Unlike Bali
Authenticity and Glocalization in the
Lombok Tourist-Landscape
Bas van Gunst 14-8-2015
Supervisor: dhr. dr. G.A. Moerman Second reader: dhr. prof. dr. M.P.J. van de Port
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Index
Acknowledgements ... 4
1. Introduction: My Presence as Indication of Authenticity ... 5
2. Setting ... 9
2.1 Fieldwork Information ... 11
2.2 Position in the Field ... 14
3. Methods ... 17
3.1 Reflexivity on the Production of Culture ... 17
3.2 Methodology ... 19
4. Theoretical Framework ... 23
4.1 Authenticity ... 23
4.2 The Front- and Back- Stage of the Lombok tourist-Landscape ... 24
4.3 Forms of capital and the language of the elite actors ... 25
4.4 The Construction of Authenticity (and Other Discourses) Through Language ... 27
4.5 The Analysis of Existing Discourses Present in Language ... 30
5. The Lonely Planet ... 32
5.1 Representations of and Discourses About Lombok ... 33
5.2 Lombok’s time is now ... 40
5.3 Summary ... 42
6. Tourists: Relational Authenticity ... 43
6.1 Holiday Goers and Exploring Travelers ... 43
6.2 Bali versus Lombok ... 44
6.3 The Condition of Infrastructure as Symbol of Development ... 50
6.4 Lombok is Located in the Past ... 52
6.4 Development of Tourism: Investing in Lombok ... 55
6.5 Summary ... 57
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7.1 The Indonesian State: Multicultural Domination ... 59
7.2 Top-down Traditionality ... 61
7.3 Sade: a Sasak Traditional Village? ... 64
7.4 Staging Adat [traditions]and Authenticity ... 67
7.5 The Local Government: Progression and Development ... 70
7.6 Summary ... 75
8. Local Actors: Combining Tradition and Modernity ... 76
8.1 Kampung Resort: The birth of tourism in Orong Gerisak ... 80
8.2 Transforming Tradition into Marketable Culture ... 85
8.3 Sameness and Friendliness: The Limits to Commercialization ... 89
8.4 Growing up ... 92
8.5 Glocalization: Thinking Global but Acting Local ... 95
8.5.1 Ale-Ale: Modern Traditions ... 99
8.5.2 Resorts: Global or local space? ... 103
8.6 Being One Thing While Seeming Another ... 105
8.7 Summary ... 110
9. Conclusion: Unlike Bali? ... 110
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Acknowledgements
I want to thank my lecturers of the Research Master Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam for their commitment to my, and any students’, work. Without you I wouldn’t have been able to do this research the way I did. A special thanks goes out the Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta for sponsoring my cultural visa to Indonesia. Above all I want to thank my thesis supervisor, dr. Gerben Moerman, for his help in developing my qualities as a researcher, his patience, his kind words, his words of encouragements, and above all for the time he invested in me.
Further I would like to thank my girlfriend, Juliëtte Cassé, for her support throughout the past four years and for her patience in listing to all my ramblings about fieldwork and writing. Thank you so much Juul. Further I would like to thank my parents for their role in making me the person I am today, their help and backing in any way possible in making my goals come through. My friends -Stijn, Olf, Sjoerd, Julius, Paul, and Wietse- for keeping believing in me, pushing me to do better, and being there for me in rough times.
But above all I want to thank the new friends I made on Lombok, the people that took me in and included me in their community. The people that showed me around the island and accompanied me to so many interviews and fieldtrips. For the people that made me feel at home and cared for me. For Ronny, Adi, Bram, and Hir and their families for always having an extra plate at dinner and for the painful ear they gave me while playing dominos. ‘
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1. Introduction: My Presence as Indication of Authenticity
Sitting at the small warung in the kampung where I spend most of my days talking with whomever walked in I asked the couple that just sat down for a mango smoothie a simple question: “What do you guys think about the village and Lombok?” Yet the answer was one I never would have expected.
“It’s beautiful here, last year we went to Bali and we were looking for something less hectic. There are no tourists here, not like Bali in any case and the place is still, like, pure. … I don’t know, it like the chickens still walk around on the road and no major intervention by companies wanting to destroy nature.(Transcribed from field notes)”
So far no surprises. It was the day before new year’s eve and I had been writing down similar expressions of this discourse in my notebook for over four months now. But what was said next came as a shock to me. I had spent a total of five months in Indonesia and the thought hadn’t even occurred to me yet.
“When mister Adi told us about a researcher staying in the village where the waterfall is I was like; ‘ooh they even have a real anthropologist here, how exiting!’ It’s so exotic, like, you guys [anthropologists] go to these tribes in difficult to reach places and we end up in one of those places! It’s like Andy said, it feels just pure! (Transcribed from field notes)”
I was perplexed. I went to Lombok to do fieldwork on the ways in which the construction of authenticity in interaction between the local population and tourists takes place. For over a year already I was reading about authenticity, the Other, orientalism, and tourism – on the basis of these readings I was under the assumption that authenticity is constructed through symbols. Yet this idea had never arisen in my thought: I, myself as a cultural anthropologist, am a symbol of authenticity for those tourists visiting the kampung of Orong Gerisak.
