This study will consider several
stages of scholarship on Bali. First, it
will consider the
earliest 20th century
tourists-turned-scholars on Bali who pioneered both the scholarship and
the tourist industry itself. I refer to those writing during this period
as “first wave” scholars.
These include Holland’s Gregor Krause
and the Mexican-American Miguel Covarrubias, who were enamored
with the island, and were presenting
their first hand observations of the
people, which was oftentimes quite
essentializing. Many of these earliest
scholars have been
accused of romanticizing Bali through
their writings. This notion of Bali
being romanticized is a
theme that comes up more than once in
the more recent literature. David
Shavit, for example,
notes that scholars such as Gregor
Krause discussed at length the beauty of the Balinese
people, particularly the women, and
the island itself. (Shavit, 2003: 18-19)
Words like sensual
and exotic were often used to
describe Bali. The island was treated as
“a hallowed land of love,
peace and beauty.” (ibid.) Robert
Pringle described it as a place of “nectar and ambrosia” for
the earliest anthropologists.
(Pringle, 2004: 147) So certainly the
idea that Bali has been viewed
not only as exotic but as romantic in
the eyes of its earliest visitors is not a new idea, but rather
one that is visited with some
frequency.
Along with these earliest scholars,
this stage also includes anthropologists Margaret
Mead and Jane Belo, who came to the
island shortly after the first scholars and who were
writing around the same time. They were influenced by their predecessors,
but brought more
analysis and theory to their study of
Balinese culture. In this way, Mead and
Belo became an
academic bridge between the earliest
first wave scholars and the “second wave” scholars.
The next stage of scholars is a group
I collectively refer to as “second wave” scholars.
They conducted research post-World
War II and during or after the period when Indonesia
gained its independence from the
Netherlands.
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These included
anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Hildred Geertz, and J. Stephen
Lansing. This stage of writers built on
the contributions of
the first wave and also brought new
questions to the study. These scholars
applied further
theory and analysis as they went in
search of deeper understanding and new information.
The third section of the thesis deals
with the representation of Bali within
anthropological pedagogy,
specifically in undergraduate textbooks.
The representation of Bali
and of scholars who conducted
research in Bali, often called Baliologists, has been very limited
and this paper will attempt to
determine why that is. I investigate
what scholarship has been
presented within a sample of
introductory undergraduate anthropology texts, why they were
considered, and how these ideas have
been presented. I identify specific areas in which this
representation of Bali and the
Balinese is very limited. This research
was initially done for the
project Significant Others: Iconic
Ethnographic Cultures directed by Thomas Abler and Pamela
Stern, which investigated how
different cultures and topics have been presented in
undergraduate anthropology textbooks.
The final section of the paper looks
at what has been, and what is being, published
about Bali since the late 1980s. Many of today’s prominent scholars, such as
Michel Picard
have strongly criticized the work of
first and second wave scholars. There
has been a real
interest in Balinese identity and how
that identity has been influenced and even largely created
by this scholarship. The impact of
tourism and globalization, are being thoroughly investigated.
Unni Wikan, Megan Jennaway, and
others have written extensively on the representation of
Balinese women through scholarship
and women’s agency within Bali.
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