong Gerisak Kampung Resort and the Sasaknese actors of Lombok are a modern glocal people that intertwine global and modern aspects of culture with more local and traditional ones. This is what I consider to be the Real Lombok - a through and through glocal space. Yet many tourists, exploring travelers and holiday goers alike, don’t seem to see this Real Lombok; they see the Real Lombok as an authentic local space with a traditional people living in it. It can be argued that the Real Lombok, the glocal one, is hidden from sight for these tourists. As such there seem to be multiple versions of the Real Lombok, depending on who you ask. Let us consider how it is possible to see yourself as one thing while seeming another to other groups of actors. For this we have to turn to one of the tenets used in the structure of multicultural domination -a process which requires that ethnic minorities, such as the Sasak, authenticate their otherness within the frameworks -which I have shown to be museumification and to a certain degree adat- of the state (Tambar 2010:652): aesthetic formations. It is my view that the Sasak actors, through growing up, have adapted the process of multicultural domination as method for multicultural identification. The Saskanese actors have started to authenticate there difference outside the structures of the Indonesian nation-state through tying there identity to the global flows tourism brings and the process of cultural closure: this allows
105 them to construct glocal identities that to a certain degree circumvent the processes of top down internalization and inclusion into the Indonesian nation-state. The Kampung Resort is a good example of this process: through self-museumification they have constructed an glocal identity outside the framework of the Indonesian nation state. However the Indonesian state and NTB government have usurped them through investing in the project and area. Aesthetic formations are the basis on which multiple Real Lombok’s can be constructed. As such aesthetic formations, sometimes in the form of symbols, are thus important in the construction of identity and imagined communities since “… in order to … be experienced as real, imaginations are required to become tangible outside the realm of the mind, by creating a social environment that materializes through the structuring of space (Meyer 2009:5).” To reiterate: to be sensed as reality imaginations need to become felt as part of that reality. The tangible aspect that confirms the imagination concerning the social environment as being either a modern, glocal, or local space is what constructs Lombok as either being a glocal reality, a modern reality, or as the Real local Lombok. As such it is tricky that these aesthetic formations are not only tangible for those that construct them but that they become touchable as well for other groups of actors in the same setting. Ale-Ale, as a social environment that has reshaped space, makes certain imaginations the Sasaknese have concerning themselves tangible. As is shown above Ale-Ale poses a mixture between global ideology and local ideology for the Sasaknese. These two different spaces are made tangible within the same social environment by including one the one hand modern instruments, fashion aspects, and other aspects they see as modern. On the other hand they include local and traditional aspects of what the cultural, religious, and political elite see as authentic art forms and folklore clothing into the social environment of the Ale-Ale. As such it can be claimed that through the practice of Ale-Ale the imaginations Sasaknese hold concerning their community being a glocal, a grown up, one become tangible within the context of Lombok. This leads to their experience of the Real Lombok as made up out of modern grown up Sasak-Indonesian actors. Once again it becomes clear that the Sasaknese actors have created an imagined community, that of a glocal Lombok, outside the framework of the Indonesian state by not authenticating their difference as located in the past. For tourists, the exploring travelers I have witnessed taking part in Ale-Ale performances, the same social environment makes a different imagination tangible. For exploring travelers the experience of the Ale-Ale seems to confirm that they have entered, or are viewing, a traditional performance and as such a local space. Here we see the relationship between Wang’s (1999) symbols of authenticity as constructed by the consumer of the setting
106 and the experience of the realness of your imaginations through aesthetic formations. Exploring travelers see the Ale-Ale in an untouristic setting (as political, cultural, and religious elites don’t allow its performance at official sanctioned events), with an collective identity on behalf of the Sasak taking part, and as a practice that follows traditional cultural rules. These discourses are all constructed as symbols of authenticity by the exploring traveler and in the social environment of the Ale-Ale these imaginations become tangible and thus real. Because of this the exploring traveler sees the Ale-Ale as part of local space and as aesthetic formation pinpointing the Real authentic Lombok as once of pre-modernity and tradition. Although the modern and global aspects present in the glocal social environment of the Ale-Ale are hiding in open sight they still seem hidden from the tourists experience. It can be argued that this is due the dichotomous thinking that exploring travelers employ vis-à-vis the setting they visit. Authenticity seems to be a zero-sum game: it is either, or. As such the exploring travelers locate the glocal Ale-Ale in the past as part of a static traditional and local culture.
