The cultural politics of performance: Women, dance ritual, and the transnational tourism industry in Bali.

摘要

The main goal of this study is to explore the dilemmas encountered by female Balinese dance performers as they negotiate their role and position in regards to the major influences that define Bali at the close of the 20 th century: the local Hindu-Balinese tradition; the discourse of the Indonesian nation-state; and the demands of a transnational tourism industry. The study focuses specifically on three villages: Ketewel, Tista, and Peliatan.;The approach to study this question is interdisciplinary, engaging the fields of anthropology, dance, and gender studies. The issues of cultural tourism, gaze and authenticity, and the notion of religious Balinese dance drama as both ritual and entertainment (or sacred/profane) are explored through the anthropological perspective. Additionally, the fields of Euro-American and Balinese dance and spirit possession (trance) studies serve to further assess the problems of evaluating issues of dance as representation and embodiment as well as the performers' experiences.;While academic research is mainly based on contemporary Indonesian feminist studies, the scant material on Balinese working women, and Hindu-Balinese religion, the ethnographic section brings together an interdisciplinary methodology that includes participant/observation, oral histories, formatted interviews, choreographic exchanges and interactions, and video documentation.;The findings differ from those of recent studies in that they point to fluid cultural interactions rather than to a loss of cultural identity. While the dancers' response to the problematic aspects of their social, political and cultural situation were not homogenous (struggle, indifference, concession, adaptation, negotiation) and depended greatly on their personal circumstances, the overall attitude was one of engagement with the demands of the transnational industry through the recreation of local tradition. This response was made possible by the fluidity of the Hindu-Balinese cosmological tenets. Although the intrinsic contradictions posit severe conflict and the implicated discourses are not flexible, most of the dancers' response to these tensions resulted in attempts to re-imagine local belonging through a recreation of the meanings of the cultural self and the foreign other, both at home and abroad.