Transforming Tradition. Place, Ideology, Development and Planning in Bali

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PEOPLE AND PLACE IN THE 21ST-CENTURY CITY

Increasing urbanization and increasing urban density put enormous pressure on the relationships between people and place in cities. Built environment professionals must pay attention to the impact of people–place relationships in small- to large-scale urban initiatives. A small playground in a neighborhood pocket park is an example of a small-scale urban development; a national environmental policy that influences energy sources is an example of a large-scale initiative. All scales of decision-making have implications for the people–place relationships present in cities. This book presents new research in contemporary, interdisciplinary urban challenges, and opportunities, and aims to keep the people–place relationship debate in focus in the policies and practices of built environment professionals and city managers. Most urban planning and design decisions, even those on a small scale, will remain in the urban built form for many decades, conditioning people’s experience of their city. It is important that these decisions are made using the best available knowledge.

This book contains an interdisciplinary discussion of contemporary urban movements and issues influencing the relationship between people and place in urban environments around the world which have major implications for both the processes and products of urban planning, design, and management. The main purpose of the book is to consolidate contemporary thinking among experts from a range of disciplines including anthropology, environmental psychology, cultural geography, urban design and planning, architecture and landscape architecture, and the arts, on how to concep- tualize and promote healthy people and place relationships in the 21st-century city. Within each of the chapters, the authors focus on their specific areas of expertise which enable readers to understand key issues for urban environments, urban populations, and the links between them.

Kate Bishop is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Built Environment at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. Her background in environment-behavior research un- derpins her teaching and research, and her particular area of interest is children, youth, and environments. She specializes in the research and design of environments for children with special needs;

pediatric facilities; and participatory methodologies with children and young people. Kate worked in the private industry and government before completing her PhD and becoming an academic.

Nancy Marshall is an Associate Professor in the City Planning Program at UNSW in Sydney, Australia, where she was the Associate Dean/Education from 2009 to 2013 and won the UNSW Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence. Her research focuses on people and place, with a particular focus on plazas, parks, and smart cities. Her recent book is co-authored with Jon Lang and entitled Urban Squares as Places, Links and Displays (2017). Nancy worked as an urban planner

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PEOPLE AND PLACE IN

THE 21ST-CENTURY CITY

Edited by Kate Bishop and Nancy Marshall

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First published 2020 by Routledge

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bishop, Kate (Lecturer on the built environment), editor. | Marshall, Nancy (Nancy G.), editor.

Title: The Routledge handbook of people and place in the 21st century city / edited by Kate Bishop and Nancy Marshall.

Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. |

Subjects: LCSH: Urbanization—Social aspects. | Cities and towns. | City dwellers. | Sociology, Urban.

Classification: LCC HT151 (ebook) | LCC HT151 .R6635 2020 (print) | DDC 307.76—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016091 ISBN: 978-0-8153-8094-8 (hbk)

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Acknowledgements viii List of Contributors ix The Power of Cities on People–Place Relationships 1

Kate Bishop and Nancy Marshall

SECTION 1

Vibrant Cities 9

1 Self-Conscious and Unselfconscious Place-Making in Cities 11

Jon Lang

2 Using Places/Exchanging Places 22 Kate Shaw

3 Festival Bodies: The Role of the Senses and Feelings in

Place-Making Practices 33 Michelle Duffy

4 A Sound Understanding of Healthy Cities 43 Rachel Cogger and Nancy Marshall

5 Art, Communities, and Housing Form: A Practitioner’s Perspective 53 Marla Guppy

SECTION 2

Diverse Cities 67

6 Pushing Diversity beyond Recognition 69

Ruth Fincher

7 Diversity in Density: Encouraging Participation in Higher Density Living 79 Hazel Easthope, Edgar Liu, Christina Ho, and Caitlin Buckle

8 Knowing Their Place: Children, Young People, and Cities 88 Kate Bishop and Fatemeh Aminpour

9 Exercise Space Planning and Design for an Aging Society: A Case Study of Space, Exercise Behavior, and Cognitive Function of Older