Fig. 8.8 – The first Wi-Fi antenna is installed in the Kampung Resort It should be clear by now that I consider the relationship between the local and the global not as a dichotomous one but as one where aspects related to the global become indigenized by local actors to their particular setting through glocaliziation. Nevertheless my research shows that exploring travelers on Lombok construct a dichotomy between the local and traditions (or the pre-modern) one the one hand, and the global and modernity one the other. As is the case for their view of the Ale-Ale and as I will show now for the Kampung
107
Resort. The Kampung Resort, as the name itself already indicates, is a glocal space.12 Through the practice of growing up the residents of Orong Gerisak mix the processes of upward social and economic mobility with more traditional aspects of their local culture. The installment of Wi-Fi in the Kampung Resort (See fig. 8.8) was an aesthetic formation that made the local community’s imaginations concerning themselves tangible as one of growing up, global flows, and sameness with those that come to visit them. The antennas are a tangible reminder that they are glocal. Surprisingly enough, as is the case with the Ale-Ale, exploring travelers tend to ignore the aesthetic formations indicating a more modern and global character of the space. Rather they focus on the symbols they have constructed that signal that they are in an authentic space -that they are experiencing the Real Lombok. As such the Wi-Fi is ignored and the focus remains on the poverty, un(der)development, traditions, and the lack of other tourists. This might have to do with the dichotomous thinking these exploring travelers employ, an tangible instance of modernization and globalization might not yet be enough for them to switch from authentic to inauthentic; from traditional to modern; from local to global. However, as analysis of these tourist discourses indicates, with the construction of the new asphalt road to the Kampung Resort the cutoff point at which the dichotomous thinking switches from one extreme to the other may be reached: making the kampung Resort on the main road of tourism. Perhaps one day these exploring travelers will be able to see that Lombok, and the Kampung Resort in particular, are located on a glocal continuum and not either, or. Spaces dominated by multinational corporation, the state, or a combination of both are seen as global, modern , and/or staged. This holds true for as well the exploring travelers as the Sasaknese actors that experience or talk about the setting. Sade is the best example: Adi, as can be seen in the paragraph on Sade, thinks of the space as one of modernity –a space of no adat. Andrea, as many exploring travelers with her, views Sade as a touristic and modern. The state tries to structure Sade as a local traditional space, however the experience of its social environment cannot hide its complete commercialized nature. Through the staging of authenticity the state hopes to make the imaginations tourists hold concerning authenticity tangible within the context of Sade. this however fails as the social environment is one of museumification, multicultural domination, and as such staged authenticity merely serves to
12 The Kampung Resort carries within its name a reference to the local and traditional –the kampung- while at the same it indicates a more globalized and modern aspect –the resort. As such, through the intertwinement of these two spaces, the Kampung Resort is constituted as a glocal space 108 masquerade the modern commercialized space. The tangible aspects of Sade lead to the experience of the setting as fake rather than real. The same can be said about the Novotel resort; exploring travelers do not visit this resort as it is too expensive and they see its tangible aspects that are put in place to give the global space a local character as staged and fake. In all these cases difference is enacted within the framework of the state through multicultural domination. As such it can be argued that staging is used when a setting is seen as possessing dominantly modern and global aspects. In every case the Sasaknese actors and exploring travelers I have followed during my fieldwork see the aesthetic formations constructed on this basis as fake and as an act of staging. However the holiday goer seems to enjoy these glocal spaces: where the local is infused into the global through staging. Consider the Senggigi festival described in the previous chapter. The Sasak culture is presented as heritage to the holiday goer, this makes for easy linear consumption. As the space of Senggigi becomes staged as one of tradition for the duration of the festival it offers the holiday goer to experience this staged authenticity as real. Since the experience of authenticity is subjective the tangible aspects of the festival allow the holiday goer to experience the social environment as one of real authenticity within the global space of luxury and leisure. Thus, local actors in tourism-settings have to walk a thin line between tradition and modernity, between poverty and economic-mindedness, between a display of static and dynamic culture and between commodification and staying Other. Through the tourist gaze these local actors have been able to construct a new collective identity based on an outsiders homogenizing view of their ethnic culture, in this sense the commodification of culture has indeed given them the tools to empowerment by constructing a broader ethnic identity on the basis of which can be acted.. Here a manipulation of the Indonesian state’s adat system has given minority actors the means to construct, not (only) a new ethnic group identity, but a new modern and cosmopolitan identity on the basis of their access to the tourism market. As such there is a move to an identity as Sasaknese-Indonesian: to be a modern glocal subject included in the Indonesian nation-state while retaining the local aspects that make them Sasak. Rather than being positioned as an Indonesian subject that has to enact heritage as located in the past, the Sasaknese-Indonesian identity makes the local culture central to the experience of being Indonesian . However, for many local groups this empowerment is still related to the need to remain primitive and Other in the guest’s eye, so how much they can act upon this emancipation still remains to be seen.