For these tourists, as for most I spoke to, going up a shady path at the end of the road, without big resorts giving you shade to walk in but simple palm trees to fulfill this function, and devoid of any other tourists, gives a certain sense of adventure; a feeling that you are
6 setting foot in a place that is yours to discover. Walking up to that kampung five kilometers from the end of the asphalt road gives you the sense that you are about to encounter the Real Lombok, the authentic everyday life that cannot be seen in the touristic areas. To grasp the otherness of Lombok that is oh so difficult to sense when walking on a beach where speakers blur out the same pop songs you hear on the radio during your monotonous office job. These things, these sensations, make you feel like an adventurer, an explorer of a forgotten past.
And, when you finally reach the kampung, sweaty and looking forward to a shower at the waterfall, you see him. This large, big, white from sunblock, red-haired cultural anthropologist. At that moment you know that you’ve stumbled upon the real local way of life, that space where no tourist ever comes. It is here that you realize that you truly are of the beaten path. Or so I imagine the experience to feel. My presence in the kampung of Orong Gerisak was for many tourists an indication that they had found a local traditional setting. That they shared a place with the noble savages that inhabited it and no-one else: so pure, so untouched. Their ideas, fantasies, and imaginations about the Other, traditionality, discovery, and above all of finding the authentic all came through in an orgasm of exoticism, romanticism, and orientalism.
Once the local tour-guides realized that telling people they had a real anthropologist in their kampung worked wonders for business I had to tell them when and where I would be in the kampung. I was being shown off as an object, as a symbol of authenticity, to these tourists. I never would have expected that to happen during my fieldwork, but it opened my eyes to a lot of thing discussed in this thesis. For many tourists that visit Lombok the above touched upon discourses are always relational to Bali or their home society. These tourists construct the Lombok tourist-landscape in dichotomies: you are either, or. It is this or it is that. The grey area doesn’t seem to exist: touristic or untouristic, no in-between. I had chosen Lombok for my thesis research as it was being advertised in the Lonely Planet as away from the beaten path, and still right next to Bali. This was going to be the next big destination for tourism in the Global South.
The main research question I set out to answer during my fieldwork was How is authentic culture ideationally and materially constructed by interactions between local actors and tourists in Lombok’s tourist-landscape? As such the focus of this thesis is upon the ways in which, the how, (in)authenticity came to be in interactions characterized by cultural sameness and difference in an ever more globalizing world. For this reason I opted to take a theoretical approach to authenticity that recognizes its constructiveness, its subjectiveness, and the ways in which authenticity is something man-made. Following Wang (1999) it can be
7 stated that objects and cultural aspects are not authentic because they are original but because they are constructed as symbols of such authenticity by its consumers. The observations I made during my fieldwork point to a confirmation of authenticity, or what many tourists seem to refer to as the real local life, as constructed within and through social interaction. Albeit consciously or subconsciously
In this thesis I present the analysis of data collected during a six-month fieldwork stint on Lombok, Indonesia. I start out by researching the construction of authenticity through a critical discourse analysis of the guidebooks of the Lonely Planet on Indonesia and on Bali and Lombok. The meaning these discourses hold cannot be analyzed without researching the social practices and environments of which these discourses are part. This as to constitute what these discourses in the man-made and fuzzy reality of Lombok mean. It follows that the discourses found in the Lonely Planet are traced to the ways in which tourists consuming these guidebooks use them to make sense of Lombok’s tourist-landscape. These insights are then further substantiated through analyzing the ways in which the Lonely Planet, tourists, and the Indonesian state and local government position Lombok. It was analyzed that the Indonesian state aims to include the local actors of Lombok as modern Indonesian subjects through multicultural domination in the form of museumification and adat. The Sasaknese, based on the case study of the Kampung Resort in Orong Gerisak, to a certain degree resist these projections of them as local, authentic, and located in the past through what they call ‘growing up’ –glocalization.
In the chapter 2. Setting I will outline the setting I conducted by research in and my experience within the setting of Lombok. Next up, in chapter 3. Methods, I will outline the methodology I used to conduct my fieldwork and a reflection on how feasible these methods proved to be. As well as taking a more practical reflexive stand on my research experience and what it entails to write a thesis on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork. After this I will outline my 4. Theoretical Framework as to indicate which theories and concepts governed the analysis of the data I collected during my research.
It is here that analysis proper begins. In chapter 5. The Lonely Planet I will outline the discourses present in the guidebooks of the Lonely Planet Indonesia and the Lonely Planet Bali and Lombok. This will be done on the basis of a critical discourse analysis which will yield insights into the tropes used within the text of the Lonely Planet. The key discursive practices present within its text are those of un(der)development, otherness, authenticity, pre-modernity, and discovery.