Women in Taiwan 98 Tzu-Yuan Stessa Chao and Yun Chou

10 Culture, Citizenship, and Emplaced Practice 109 Michael Rios

SECTION 3

Equitable Cities 123

11 The Experience of Place and Displacement in the 21st-Century City 125

Lynne C. Manzo

12 Propositions for More Just Urban Public Spaces 135 Setha Low and Kurt Iveson

13 Place-Based Activism: Getting out of the Frying Pan of Citizen

Disengagement or into the Fire of Territorial Localism? 155 Ryan van den Nouwelant

14 Transforming Traditions: Place, Ideology, Development, and

Planning in Bali 165 Gusti Ayu Made Suartika

15 Consuming Heritage or the End of Tradition: Challenges in the

Transition from Vernacularism to Globalization 175 Nezar AlSayyad

SECTION 4

Smart Cities 185

16 The Infrastructure of Place 187

Mitchell Schwarzer

17 Exploring the Use of Digital Technologies in Participatory Landscape

Planning Processes 197

Deni Ruggeri and Anna Szilágyi-Nagy

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Contents

18 Overcrowding and Domestic Use of Public Space 209 Christian Tietz

19 Tel Aviv: Making Place through Technology 219 Christine Steinmetz and Hila Oren

20 Web 2.0 Social Media: Supporting People–Place Relationships 229 Nancy Marshall and Homa Rahmat

SECTION 5

Resilient Cities 241

21 Place Attachment, Well-Being, and Resilience 243

Leila Scannell, Li Qin Tan, Robin S. Cox and Robert Gifford

22 The Importance of Prioritizing People and Place in Urban Post-Disaster

Recovery 252 David Sanderson

23 Rebuilding After Disaster: People, Processes, and Five Percent Technology 263 Anshu Sharma

24 Making Place by Making Things Again?: How Artisanal Makers are

Reshaping Place in Post-Industrial Detroit and Newcastle 273 Laura Crommelin

25 Resilience in a Warming Climate: Public Place-Making for Health and

Well-Being in Hot Cities 282 Louise McKenzie and Susan Thompson

26 Urban Green Space: Places Supporting Urban Resilience 294 Linda Corkery

Meeting the Demands for Change, Adaptation, and Innovation in

21st-Century Cities 305 Nancy Marshall and Kate Bishop

Index 313

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165

Introduction

A healthy economy is no doubt a prerequisite for a healthy city. Thankfully, social life revolves around more than money; at its center is culture as a core value. Yet for planners, culture remains a vexed issue. Since culture in complex societies is capable of infinite variety, formulating a working definition of it is almost impossible. Indeed, reversing this process seems more achievable. It is more useful, perhaps, to see planning as a cultural product itself – as a ‘servomechanism’ of the state and urban politics, where culture is contained in ideological production as the dominant social process. Planning and culture, then, become subjects of ideological production, rather than its definers. To shed light on this issue, this chapter addresses a globally celebrated culture – Bali, the Island of the Gods. It argues that the protection of culture is a pivotal element in the creation of a healthy city. Taking the case of development in Bali, the chapter shows that the lack of appropriate planning policy or its absence has exacerbated the difficulty of achieving this goal. This problem is illustrated with a series of examples.

To advance these foundational ideas, the approach taken in this chapter is to avoid defining either culture or planning as unproductive. Instead, both are situated within ideological produc- tion as a whole – history, economy, religion, language, space, and identity. It is also clear that this position constitutes a contradiction. It simultaneously deploys a totalizing concept (ideology) and seeks to explain, in associated fragments, how culture and space intersect (Thompson 1984).

While this approach lacks the specificity and security of a ‘working definition,’ it reveals a more accurate picture of ‘reality’ in all its confusions and contradictions. These fragments add up to more than the sum of the parts. In order to situate this position, the chapter interrogates the prevailing belief that control over building densities through an island-wide regulation protects Balinese culture. The regulation prohibits developments that exceed the height of a coconut tree (15 meters). In the process, it becomes clear that ideological structures are of prime importance and that attempts by planners to define culture in isolation will inevitably have entropic outcomes.