109
8.7 Summary This chapter has focused on the ways in which local actors resist the top-down internalization of adat and museumification by the Indonesian state. Based on a case study of the Kampung Resort project in Orong Gerisak it is argued that local actors resist the complete commercialization of their local culture as a form of heritage located in the past by the process of growing up. Growing up is the term they use for glocalization. It was then shown how glocalization is used as to create a grey area in which they can both be local and global. As such creating a modern identity –that of the Sasaknese-Indonesians- on the basis of aesthetic formations and as to satisfy tourist longings to imagine Lombok as a local tradition space of authenticity. Central to the construction of Lombok as a glocal space are aesthetic formations – the construction of tangible aspects as to make imaginations real. Various examples of this process have been consider. These examples show that the local and glocal intertwine in such a way to make the existence of both local aspects and global aspects in the same social environment possible. Different actors interpretation these aesthetic formation in different ways. As such it is possible for the Sasaknese-Indonesians to view the same social environment as one of glocality while visiting tourists view it as a local, or modern, space. It the end this subjective experience by actors within the Lombok tourist setting is central to the construction of authenticity.
9. Conclusion: Unlike Bali?
In this thesis I present the analysis of data collected during a six-month fieldwork stint on Lombok, Indonesia. I started out by researching the construction of authenticity through a critical discourse analysis of the guidebooks of the Lonely Planet on Indonesia and on Bali and Lombok. However, the meaning these discourses hold cannot be analyzed without researching the social practices and environments of which these discourses are part. This as to constitute what these discourses in the man-made and fuzzy reality of Lombok mean. It follows that the discourses found in the Lonely Planet are traced to the ways in which tourists consuming these guidebooks –the exploring traveler type- use them to make sense of Lombok’s tourist-landscape. These insights where then further substantiated through analyzing the ways in which the Lonely Planet, tourists, and the Indonesian state and local
110 government position Lombok. It was analyzed that the Indonesian state aims to include the local actors of Lombok as modern Indonesian subjects through multicultural domination in the form of museumification and adat. The Sasaknese, based on the case study of the Kampung Resort in Orong Gerisak, to a certain degree resist these projections of them as local, authentic, and located in the past through what they call ‘growing up’ –glocalization. From this analysis follows the conclusion that the construction of authenticity within the Lombok tourist-landscape is based on a dichotomous model that is fashioned through interactions between the groups of actors that are present in this landscape. The dichotomous discourses propagated by the Lonely Planet Indonesia and the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok are constructed by, and to a certain degree construct, the dichotomous discourses tourists –be it exploring travelers or holiday goers- hold vis-à-vis Lombok as symbolic for real, authentic space. The Indonesian state and the NTB government follow these dichotomies to a certain degree, they aim for the modernization of Lombok through the process of multicultural domination. A process in which the frameworks of museumification and adat [tradition] is internalized in the minds of the Sasknese to construct their local traditions as forms of heritage located in the past. This leads to the staging of authenticity as it is to be enacted to tourists in commercialized modern settings such as Sade and the Sengiggi festival.
