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Michel Picard. Bali: Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture. Singapore: Archipelago Press,1996. 231 pages.
Tourism has become a crucially important subject in the study of culture today. In many places in the world tourism has become a key agent in constructing and reconstructing "traditional culture." In fact, today, traditional dress, traditional houses, and traditional dances often exist only for the tourists. Tourism becomes, as Lean MacCannell writes, a field of cultural production on a global scale.1
In this book, Michel Picard, a French anthropologist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), examines the dynamism of cultural production in touristic contexts, focusing upon Bali, Indonesia. The book was originally published in French in 1994. The English translation is by Diana Darling.
According to the author, the book was written "out of a dissatisfaction with the way in which questions are commonly formulated when international tourism penetrates a society": namely, "the question of whether the impact of tourism on the culture is positive or negative." (p. 8) The real issue, he tells us, is that "tourism has neither 'polluted' Balinese culture nor kindled its 'renaissance/ much less simply contributed to 'preserving' it. What has happened is that the decision to promote 'cultural' tourism made the Balinese self-conscious about their culture." (P.198) The book as a whole eloquently demonstrates this point.
The book consists of two parts. Part One, "The Touristification of Bali," traces the history of tourism in Bali under the Dutch colonial regime as well as the nation-state in independent Indonesia. This part includes chapters on how Bali became "a living museum" or "the last paradise" under Dutch colonization (Chapter 1 ); how Bali became "the show window of Indonesia" in the nation-building processes after Indonesia's independence (Chapter 2); and what has been going on in relation to the development of tourism in Bali at tourist sites such as Nusa Dua, Sanur, Kuta, and Ubud (Chapter 3).
Part Two, "Balinese Culture under the Challenge of Tourism," examines the dynamism of the relationship between culture and tourism in the context of the contemporary Indonesian politico-economic regime. This part includes chapters on the socio-cultural impact of tourism (Chapter 4); "cultural tourism" which is the most important regional development policy to have been adopted by the provincial government...