As to our subject, the name ‘Bali’ conjures in the imagination a place synonymous with paradise. Reality for the Balinese is, however, somewhat different (Cuthbert 2012). The island is a minute Buddha-Hindu enclave that struggles to maintain its culture and traditions in the face of globalization and the pressure to conform imposed by the world’s most populous Islamic state. While this might infer that the Balinese migrated from India, in fact their genetic makeup is 84 percent Austronesian, 12 percent Indian, and 2 percent Melanesian (Karafet et al. 2005).

TRANSFORMING TRADITIONS 14

Place, Ideology, Development, and Planning in Bali

Gusti Ayu Made Suartika

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Gusti Ayu Made Suartika

Bali clearly has ancient origins, but its recorded history began with its invasion by the Majapahit Kingdom of Java in 1343. Over time, the people of Bali became divided into two groups: the highland people (Bali Aga) and the lowland Balinese who claim descent from the Majapahit Dynasty. In 1619, the Dutch began their gradual colonization of the archipelago when the Dutch East India Company was established in Batavia, today’s Jakarta. But it was not until 1906 that the Dutch finally claimed Indonesia as a colony – largely to capture a dominant share of the opium trade that had been secured by Chinese merchants. This profi- teering was short-lived, as President Sukarno declared independence in 1945 after the defeat of Japan in World War II. In 1949, the Dutch accepted that they no longer ruled Indonesia (Hobart et al. 1996).

From this point, one would expect the gradual emergence of a modern ‘state’ with a defined ‘planning’ system (Clark and Dear 1984). But, if anything, the transition from a Dutch colonial state to independence marked a serious decline, from the failed attempt to institute a socialist state under Sukarno (1945–1967), Indonesia’s first president, into crony capitalism under Suharto (1967–1998), its second, which ushered in a welter of self-interest, violence, endemic corruption, and the theft of national resources (Anderson 1998; Greenlees 2008).

President Sukarno was left leaning politically, anti-imperialist, and sympathetic to the In- donesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia – PKI). He was supported by both the Soviet Union and China, and collectively his policies alienated him from the military, the Islamists, and the USA – the latter keen to contain the spread of communism in Asia (Lashmar and Oliver 1998).

By 1965, the PKI was the strongest political party in Indonesia with a membership of three million. On October 1, 1965, six of Indonesia’s leading generals were murdered in an attempt to establish Indonesia as a communist state, leading to a military coup by General Suharto and the downfall of President Sukarno. The leaderships of the PKI were arrested and a purge of PKI members ensued across Indonesia. It is estimated that half a million to two million people were murdered, mostly uneducated peasants. Bali was reputedly a PKI stronghold, and some estimate that between 80,000 and 100,000 Balinese were massacred as an introduction to Suharto’s dictatorship (Roosa and Oppenheimer n.d.). During his rule, Suharto amassed an illegal fortune of US$40 billion, half of the country’s gross domestic product at the time. Most of this sum has not been recovered (Simson 2015).

For the Suharto clan, Bali was a prime target. The family owned or had shares in the entire tourism infrastructure, from airlines to hotels; it has been observed that “most of the land these hotels sit on was stolen under ‘compulsory purchase orders’ made by Suharto’s Government”

(Aditjondro 2007). ‘Planning’ in this period had become a tool to facilitate oppression (Suartika 2010). Violence, both psychological and physical, was widespread as development interests subju- gated traditional land rights and community interests:

In 1996, a company owned by Tommy [Suharto] forced villagers off their land in Bali to build a 650-hectare resort. The firm had a permit for only 130 hectares, which it illegally expanded, according to Sonny Qodri, chairman of Bali’s Legal Aid Institute. Residents who refused to sign an agreement to sell their land were intimidated, beaten and sometimes put in a pond up to their necks.