Authentic: Inauthentic: - Local - Global
o Pre-modernity o Modernity o Un(der)developed o Modernization o Traditionality o Globalization . Otherness . Sameness . Poverty/ . Capitalism/ uneconomic economic . Collective identity . Individualization . Located in the past . Loc. in the present . Undiscovered/ . Discovered/ untouristic touristic . Real Indonesia . Fake Indonesia • Back-stage • Front-stage/ staging
111
The local actors of Lombok don’t construct their identity on the basis of these dichotomies. Rather they see these dichotomies as the extremes of an continuum on which they position themselves through the method of ‘growing up’- an act of glocalization. These Sasaknese intertwine the local and the global through adapting the framework of multicultural domination by the state as underlying basis for multicultural identification. Rather than enacting their difference within the framework of the Indonesian nation-state as form of heritage located in the past. They instead enact their difference as central to their identity within the framework of the global flows of tourism. This leads to the cultural closure of their imagined identity as one of glocal modern Sasak-Indonesians. Which positions these glocal actors at the center of Indonesian nationhood while retaining their indigenous character. This drive for glocalization seems to be based on a longing to be unlike Bali; Bali is positioned by these Sasaknese-Indonesians as a setting of multicultural domination in which commercialized form of local culture are enacted as tourist capital. Thus deriving the Balinese from their own indigenous identity through inclusion in the canon of Indonesian nationhood. The process of glocalization by these Sasaknese-Indonesians is based on the construction of aesthetic formations –the insight that to be experienced as real imaginations need to become tangible outside ideational culture- that signal the intertwinement of local traditional culture with global forms of modern culture. As such these astatic formations –i.e. the Kampung Resort and Ale-Ale- include aspects of both sides outlined in the dichotomous model above. This is what I consider to be the Real Lombok – a glocal setting placed on a continuum between the extremes of the local and the global. The exploring travelers visiting Lombok however think about the Real Lombok – the authentic Lombok- as a space of the pre-modern, a locality free from outside interference by global and modern processes. In which they can affirm their longing for, and fantasies about, the encounter with the authentic Other and his local traditional space. As such the Real Lombok is one where they experience the symbols of authenticity that they have constructed through guidebooks and their own longing. This Real authentic Lombok is what these exploring travelers expect to encounter and why more and more join them in visiting a presupposed local Lombok . As this is the imagination these exploring travelers have paid to visit and as such want to see confirmed. For these tourists the materialization of their imaginations –the symbols they have constructed for pinpointing the authentic- makes them real, effectively placing the experience of these imaginations about the authentic in the sphere of aesthetic formations.
112
Due to the ambiguous character of the aesthetic formations their construction as tangible social practice affirms at the same time the glocal character of Lombok for one group of actors –the Sasaknese-Indonesians- while for the other group –the exploring travelers- it indicated the Real “authentic” Lombok as local pre-modern space. Even though the glocal aspects of Lombok are hidden in plain sight the explorer traveler’s longing blinds his view to the modern aspects present in the aesthetic formations of Sasaknese-Indonesian culture. Though the dichotomous thinking that the Lonely Planet and exploring travelers employ authenticity becomes a zero-sum game: it is either, or. It can thus be concluded that the dichotomy between the authentic and inauthentic -between the local and the global- that exploring travelers can be seen to experience on Lombok, and especially in the Kampung Resort, is based upon the assumption that the process of globalization and modernity gives rise to the loss of the local as pre-modern and traditional. These exploring travelers fail to see the ways in which global aspects become indigenized in the local setting. But rather view a setting as either being local and a space of tradition or as one that shares the same condition of their home society: that of modernity. For these tourists a glocal setting doesn’t seem to exist; the setting they visit is either based on Otherness or sameness. What in reality can be witnessed is an alternative modernity¸ but for the dichotomous thinking exploring travelers you are either modern or pre-modern. In the end the construction of Lombok as authentic has its foundations in the subjective experience of the Lombok tourist-landscape on the basis of the longings any given tourist –be it exploring traveler or holiday goer- has. The questions remains if Lombok and the Kampung Resort will stay unlike Bali. This, staying unlike Bali, all depends on the path glocalization takes on Lombok and whether the aesthetic formations these Sasaknese- Indonesians construct stay on the local side of the dichotomous thinking the Lonely Planet, tourists, and the Indonesian state deploy as to make sense of Lombok. For the Sasaknese- Indonesians staying unlike Bali further depends on the methods the Indonesian state deploys as to include their glocal aesthetic formations. In the case of the Kampung Resort the inclusion into the Indonesian state already seems underway through investments in their project, tying the residents of Orong Gerisak to the Indonesian nation-state through taxation. In a sense making them like Bali as they are becoming more and more dependent on the Indonesian state as custodian of their ever modernizing setting. Into what will they grow up?