8 The discourses uncovered during the critical discourse analysis are then traced to the social practice of which they are part. It is here that 8. Tourists: Relational Authenticity will be analyzed as to discover if they use the same discourses as they can read in the Lonely Planet. It can be concluded that tourist construct authenticity relationally on the basis of discourses. These tourists view the development of tourism on Lombok as negative as they think that this will diminish the authenticity they experience.
In chapter 7. State and Cultural Elites is then researched in which ways the Indonesian State and the provincial government try to develop tourism as a method of multicultural domination. It is argued that the Indonesian state employs a process of museumification as to get the Sasaknese to enact their difference within the frame of Indonesian nationhood. Making them modern Indonesian subjects with only a tie to their indigenous culture as a form of heritage to be commercialized for tourists. The case study of Sade serves as example to substantiate these claims.
The following chapter focusses on the 8. Local Actors: Combining Tradition and Modernity of Lombok and the ways in which they resist the top-down internalization of adat [traditionality] and museumification by the Indonesian state. Based on a case study of the Kampung Resort project in Orong Gerisak is argued that local actors resist the commercialization of their local culture as a form of heritage located in the past by the process of growing up. Growing up is the term they use for glocalization. It is then shown how glocalization is used as to create a grey area in which they can both be local and global. As such creating a modern identity –that of the Sasaknese-Indonesians- on the basis of aesthetic formations and as to satisfy tourist longings to imagine Lombok as a local tradition space of authenticity.
In the final chapter 9. Conclusion: Unlike Bali? The previous chapters are brought together as to answer the question that governed my research. It is here that the argument made throughout this master thesis will be neatly summarized. A dichotomous model will be presented that is used by the Lonely Planet, tourists, and Indonesian state as to categorize space and the social environment within it. Finally the ways in which the Sasaknese-Indonesians resist this model and use it to build a glocal identity will be outlined, as well as the implications this has for the construction of authenticity within interactions between them and tourists.
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2. Setting
Fig 2.1 – Map of Indonesia (Google, GBRMPA 2014)
The research laying the foundation for the master thesis you are now reading was conducted on the Indonesian island of Lombok. The area of Lombok is around 4740 square kilometers large and houses an active volcano (Rinjani), which is the highest point in Indonesia with exception of West Papua (Fallon 2001:483). Lombok, together with the island of Sumbawa makes up the Indonesian province of West Nusa Tenggara. The Wallace line marks the western boundary of this province (Indonesia.travel 2014). Historically the island of Lombok has had many colonizers; starting with the Balinese, then in 1894 Lombok was taken over from Balinese rule and brought under Dutch control. During the Second World War Lombok was shortly invaded by the Japanese, till their defeat by allied forces and the Indonesian declaration of independence in 1945 (Grace 2004).
Fallon (2001, following Corner 1989) states that West Nusa Tenggara has the dubious honor of being one of Indonesia’s poorest provinces. According to Fisher et all (1999, following Corner 1989) this poverty is due to a combination of physical isolation, undeveloped infrastructure and scarcity of natural resources. As will be argued throughout this thesis these conditions make it ideal for tourists wanting to experience authenticity. Based on their own research Fisher et all (1999) conclude that being one of the poorest Indonesian provinces translates to one of the highest infant mortality rates and highest rate of illiteracy in Indonesia, with incomes that are two-third lower than the Indonesian national average. The
10 paradox is that, according to Cole (2007), this poverty is one of the key reasons that tourists spending their vacation and money in this sort of settings see them as authentic. But to remain authentic they have to remain poor, or perceived as such by tourists. Making Lombok, and its tourist-landscape in particular, a good setting for research into the construction of authenticity.
While there are multiple definitions of tourism, this research will conceptualize it as an event in which different localities are meeting in cross-cultural exchanges of ideas, goods and cultures (Simpson 1993). This is in line with the United Nations approved International Recommendations that should be part of any national System of Tourism Statistics; the act of tourism is “…a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes (UNWTO.org 2014).” Key here is the emphasis on the movement of tourists to places outside their usual environment, indicating a certain form of global flows between these different environments.
The ethnic group upon which this research focuses are the Sasak. The local Sasak indigenous group dominates the culture of Lombok as, according to the Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok, a total of 90% of Lombok’s population identifies as such (Verberkmoes and Stewart 2007:285). The Other 10% consist out of Chinese and Balinese (Indonesia.travel 2014) According to the CIA World Factbook on Indonesia (CIA.gov 2014) a total of 1.3% of Indonesia’s total population is part of the Sasak ethnic minority, from which a large part is located on the island of Lombok. Grace (2004) states that before a massive wave of conversions to Orthodox Islam prior to the year 2000 the Sasak communities of Lombok where based around adat (customary law) and the Wetu Telu religion. The Lonely Planet on Bali and Lombok identifies this local Sasak religion as compromised of traditional animistic beliefs mixed with Muslim and Hindu teachings (Verberkmoes and Stewart 2007:38-44). Grace (2004) states that in the aftermath of the failed 1965 coupe approximately 50.000 Wetu Telu Sasak’s where killed. After the violence calmed down Orthodox Muslims, together with the army, used force to convert Wetu Telu into Waktu Lima.