(Colmey and Liebholt 1999: 3) So, extortion, violence, extra-judicial activity and a supine planning system have accompanied Bali’s development, up until the present time (Suartika et al. 2018). The state has assisted this process with a planning mechanism whose ‘flexibility’ knows no bounds and whose central feature

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Transforming Traditions

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remains the coercive nature of the state planning apparatus and its connection to big capital.

Hence:

The ‘traditional’ Bali so admired by travelers and scholars alike is a product of political cal- culation and conservative political objectives… The Bali myth has helped to falsify history in a way that has served the people in power while silencing those who have suffered injustice.

(Robinson 1995: 65) Given that ‘planning’ is a function of state regulation and is defined by it, this recent history demonstrates the term has little generic meaning. During Suharto’s dictatorship, it was difficult to separate the Indonesian economy from the personal interests of the political class – namely, the military, the ‘government,’ and the Suharto family (Aditjondro 1995, 2008). In the 20 years of democracy since Suharto’s resignation, the ideology of his New Order remains somewhat intact, including its centralized governmental and planning practices and policies, as well as widespread corruption across the entire spectrum of activity. Any attempt to explain development and social relations in Bali must therefore be placed in this context – between mainstream definitions of what ‘planning’ is supposed to do, in opposition to what planning actually does (Suartika 2010).

The State and Cultural Conservation

Coinciding with the Suharto clan’s focus on Bali as a serious generator of foreign currency, in March 1969, Indonesia in collaboration with the World Bank and the United Nations Develop- ment Program decided to prepare a model strategy for tourism development in Indonesia, using Bali as its focus. The contract was awarded to a French firm, the Societé Centrale pour l’Équipe- ment Touristique Ôutre-Mer (SCETO), and was implemented in 1973 (Suartika 2010). Several key principles were adopted. Tourist development was to be limited to the south of the island, predominantly the Nusa Dua area, an enclave containing superb white sand beaches, and about as far south as one can get on the island.

The airport was in close proximity and the land there had little agricultural value. More re- cently, a massive bypass has been built, in theory to improve access to the area, but more likely to service the future development of Benoa Bay (discussed below). The adopted policy of segregating tourist development in order to reduce its impact on local culture became the governing strategy.

In other words, tourists were to be isolated from the culture they had come to visit, the extraction of profits was to be geographically concentrated, and the rest of Bali (i.e. the Balinese people) were to gain little from the tourism extravaganza.

While Bali was recognized by its Dutch colonialists as having an extraordinarily rich culture, it was Sukarno who initiated tourism development in Bali, by constructing the Ngurah Rai Airport in the 1960s. Since then, the island has been developed intensively as the center for tourism in the Nu- santara [Indonesian Archipelago] by the Suharto administration and his oligarchy up until the present time. It was clearly in their financial interests that the brand ‘Bali’ be successful as a major source of foreign capital, and today it accounts for 70 percent of Indonesia’s tourism revenues. The commodification (‘conservation’) of Balinese culture was officially recognized in 1966 when the fear of cultural degradation was sparked by the building of the ten-story Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur. From this arose the controversy over building heights and the 15-meter limit. This height limit was imposed with the iconic statement “no higher than a palm tree.” No high-rise building has been built since.

In addition to the building height controls, the outcomes of the 1971 seminar on cultural tourism included the idea that a set of regulations could be adopted to control tourism, specifically with the object of preserving Balinese culture (without actually stating what it was). So, between

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1971 and 1974, only three decrees were promulgated by the governor, namely (Picard 1996: 130):

(a) a decree forbidding the performance of sacred dances for tourists; (b) a decree requiring guides in Bali to have a license and professional card issued by the Bali Government Tourist Office; and (c) a decree restricting access to temples and other sacred Hindu sites in Bali.