113
Bibliography Abu-Lughod, L. (1993). Writing women’s worlds. Bedouin stories. Berkeley: University of California Press. Adams, K. M. (2006). Art as politics: Re-crafting identities, tourism, and power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press: Honolulu Adinolfi, M.P. and Van de Port, M.P.J. (2013) Bed and Throne: The 'Museumi7fication' of the Living Quarters of a Candomblé Priestess. Material Religion 9(3) pp. 282–303 Alfarisi, S. (2014). Disertasi: Kesenian Ale-Ale sebagai kontestasi ideology masyarakat Sasak. Unpublished Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, New York: Verso. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large.. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, Minn. Becker, H. (1996). The Epistemology of Qualitative Research. Ethnography and Human Development: Context and Meaning in Social Inquiry. Edited by R. Jessor, A. Colby and R.A. Shweder. Chicago: University of Chicago Press pp. 53-74 BPPDNTB (2013). Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah Daerah Provinsi Nusa Tenggara Barat 2013-2018 Bruner, E. M. (1991). Transformation of self in tourism. Annals of tourism research, 18 (2), pp. 238--250. Bunten, A. C. (2008). Sharing culture or selling out? developing the commodified persona in the heritage industry. American ethnologist, 35 (3), pp. 380--395. Burawoy, M. (1998). The extended case method. Sociological theory, 16 (1), pp. 4--33. Central Intelligence Agency (2014). The World Factbook on Indonesia [Online] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html [Accessed: 26-06-2014] Cross, B. (2006). Infinite rehearsal of culture in st catherine jamaica: heritage as tourist product, implications for caribbean pedagogy. Pedagogy, culture & society, 14 (3), pp. 315--327. Cole, S. (2007). Beyond authenticity and commodification. Annals of Tourism Research, 34(4), 943-960.
114
Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. L. (2000) Millennial capitalism: First thoughts on a second coming. Public culture, 12(2), 291-343. Csordas, T. J. (1990). Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology. Ethos, Vol.18 No.1, pp. 5-47. Esperanza, J. S. (2010). Bali’s ethnic arts industry: crafting global identities amidst a national tourist agenda. Material culture review/revue de la culture mat'erielle, 71. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Polity Press: Cambridge. Fallon, F. (2001). Conflict, power and tourism on Lombok. Current Issues in Tourism, 4(6), 481-502. Fisher, L., Moeliono, I., & Wodicka, S. (1999). The Nusa Tenggara Uplands, Indonesia: Multiple Site Lessons in Conflict Management. Cultivating Peace: Conflict and Collaboration in Natural Resource Management. International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, 61-80. Geschiere, P. (2010). In conversation: Writing culture. The self-reflective turn in thnography, from dialogue to narcissism?’ Etnofoor 22,1: 137-147. Geschiere, P., & Meyer, B. (1998). Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of flow and closure. Introduction. Development and Change, 29(4), 601-615. Grace, J. (2004). Sasak women negotiating marriage, polygyny and divorce in rural East Lombok. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, 10. [Online] http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue10/grace.html [Accessed: 26-06-2014] Indonesia.travel (2014). West Nusa Tenggara [Online] http://www.indonesia.travel/en/discover-indonesia/region-detail/36/west-nusa- tenggara [Accessed: 26-06-2014] Jørgensen & Phillips, M. W., & Phillips, L. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. Sage: London Kelle, U. (2005). “Emergence” vs. “Forcing” of Empirical Data? A Crucial Problem of “Grounded Theory” Reconsidered. Forum: Qualitative Social Research Vol. 6 No. 2 pp. 1-22 Keurs, P. ter (2006). Condensed Reality, A Study of Material Culture. CNWS Publications: Leiden Lonely Planet Online (2014). About us. [Online] retrieved from http://www.lonelyplanet.com/about/ (Last visited on 29-05-2014) Lonely Planet Online (2014b). Sights in North & Central Lombok. [Online] retrieved from