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2.1 Fieldwork Information
Fig. 2.2 – Map of Lombok, Indonesia (Google 2015)
Upon entering my research-setting it became clear that my initial plan of focusing on the village of Sade, a village being promoted by the Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB) government and reviews of tourists on Tripadvisor.com as a setting of Sasak traditionality, was going to be problematic. Yes, as a tourist I was more than welcome to visit, but any attempt to move beyond mere, dare I say superficial, tourist-local interactions were thwarted by unwilling Sade tour-guides. Let alone my aim of arranging a meeting with Sade’s village head became impossible after he heard through the grapevines that I was no ordinary tourist. Thus, my original plan of spending a longer stint within the confines of Sade proved to be a dead-end. The other village I initially wanted to focus on, a traditional-handicraft village with the name Sukarara, proved to be too limiting for the scope of my research. While interesting in every aspect and the welcoming of tourists I witnessed and experienced there myself, it seemed that the place was just too far of the tourist-path for the aim of my research; interactions between
12 tourists and locals where minimal in Sukarara and thus basing myself there would mean missing a large part of the structures I find so interesting.
So what to do instead? After this initial blow I decided to take a more pragmatic approach to selecting the locations of my research. I was already located in Kuta Lombok as it is close to Sade, thus starting here seemed the logical thing to do. In the end I decided to focus on the main tourist-hubs of Lombok’s five regencies as outline of my field. For this I used the tourism division of the island that was already made by the NTB government and the NTB and Lombok tourism board and that corresponded crudely to the five official regions of Lombok, namely: West Lombok, North Lombok, Central Lombok, East Lombok, and South Lombok. I decided to visit the main tourism-zones with the exception of North Lombok as the only notable tourism activity there is the possibility to climb Rinjani – attracting a type of tourist that I already covered by visiting the central and eastern part of Lombok as they do similar hikes up the mountain.
After being in Yogyakarta, Java for a month to learn the Indonesian language I was ready to enter the field on the last day of August 2014. Flying to Lombok via Jakarta my first taste of Lombok was upon my arrival at (1) the newly constructed international airport which lies at the center of Lombok. The close by village of Praya serves as Lombok’s traffic hub, it is here that all main roads intersect. As such Praya poses an ideal location for the airport as reaching most of the main tourism destinations only takes up to thirty minutes from here.
From the airport I took what I presume to be a taxi, being new to Lombok I of course overpaid, to the town of (2) Kuta – the main tourist hub in the South Lombok and part of the Mandalika tourist zone (Kuta, Sade, the Novotel Resort, and Gerupuk). Here I spend the first week of September 2014 trying to gain access to the village of Sade before refocusing on the surfers that flock to the south of Lombok for its waves. After unsuccessfully trying my hand at surfing I gave up and talked to surfers at Kuta’s home-stays, in the local warungs, and by visiting the Novotel Resort.
In the middle of September 2014 I drove up to the west of Lombok as to observe and experience the Senggigi festival (a cultural festival showcasing Lombok traditional culture) in the resort town of (4) Senggigi. This is the main tourist hub of Lombok and all the international resorts can be found here. The Senggigi tourist zone consists of, naturally, Senggigi and Lombok’s Gili islands (where I spend four days in November). Here I spent my days talking to tourists visiting the Senggigi festival and talking about tourism with locals and expats working in Senggigi’s tourism industry. I observed the week-long festival on a daily
13 basis before returning to the Mandalika region to hang out with expats and locals owning (small) warungs on the beach and the main road through Kuta.
The first two weeks of October 2014 where spend following tourists staying in Kuta to the traditional villages of Sade, Sukarara, and Loyok. As to see how interactions between these tourists and the local population took place. The second halve of October consisted of traveling around with my girlfriend that came to visit me, it is here that I found out about the kampung Resort. More importantly, and unfortunately for my girlfriend, most of these two weeks I was ill. I had a bacterial infection that resulted to two trips to the hospital in Mataram.
In November 2014, after getting better, I drove my scooter up the shady track to (3) Orong Gerisak. A kampung that is part of the Tetebatu tourism zone located in the central (and east) part of Lombok. Here I learning about the local tourism development project called the Kampung Resort. A project which aims at creating social and economic upward mobility for all of the region through attracting tourists. During November 2014 I invested in developing in depth friendships with a purpose in the region of Orong Gerisak as to understand what makes tourism so attractive, the ways in which they see tourists, the ways in which they see themselves, and by following local tour-guides on their job and while waiting. The last week of November 2014 I was in the town of Sembalun located high up the mountain of Rinjani. Hir and Bram, two of my main informants from Orong Gerisak, took me here to meet the people behind the Sembalun Community Development Centre. Here I learned about the ways in which they try to develop tourism in the region and the ways in which they try to secure a better future for the young community through free English and tourism courses.