Balinese culture involves long-standing traditions in a myriad of art forms, including religion, architecture, urban planning, language, dance, art, theatre, painting, sculpture, silversmith- ing, and wood carving. Given this, it seems that while the building height regulation implied some control over culture, legislation to enforce this was patently minimalist and uninformed.

While this might be interpreted as a deliberate strategy to resist culture dictating planning policy, two other speculations are possible: one, that the state promoted (under Suharto) the idea that less regulation was better than more; and the other, more likely, that nobody really knew what to do. As late as 2009, Bali’s House of Representatives (known as DPRD or Denpasar House of Representatives-Bali) confirmed that there would be no change to the permitted max- imum building height in the new provincial zoning law (Rencana Tata Ruang Wilayah Propinsi (RTRWP)). The Vice-Chairman of the DPRD, Ida Bagus Suryatmadja Manuaba, stated: “Our first consideration is the view; people approaching the island from the sea should immediately see rows of coconut palms” and that “buildings can’t be built higher than 15 meters; that’s a do or die proposition” (Balitrips.net 2009, website).

So, on the one hand, the state tacitly supports the legislation to limit building heights, simply because it is one of its own creations. On the other, legislation undergoes all kinds of abuse; examples are the building of a 14-story Nikko Hotel (then named after Bali Hilton Resort), ten floors of which traverse a cliff face beside the beach (Figure 14.1), and the new Mulia Hotel, which has seven stories rather than four (Figure 14.2).

More importantly for planning theory, however, is the proposition that existing density controls protect Bali from the destruction of its culture and, therefore, generate the creation of a healthy place to live. This chapter argues that there is no overwhelming logic that density controls

Figure 14.1 Nikko Hotel (Bali Hilton Resort – 14 stories).

Source: Photograph by GAM Suartika.

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and cultural conservation are symbiotic. In addition, planners seldom have a working definition of culture (so how can legislation be used to protect it?). While it is clear how economic systems create spatial systems, what is less clear is how ideological structures intervene. In a recent paper, we discussed ideology, religion, and aesthetics in Bali at length (Suartika et al. 2018), but a few additional words on culture are elaborated below, as part and parcel of Balinese society in the age of globalization.

Culture and Ideology

Over the last century, Balinese culture has been studied by world-renowned scholars, predominantly Western anthropologists, including luminaries such as Margaret Mead and Clifford Geertz (1973, 1980). To that extent there are few dimensions of local ‘culture’ remaining unexplored.

Problematically, however, the anthropological worldview has dominated cultural analysis, and

‘planning’ locally has had little to say. Today, cultural studies have enormous scope, and only a few details can be addressed here that are relevant to this chapter. Readers might wish to consult some of the better overviews of the subject (e.g. Agger 1992; Blau 1998; Lewis 2002). So rather than define Balinese culture from the inside, as most have sought to do, it seems more productive to adopt the idea that culture is best viewed as a part of the overall ideological constitution of society (Giddens 2002).

Mark Hobart (2000: 14) suggests that culture can have at least three significant dimensions: as a frame of reference, as a paradigm, or ‘a way the world is.’ After surveying existing definitions of culture and proposing new ones, he asks ‘Does the idea of culture serve a serious intellectual Figure 14.2 Mulia Hotel (seven stories).

Source: Photograph by GAM Suartika.

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purpose anymore?’ suggesting that perhaps the answer to his question is ‘no’ (Hobart 2000:

34–35). Curiously, this must be seen as a positive outcome since the alternatives then become more relevant. What we should be seeking instead is an understanding of a particular culture as a totality, within an evolving set of historical circumstances, political strategies, and social relations that constitute the dominant ideology (Fulbrook 2002). Culture is a part of a unified field, yet contains infinite variation. How, therefore, has culture been perceived in the Balinese context?