115
web.archive.org/web/20140909060525/http://www.lonelyplanet.com/Indonesia/north- central-lombok/sights (last visited on 28-06-2015) Lonely Planet Online (2014c). Gone off-the-beaten-path? [Online] retrieved from http://www.lonelyplanethostel.com/indonesia/tetebatu/desa-tetebatu (last visited on 28-06-2015) Maanen, J. V. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. MacCannell, D. (1973). Staged authenticity: arrangements of social space in tourist settings. American journal of sociology, Vol.79 No.3 pp. 589--603. MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. University of California Press: Berkeley Marcus, G. E., & Cushman, D. (1982). Ethnographies as texts. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25-69. Meyer, B. (2009). From Imagined Communities to Aesthetic Formations: Religious Mediations, Sensational Forms, and Styles of Binding. In Meyer, B. (Ed.). Aesthetic Formations. Palgrave Macmillan Novotel Online (2015) Hotel Novotel Lombok Resort and Villa. [Online] retrieved from http://www.novotel.com/gb/hotel-0571-novotel-lombok-resort-and-villas/index.shtml (last visited on 12-08-2015) Pels, P. J., & Salemink, O. (1999). Introduction: Locating the colonial subjects of anthropology. In Pels, P., & Salemink, O. (Eds.). (1999). Colonial subjects: Essays on the practical history of anthropology. University of Michigan Press. Philp, J. & Mercer, D. (1999). Commodification of Buddhism in contemporary Burma. Annals of tourism research, 26 (1), pp. 21--54. Robertson, R. and White, K.E. (2007) What is Globalization? In Ritzer, G. (Ed.). (2007). The Blackwell companion to globalization. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford Said, E.W. (1987). Orientalism..Penguin Books: London Salazar, N. B. (2010). 15 from local to global (and back): towards glocal ethnographies of cultural tourism. Cultural tourism research methods. Edited by G. Richards and W. Munsters. Cambridge: CAB International pp. 188-198 Simpson, B. (1993). Tourism and tradition from healing to heritage. Annals of tourism research, 20 (1), pp. 164--181. Soguk, N. (2003). Incarcerating travels: travel stories, tourist orders, and the politics of the'hawai'ian paradise'. Journal of tourism and cultural change, 1 (1), pp. 29--53.
116
Spracklen, K. (2011). Dreaming of drams: authenticity in Scottish whisky tourism as an expression of unresolved habermasian rationalities. Leisure studies, 30 (1), pp. 99-- 116. Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Sage Publications: London Shaw, B. J., & Shaw, G. (1999). 'Sun, Sand and Sales': Enclave Tourism and Local Entrepreneurship in Indonesia. Current Issues in Tourism, 2(1), 68-81. Tambar, K. (2010). The aesthetics of public visibility: Alevi Semah and the paradoxes of pluralism in Turkey. Comparative Studies in Society and History,52(03), 652-679. Tegelberg, M. (2010). Hidden sights Tourism, representation and Lonely Planet Cambodia. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 13(5), 491-509. Teo, P., Leong, S. & Ra (2006). A postcolonial analysis of backpacking. Annals of tourism research, 33 (1), pp. 109--131. Thompson, M. (2004). Discourse, ‘development’& the ‘digital divide’: ICT & the World Bank. Review of African Political Economy, 31(99), 103-123. Tourism and Culture Department (2014). Guide Book – West Nusa Tenggara 2014. UNWTO.org. (2014). Understanding tourism: basic glossary. [online] Retrieved from: http://media.unwto.org/en/content/understanding-tourism-basic-glossary [Accessed: 5 Jan 2014]. Vaisutis, J., Bedford, N., Elliott, M., Ray, N., & Ver Berkmoes, R. (2007). Lonely Planet Indonesia. Lonely planet Publications: London Ver Berkmoes, R., & Stewart, I. (2007). Lonely Planet Bali & Lombok. Lonely Planet Publications: London. Ver Berkmoes, R., & Skolnick, A. (2013). Lonely Planet Bali & Lombok. Lonely planet Publications: London Wang, N. (1999). Rethinking authenticity in tourism experience. Annals of tourism research, 26 (2), pp. 349--370.
117