A large part of December 2014 consisted of waiting, smoking, drinking coffee, and playing domino with the actors involved in tourism activities –tour-guiding, small business owners- at the Warung monkey Forest in Orong Gerisak or Warung Sasaak down the road in Tetebatu. The insight derived from this month of deep hanging out make up most of my theoretical insights concerning the Kampung Resort. The waiting and talking with the local population of the Tetebatu region was supplemented with joining these tour-guides on tours through the region with tourists and talking to tourists walking through Tetebatu and Orong Gerisak. Occasional trips to Kuta, Sade, Mataram, and Senggigi were made by me and Salman –a local journalist from Tetebatu and as such well-connected- to talk about tourism, adat, and local cultural practices with a range of interviews as result.
The final month of my research, January 2015, consisted out of an extra focus on the young community of the Tetebatu region, learning more about local culture, helping in the rice paddies and gardens of my informants, and more interviews. The last month the
14 interviews focused on land-conflicts on Lombok, the construction of Sade as traditional village, and talking to Sasaknese academics. As such January 2015 served as a period in which I wanted to fill up gaps in the data I collected. However, after starting the writing process in February 2015 I have found out that I still have a gap in my data concerning the tourist type of holiday goer. I wish I devoted more time to this type of tourist as he differs substantially from the exploring traveler type of tourist.
2.2 Position in the Field
The position I occupied in the field is one clouded in the construct of colonialism and its discourses. I am not only a Dutch white male visiting the state of Indonesia to study its subjects On top of this historical problematic power-relationship between these two nation-states I am a cultural anthropologist as well. I will be offending no-one when I state that the discipline of anthropology, as we now know it, indeed came into existence as part and parcel of the colonial context (Asad 1973:18-19 in Pels and Salemink 1999:5). Thus even before going into the field I had to be aware of the fact that me being a Dutch anthropologist in Indonesia, the “pure” scientific observer, placed me in relationship surrounded by post-colonialist tones with “my” native informants. For my position in the field this meant that I possibly had to deal with and negate (post-)colonial and classic-anthropological power-structures in moving around in the Lombok tourist-landscape.
During my fieldwork “my” native informants and I where equals. Of course it felt like this for me in interacting with these new friends. but that doesn’t make the above statement true. When I take a more objective look at our interactions I must come to the conclusion that like the forgone dyadic image of anthropology the above “..view of the anthropological relationship ignored its situatedness in a history of global inequality, perpetuated by the unequal power relations between a universal anthropological subject and his ‘local’ coproducers of knowledge (Pels and Salemink 1999:3).” Indeed, the way I was treated by my friends and informants in Orong Gerisak now seems to be based in the history of global inequality and colonialism that we all share, albeit on different sides of the same coin.
While for many Sasaknese -the majority that I only met hastily, irregularly or when I felt it was beneficial for my research to play with the roles I held in the field- I occupied the position of tourist and in some cases I was typified as a tourist plus – a foreigner that does more than drink, sunbath, and do the occasional cultural visit: but tries to experience the real Lombok. Even in the position of the tourist, maybe especially in this position, the situatedness
15 in a history of global inequality can be seen. Tourists vis-à-vis the Other that they visit on Lombok embody a position of power, almost a dominance over the local subject due to their whiteness, Westernness, wealth, and just by being born in nation-states that set out to colonize the Orient until recently. This is not to say that tourists, nor me during my stay in the field, enforce this relationship of power on purpose (or at all). However, many Sasaknese seem to enforce this relationship of power vis-à-vis the visiting Other. It’s almost as if the tourist is placed on a pedestal; he or she is invited to weddings as his whiteness seems to transfer some sense of status to the Sasaknese present, everything is done to ensure that the tourist enjoys his stay, the served food and the house one is invited into is referred to as simple and not up to Western standards. But maybe all this is because the local subject realized that tourism is where the money comes from, that serving the wishes of the tourist as best as possible is in his own best interest as well.
No matter what position in the field you hold as bule [Westerner] you have to deal with these unequal power relationships that more often than not seem to be enforced by the Sasaknese. Who tend to place themselves in the dominated or lower position in these interactions. During my stay in Orong Gerisak I was able to negate most of these instances, at least so it feels like to me. I did my share of chores, helped in the rice field when possible, and joined in with the day-to-day activities. The Sasaknese where always enthusiastic when I did this, going wild when I once again slipped while walking in the rice field: adopting a grim outlook on these instances it can maybe be argued that it where occurrences where the white Dutch anthropologist lowered himself to the same position as his local informants, I opt not to take this road.
I, however, cannot claim that my position as white, Dutch, and anthropologist –as the Other- in Orong Gerisak didn’t influence my position in the field. During the first evening in Orong Gerisak I was made to accept the role of consultant to the project I came to research. This role was awarded to me by the local men due to the position in the field I occupied in their eyes or so I think. In their eyes I was educated in a manner that was out of their reach and because of this they looked at me for advice. Thus, I became an unwilling consultant, I became a teacher, and I became respected by many in the village for skills that I have. Skills that up till now I considered as ordinary. Having people your own age move their head down to touch your hand as a sign of respect, hierarchy, and indication of your and their status is one of the weirdest feelings I have had to experience in my life.