While most anthropological studies talk in general about Bali, it is apparent that they, like oth- ers, are constituted in a morass of competing cultural traditions. Four distinct groups of Balinese people suggest themselves, since we find mountain and lowland, urban and rural peoples lumped together in the same category (Cuthbert and Suartika 2017). So even the term ‘the Balinese’ is of little use, since it is the beliefs and situated practices of each Balinese that are important – in other words, their ideological orientation toward their own conditions of existence. Vickers’ (1989: 23) insightful remark prevails:

Ultimately there is no single ‘real’ Bali. When the package is unwrapped, we are left with something of a Pandora’s Box of political struggles, individual glory and suffering, optimism and frustration – in short, both a nightmare and ‘a day dream of a summer’s afternoon’.

Reduced to essentials, we must accept that, while the economy rules, culture cannot be treated as somehow ‘floating above it all,’ as in an orthodox Marxist perspective. Within the development process, culture plays a multitude of roles that now include production rather than a totalizing consumption (Scott 2000). Paradoxically, suggesting that the terms ‘culture’ and ‘the Balinese’ are rather useless, analytical categories do not deny that culture exists. Undeniably, Balinese cultures exist, but they cannot be assumed from prevailing definitions or focused studies. In a globalized world, village life cannot be abstracted away from society as a whole, a practice that most anthropological paradigms have facilitated. Arguably, the complexity of geography and population makes it impossible to generalize about Balinese culture, which varies not only in the intensity with which it is practiced, but also in regard to the perception of problems and how they are defined. Hence, many anthropological studies of village life have adopted the position that culture is an independent factor in urbanization, which clearly is not. It would appear that the issue of Bali- nese culture cannot be understood in reference to any of the traditional ethnographic approaches that have so far been deployed, since the significant ‘urban’ dimension is singularly absent from discussion (Castells 1977).

The Unselfconscious Process

Culture in Balinese society refers predominantly to the traditional system of government and beliefs called adat and sima. While Balinese today live within a system of globalized capitalism, ideologically they remain rooted in the customs and traditions of village life. Before ‘urban really developed,’ that system constituted Balinese society in its entirety. Over the last century, progres- sive forms of capital have significantly affected the adat-sima system, with adaptation to urbaniza- tion proving the greatest challenge. Despite the economic benefits of global tourism, support for traditional values enshrined in village life generally hold sway, and people meeting in the city will still ask ‘Sakeng napi?’ [Where are you from?] as opposed to ‘Ring napi meneng?’ [Where do you live?]. Modernity appears as a force to be resisted, since the association with village life represents origins rather than the city (kota).

In consequence, Balinese culture is increasingly becoming a ‘manufactured’ phenomenon as the processes of commodification deepen. From the beginning of the 20th century and even up to liberation in 1945, one could say with some risk that the Balinese had no culture at all. This does

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not infer that the Balinese did not have a vibrant social life filled with ritual and ceremony. It does suggest that having a ‘culture’ is a concept that accompanies commodity capitalism as the dominant stratum. The big problem for capital was how to sell it. The Balinese culture had to be commodified and packaged into ‘art,’ ‘religion,’ ‘architecture’ (despite there being no word for ‘architect’

in Balinese), and so on. For example, the three-hour performance of the Mahabharata had to be condensed to accommodate the 15-minute attention span of the tourist.

In contrast, the Balinese lived their lives as an unselfconscious process, where rituals, religion, craftsmanship, and their own sense of space-time was enacted as integral to their sense of being.

Indeed, many ‘art forms’ had no social value at all, such as masks used in ritual dance, unless they had become consecrated objects. Having achieved that status, they were never sold. One idiom according to the Balinese puts this simply: “We have no art [culture] – we just do everything as well as we can.” In addition, the Balinese culture had its own inherent socio-spatial structures based on use values, where other forms of spatial organization became unnecessary.

