Bachelor thesis | South and Southeast Asian Studies (BA)
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In my thesis I will look at two areas in Indonesia which are popular tourism destinations for both Indonesian and foreign tourists and which have experienced and still experience a considerable...Show moreIn my thesis I will look at two areas in Indonesia which are popular tourism destinations for both Indonesian and foreign tourists and which have experienced and still experience a considerable amount of tourist influx. Tana Toraja and Bali are both areas to which tourists are attracted because of the culture they can find there, including for example rituals, architecture and art performances. The tourists visit these places to see and experience something that is different from their daily lives, to break through the daily grind and experience something new. This is in accordance with the definition Valene Smith gives of a tourist: "a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change" (1977: 2). The tourists, or guests, visit a place of which its inhabitants can be called the host community and of course there takes interaction place between these two groups of people. Tourism is a powerful medium affecting culture change and I want to examine in how far tourism affects culture in these two areas. Tourism growth in Tana Toraja and Bali started in the 1970s, during Suharto's Orde Baru, and these areas were explicitly named in the First and Second Five Year Plan and encouraged for tourism development. In the years after this the tourist influx in both areas grew exponentially, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, but it decreased in the years from 1997 because of political instability in Indonesia, and of course the Bali bombings in 2002 can't be ignored. So my time-frame will be from the 1970s until now, with the exception of some background information from before that time. In the case of Bali, when looking at tourism and cultural change, it is important to realize what this 'Balinese culture' actually is. Because in earlier times, Balinese culture has been influenced and inspired significantly by Western art and artists (and the other way around), like Walter Spies, and the kind of art that came about then still exists in the Bali of today. Culture is not something static, it is always subject to change and thus ever changing. So I will not discuss one 'kind of culture' in Tana Toraja and Bali respectively, but look at the process of culture change over time. Culture change doesn't always have to be because of outside influences, like tourism, but it can also happen from the inside. From what I've read until now, this is an important point concerning Tana Toraja. My thesis will not just be a one-way analysis of the positive and negative influences of tourism on these areas, but it will also be about how the hosts react and adjust themselves and their culture to the growing tourism in their homeland. There are different effects of tourism on the host community concerning religion, commercialization, the staging of culture, culture becoming art, cultural revivalism, self-image and pride, and I want to examine whether these things are taking place in Bali and Tana Toraja and if Bali responds differently to tourism then Tana Toraja and if so, why this could be. I already found that in Tana Toraja, as a result of nascent tourism, the ancestral religion or Aluk To Dolo has actually been granted legitimacy by the Ministry of Religion, which is interesting. I expect something similar happens in Bali to Hinduism. This is of course already a religion recognized by the Indonesian government, but as with Aluk To Dolo I believe it has gained a lot more political (on the national level) and outside interest and 'prestige' because of tourism. Besides that, the growth of commercial tours to Tana Toraja has supported a renewed interest in local ritual and artistic tradition, as is also true in Bali. Commercialization of religious rites in both areas is almost inevitable and I will further examine in what ways this is taking place. I will include the political context where necessary and the process of modernization and globalization also plays an important role. My expectation is that the effects of tourism in Tana Toraja in most cases parallel those in Bali, although in Bali on a bigger scale than in Tana Toraja, considering the amount of tourists visiting Bali every year. This may have the consequence that the process of culture change in Bali takes place more swiftly, and more gradually in Tana Toraja.Show less