Thus, it is impossible for me to ignore that I held a position of power, or at least as placed in this position by my informants. I did not ask for special treatment, in fact I asked for
16 them not to do it. Yet I received it. In a sense this means that I was always an outsider in the field. At the same time it taught me a lot about the structure of the field. I am many things, but because of something that I cannot hide, my skin, I was always seen in a certain way - no matter what role or identity I tried to bring to the front stage in a given interaction. With this I do not necessary mean that I was seen as white but rather I was seen as rich, Western, and modern. My position in Orong Gerisak wasn’t one of worry. unlike the people there I didn’t have to worry about if I would be able to feed my family the next day, signaling once again my position as outsider.
The moments I felt less like an outsider where the moments when I had to interact with journalists, intellectuals, and powerful government actors. At these moments I got to, it was even expected, discuss academic topics. It was at these instances that we really shared something that made us the same, something that was inclusionary. These moments of sameness however seemed to enforce my position of status outside these interactions: being able to talk with people of status as equals excluded me from the status-group many subjects of Orong Gerisak placed themselves in. In effect the inclusion I felt in the above mentioned talks meant that I was, in the eyes of the Sasaknese, positioned higher than my informants.
In the end I can only hope that I gave the people I interacted with a sense of equality, as this is what all interactions for me have felt like. I know that while many regarded me as higher in status as themselves, I hope that me being the person that I am at least gave them the feeling that we were true friends and not in some post-colonial interpersonal relationship to each other. I would like to note that my informants and the people of Orong Gerisak where able to use my position of status in the field in their advantage: me staying in the Kampung Resort for over three months was used by my informants to foster further interest from the government in the project, their attachment to me meant that they have risen in status as well, and pushing me forward as a speaker at a tourism board meeting meant that their project got recognition and legitimized.
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3. Methods
In the previous chapter I have outlined the setting in which I conducted my research and gave more in-depth information on what my fieldwork precisely entailed. Finally I discussed the position in the field I held as a white Dutch cultural anthropologist. In the upcoming chapter I will turn my eye to the ways in which I conducted my fieldwork. I will start by outlining how I hope I conducted my fieldwork on a more theoretical reflexive level concerning the practice of ethnography itself. Afterwards I will turn to the methods I have used during my fieldwork on Lombok and take a more practical reflexive stand as to determine the feasibility of these methods for what I in actuality did.
3.1 Reflexivity on the Production of Culture
Trust me, I am an anthropologist so what I present to you in my thesis is real. Based on my fieldwork stint of six months I can state that I anthropologically prove the truth behind the interactional construction of authenticity. The real-ness of authenticity is proven due to my writings on the basis of my fieldwork and the subsequent analysis of data. I have lived it so you, the reader who can only imagine it on the basis of my writing, must believe that this is the reality. Or so it wrongly seems.
Anthropology and its main method of “…ethnography is a written representation of culture (Van Maanen 1988:1).” But a representation of whose culture, of whose social reality, and of whose ideational norms and values? Which actors will this piece of writing represent? Does it represent my informants and their culture? That of the tourists visiting Lombok? Or does it simply represent me as anthropologist and the academic culture I so eagerly want to be a part of? Thus, who am I representing in this thesis?
Now that I have to write about my data and informants I have this creeping feeling that all I really did was use them for my research. All the interactions are placed in the frame of data and that translates to me wondering if I really liked the talks we had, the drinks we shared, the secrets we told, or that I liked those moments because they gave me something I needed. I can’t stop to wonder if I pushed conversations in the direction of my research interests, if I would have been as caring for some stories if it wasn’t for their importance to me as researcher. And it drives me crazy.
I cannot escape the feeling that I used the people I came to care for on Lombok for my own egotistical goals. That I went back home and have to write about them and they are still
18 there, living their life in poverty hoping for a better future. All the while I sit here reducing them to mere objects in my argument and analysis, mere words on paper. I can’t shake the last thing everyone said to me while visiting the houses to say goodbye, “you make good promotion for us.” Yet here I am writing something that analyses their dreams and longings, their most intimate wishes for a better future, and not something that promotes them as a tourist destination.
In his book on the crisis of representation van Maanen (1988:126) states that “[r]ealism … remains a laudable and thoroughly respectable goal” for the social sciences. Indeed the account you will read in the upcoming pages is a realist one as it includes social scientific jargon, totalizing description, generalizations, native interpretation, and all-seeing narration (Marcus and Cushman 1982). What you will read is my vision of authenticity in the Lombok tourist-landscape, it is my reality that forms the basis for my argument, what you will not read is the absolute and unquestionable reality. I hope I will be, I know I have been, able to negate the traps of realism in the thesis you are reading now.