Planning and space in Bali have always been linked to the Balinesedeeply-held commitment to their own sense of ‘being in the world.’ Here, three observations are definitive. First, the Balinese have a height prohibition of their own derived from religious beliefs, ceremonies, and practices – holiness in its various incarnations implied a spatial hierarchy (Warren 2005). Second, rules of inheritance also mitigate against high-rise development. Third, adat land held in common ownership is subject to the same restrictions, where buildings and space reflect pre-existing social hierarchies. “This hierarchic organization is manifested in all kinds of environmental planning and architectural design, ranging from regional planning to interior and furniture design” (Budihardjono 1995: 39). What this means in practical terms is that for most Balinese, single-story buildings are preferred, with a maximum of two stories. Concomitantly, the family shrine, a feature of most homes, must always be higher than the inhabitants. So, in a two-story building, the shrine will likely be elevated to the upper floor.

The second observation is related to this general principle. The Balinese recognize that they are merely custodians of their ancestral shrine. For the occupants, traditional compounds have use values as long as the occupants are alive and these compounds will never be sold. Given the chosen architectural form of such homes, they also represent a significant barrier to any construction exceeding two stories. Third, land held in common is subject to traditional rules unless the state chooses to intervene when its interests need to dominate, and the conflict between the state and the various Banjar is a continuing site of oppression/resistance (Suartika 2013). The practical effect of this situation is that the entire envelope of traditional Balinese society forms a barrier to capital accumulation from land, since buildings and land are not commodified on market principles. Naturally, the result is that the use values of tradition and the exchange values of commodity capital remain in stark conflict (Warren 1993).

Culture and Identity

This picture becomes even more complex when being Balinese and practicing Balinese culture are interrogated. Here, there are three dominant initiatives: first, increasing forms of resistance to planning practice in the form of urban social movements (USMs); second, the promotion of Ajeg Bali as a conservative response to any form of development that is destructive to the Balinese, including global tourism; third, the problematic of identity and consciousness brought about by globalization. In the first instance, given the rapid development of Bali over the last 40 years, it is not unsurprising that unpopular planning decisions have been increasingly met with resistance in the form of UMSs (Castells 1983; Edelman 2001).

In 1997, Tommy Suharto proposed to redevelop Serangan (Turtle) Island in North Benoa into a theme park. Many islanders refused to sell their land. Consequently, local authorities set up a command post on the island and began a campaign “of intimidation and extortion in order to encourage islanders to sell…occasionally a community member would be denounced as a member

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of the PKI when he refused” (Nakad 2008: 1–12; Wardana 2014). Since it was supposedly PKI members that Tommy’s father had executed, this label rather discouraged protest and encouraged islanders to sign away their livelihood. Furthermore, there has been significant and continuing protest at the 60-hectare Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park. The park’s main feature is a 120-meter high statue of the Hindu god, Wisnu, riding the winged god, Garuda, making the statue higher than the USA’s Statue of Liberty. Prior even to construction, the entire project was rejected by the people and the priesthood alike (3).

Historically, the ongoing opposition to the development of Tanjung Benoa forms the largest protest movement the island has ever witnessed with 30,000 citizens publicly expressing their resistance to the proposal. Benoa Bay, where the project is located, is an area sacred to the Balinese and contains 70 religious sites and 31 temples. It is slated to include “12 artificial islands, a mini- city with gated communities, Venice-styled canals, townhouses, condominiums, hotels, botanic gardens, Disney-themed parks, marinas, a cultural island, a retail and business district and mangrove chalets” (Cassrels 2016). The project will be built on an existing ecosystem that contains 1,375 hectares of mangrove forests, 5 rivers and 14 villages that contain a population of 150,000 people (Cassrels 2016; Wibawa 2017). Tomi Winata stands to gain US$2 billion on the total cost of the US$3 billion project. So, there is a clear polarization between the Balinese creation of urban meaning and that of international finance capital (Wardana 2014).