Presenting you an account that is the sole version of the unquestionably truth is impossible. Geschiere wonders correctly “…whether the anthropologist’s personal experience suffices to chart all the ‘givens’ that set the terms for the ‘possible’ in the societies we study (Geschiere 2010:143). The answer is simple: No, personal experience over a six-month fieldwork period is not enough to do this. But I hope that I make a convincing case on the basis of the sample of ‘givens’ I witnessed during my fieldwork. In Abu-Lughod’s (1993) case the question of ‘givens’ becomes one of particularity: she succeeds in illustrating the ‘givens’ individuals deal with through her stories. Based on these narrative accounts that include the ‘givens’ Abu-Lughod is able to show how individuals on a particular, or group, level struggle to attain the ‘possible.’ It is not necessary for her to give all the ‘givens’ since the ‘possible’ is context dependent. Abu-Lughod found this “better” method in what she calls writing against culture and the ethnography of the particular ; writing against the dangerous fiction that the idea of separate essentialized culture poses for the construction of difference. As such Abu-Lughod argues for a methodology that recognizes the power of ethnography in making difference and otherness a hierarchical relationship between essentialized and homogenized cultures (ibid.:10).
This is my aim as well. As such the methods I have used to gather my data serve the purpose of giving the reader the tools to achieve an understanding of the context in which the particular experiences of the actors take place in the descriptions found in this master thesis. In the case study of the Kampung Resort I will outline the ‘givens’ that make up their world,
19 that drive their strive for upward mobility. Based on the terms they use themselves for this process, growing up, I will try my best to theorize about the ‘possible’ -as to truthfully write about their act of growing up within the local context of glocalization. I hope to show how the global flows that make up the particularity of Lombok through the actions of its local actors, the tourists that visit it, and the Indonesian state are examples of the ‘givens’ I ame across and not the one universal reality. I Hope I show on the basis of the ‘givens’ that are given to me what is the ‘possible’ for the actors I write about within a glocal world made up out of various cultural flows and the closure of identity that accompanies it.
Yet, completely escaping from the hierarchical homogenization Abu Lughod (1993) writes against proves difficult. As the actors presented in this thesis make these distinctions themselves as to create an dichotomous model of authenticity. I hope I have moved beyond their essentialized hierarchical view of difference and otherness as to illustrate the process that lies behind it. I, myself, am guilty of homogenizing groups of actors in the work you read now, as portraying each and every ‘given’ on an individual level proves to be near impossible when writing about multiple groups of actors in multiple spaces. Please be reminded that there are always exceptions to the structures I pose and that this account does not give the only ‘possible.’ The real-ness of authenticity thus isn’t proven, but rather comes into existence due to my writings on the basis of my fieldwork and the subsequent analysis of data. I can only hope to do my informants justice; to have written something that represents them as much as it does me.
3.2 Methodology
My ethnographic research and the data collected during fieldwork will be crosschecked and substantiated through the practice of triangulation.1 As outlined above I have visited multiple
location within the context of Lombok. As such this thesis spans across four locations of which two case studies are presented in the following pages – those of Sade and the Kampung Resort. Data collected in these particularities has yielded interconnected information concerning authenticity and adat, how these notions are constructed and by whom. Before my arrival on Lombok a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been conducted. Through a
1
Triangulation made it possible to crosscheck findings and to build a stronger theoretical case concerning one interpretation of the social practises that where given. Through triangulation and thus by breaching out horizontally to different locations it is assumed that a higher level of external validity is achieved, since this multi-sited approach enables me to find common aspects among multiple cases (Burawoy 1998:19 and Salazar 2010:190,191). In the end making better theorization of authenticity on Lombok possible since micro and macro are better relatable.
20 critical analysis of the discursive practices present in various versions of the Lonely Planet guidebook- one of, if not the travel guide for Western tourists visiting Indonesia- an initial conceptualization of the field has been made, which informed the initial focus during fieldwork proper.2 Straussian Grounded Theory (SGT) poses the methodological backbone of my master thesis, as constant comparative method it is the framework within which all my sub-questions are related to one another.3 The data collected during and before my fieldwork
has been constantly analyzed and compared as to arrive at theoretical conceptualizations that move past mere descriptions and into the realm of theory (Strauss and Corbin 1998:274).
The main method I have used to gather data is the ethnographic method of Participant
Observation: being an active participant in the setting and its performances while analyzing
social practices and interaction that take place within that particular setting as a form of data. Participant observation has been utilized in every site included in this research. To understand what tourism and the discourses surrounding it in the Lombok tourist-landscape mean to Sasak actors living in its touristic particularities the method of deep hanging out has been used – drinking coffee, smoking, talking, and playing domino where an important part of my fieldwork experience. This method has also yielded information on possible discrepancies concerning the depiction of their “authentic way of life” in the tourist-landscape and their everyday experience of life away from the tourist gaze. Following Becker (1996:630 my aim has been to grasp the lived experience of those actors I followed around. Looking back now I wish that I had given more attention to the holiday goer type of tourist and the ways in which they spend their time on Lombok.