Second, in the aftermath of the Bali Bombings in October 2002, a revanchist movement arose whose purpose was to restore Kebalian [‘Balineseness’]. A seminar, ‘Towards Ajeg Bali,’ was pro- moted by a local newspaper, The Bali Post. Unlike other social movements which tend to have a specific objective in mind, Kebalian is almost impossible to define – hence, confusion over ap- propriate action was further extended. It was suggested that Ajeg Bali should be replaced by Ajeg Hindu, which would enshrine Hinduism as the foundation for Kebalian. At root, what was being challenged both by recent USMs and the Ajeg cultural response was Balinese identity, a retreat to the values of village life. But many realize that Balinese culture will only survive through a process of change, so the idea is also resisted. Between these two poles, a whole series of cultural world views become manifest (Allen and Carmencita 2009).

Third, overall, such processes pressured the Balinese to commodify their culture and landscape in line with the so-called ‘cultural tourism,’ despite Ajeg Bali remaining popular. For this to hap- pen, the island had to be packaged for sale – its traditions, ceremonies, sacred sites, performances, ritual objects, and even the landscape. Only then did the Balinese people realize they had a culture, something that could be adapted and sold to the international community – or as Michel Picard (2008: 155) acknowledges:

What happened is that the focus on ‘cultural’ tourism convinced the Balinese people that they have a ‘culture’, something precious and perishable that they perceive as a capital to be ex- ploited and as a heritage to be protected. As it was being manipulated and appropriated by the tourism industry, their culture became not only a source of profit and pride, but also a cause of anxiety for the Balinese, who started wondering whether they were still authentically Balinese.

Third, in order to cope with such an avalanche of problems, predominantly from global tourism, local government in Bali decided to emphasize ‘cultural tourism’ (pariwisata budaya) rather than ‘tour- istic culture’ (budaya pariwisata) (Picard 1996). Since nobody really knew what type of culture was to be protected given its representation in a lived system of values, culture became an ideology that was used to justify all kinds of action. It appeared successful throughout the 1980s, but “in the twenty first century, the Indonesian Bali of the Cultural Tourism Policy has become harder and harder to imag- ine” (Vickers 2012: 289). So, the Balinese also had to overhaul their own cultural mores: in which aspects of Balinese ritual life could tourists take part? What adaptations were necessary to ritual life to

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accommodate the tourist hordes? For example, the beach is a sacred zone for the Balinese to conduct cleansing ceremonies, particularly after ngaben (cremation ceremony) and melis (cleansing ceremony held before Nyepi day which is a Saka New Year celebration). Sacred dance is another region, and dances such as the Sangyang, performed during certain ritual ceremonies, are forbidden to tourists.

Under the onslaught of global tourism, the big question for a Balinese then became: ‘Who am I now?’

Conclusion

Culturalist explanations of Bali derived largely from anthropology are unable, by their very nature, to deal with urban life, a situation in which most Balinese now find themselves. More importantly, all such explanations depoliticize culture as a separate dimension to production, leaving resistance to hegemony subdued and unable to cope with power and the undercurrent of fear and trepidation that is implicit. Our analysis has adopted a different tactic. Instead of using culture to understand the Balinese, the conditions of existence of the Balinese are used to illustrate how culture has been, and continues to be, constituted. The state’s feeble planning action to protect culture disguises its tacit support for private capital against the will of the people for truthful and significant policies that work in the best interests of cultural conservation. Adat land, the epicenter of Balinese social life, is enduringly under threat from capital and the state alike. In consequence, USMs are on the rise, a direct sign that planning outcomes do not reflect the best interests of the people. Paradoxically, we end up agreeing with Ajeg Bali’s tacit support for the 15-meter height limit but for entirely different reasons. Until the existing planning law across the island is appro- priately enforced, threats to adat land are eliminated and corruption is removed from the entire system, and any abandonment of the current principle, ‘no higher than a palm tree,’ could stimu- late an immediate and voracious process of unregulated development and speculation.

Acknowledgements The author would like to gratefully acknowledge:

1 Valuable contribution made by Prof. Alexander Cuthbert in making this publication possible.

2 Udayana University support through its PNBP Research Grants.

3 Support provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Sustainable Higher Education Research Alliance (SHERA) Program for Univer- sitas Indonesia's Scientific Modeling Application, Research and Training for City centered.

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