Embodiment: During the initial stage of my fieldwork many of the local actors on
Lombok did identify me as being a tourist. For me as a researcher of precisely those interactions this posed an opportunity to use this identification as a way to experience firsthand the construction of the Lombok tourist-landscape and its discourses. This is in line
2
The CDA is conducted on the basis of Fairclough Discourse and Social Change (1992). Due to CDA’s focus on not only the discursive practises in texts but to the social reality as constitutive and constituted by these processes with CDA it becomes possible to offer a explanatory critique of discourses and their construction of underlying asymmetrical power relations (Jorgensen 2002:88). Based on my fieldwork data the CDA will be completed through the inclusion of the importance of social practises on the discourses at hand.
3
The form of grounded theory followed is that as stipulated by Strauss and Corbin in Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (1998). The SGT methodology focuses upon the micro-sociological level of cultural analysis and social action within this perspective (Kelle 2005). As such SGT is the method par excellence for relating the empirical findings of my fieldwork on authenticity and the authentication of Lombok tourist-culture to larger theoretical and abstract notions of the construction of authenticity in a modernizing globalized world in which Lombok becomes more and more included through the rapid growth of its tourism industry.
21 with Csordas’ (1990) conceptualization of embodiment as a phenomenological method in which meaning is constituted within and through the body; it intermediates between external structures and internal subjectivities. Thus, the embodiment of a tourist identity has given me firsthand experience of what it means to be seen as tourist in the Lombok tourist-landscape and the possibility to see how front and back regions are constructed by local actors vis-à-vis visitors in material, discursive and performative sense. Through this embodiment, well in actuality my whiteness, I found the key case study for this thesis. Adi, a tour-guide in Orong Gerisak, saw me and my girlfriend driving around the region and asked if we needed a tour (see fig. 3.1). Adi became one of my key informants for my thesis. I myself love to travel and to find those local spaces aay from the beaten path, as such I embodied what drives the tourists I analyze in this thesis. In the end I understand the longings that drive my love for travel better through this thesis.
Informal Interviews are included to make a more in-depth understanding of the views
of the actors present within the field possible. While through triangulation between multiple sites an improved focus on external validity is achieved, semi-structured interviews serve as method of vertical scaling. Thus, the inclusion of informal interviews achieved a deeper understanding of the case studies at hand and a more in-depth knowledge of historically contextualized and geographically situated practices (Salazar 2010:190). The practices that have been inquired into depend on the actors but range from questions on background, meanings and cultural displays and what certain discourses mean for these specific actors. These informal interview where conducted whenever possible. While waiting with tour-guides for tourists to show up; with tourists while enjoying breakfast at our home-stay; while hiking through the rice fields with a small tour-group; after being called by one of my informants that tourist sat down at the local warung. My only regret is that I haven’t recorded as much interviews as I would have liked, forcing me to work from field notes.
Deviant Cases: To ensure a better-rounded body of data interactions outside the
standard tourism-setting have been researched during my time on Lombok. My aim was to find out why certain practices do (not) adhere to the “authentic” and why this is the case. Through focusing on social practices and interactions that create friction between the local view of Lombok and that of tourists I came to understand my research better. Examples of these deviant cases are the ways in which capitalist logic and authenticity” intertwine in a given setting - as is the case in Sade and the newly build Sasak style villas of the Novotel Lombok- and the views tourists and local actor have concerning them. My aim to understand the glocal art form of Ale-Ale started as a deviant case but as my analysis progressed it
22 became clear that the glocal character of this art form was incorporated into the dichotomous thinking by tourists, guidebooks, and the Indonesian state as a zero sum game: you are either modern or pre-modern. There is no space for glocal practices in the thinking of these actors, while local actors use it as a means to construct a more modern identity.
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4. Theoretical Framework
In the upcoming pages I will outline the theoretical framework for my thesis on the construction of authenticity within the Lombok tourist-landscape. Throughout this thesis I argue that the construction of authenticity is a relational endeavor in which various views of various groups of actors collide within the same setting, which in the case of my thesis is Lombok. To trace is process it is important to understand the main theories and concepts that have guided my thinking while writing this these. In the follow pages the basis on which the discourses found within the setting are constructed are explained. The framework presented in this chapter forms the basis on which actors construct and move within the setting of tourism on Lombok.
4.1 Authenticity
While many authors working within the anthropology of tourism see authenticity as a reason for tourists to visit other localities (for a complete list see Wang 1999) they are skeptical about the existence of such a phenomenon in the empirical reality. They refrain from using the term authenticity, but instead opt form terms such as staged authenticity (Esperanza 2010, MacCannell 1973), re-enactment (Soguk 2003), infinite rehearsal (Cross 2006), existential authenticity (Wang 1999), they refrain from using the term authenticity altogether except to indicate the tourist’s desire for encountering the Other as such (Bunten 2008), or to show that it is constructed by powerful actors to make culture seem authentic to the tourist gaze (Philp & Mercer 1999).
All in all authenticity seems to be nothing more than a construction that tourists hope to encounter on their vacations, a depiction of the Other that offers them a mirror for their own lives; a fantasy that informs their desire to travel (Bunten 2008, Esperanza 2010, Simpson 1993, Teo & Leong 2005). Tourism is thus informed by imagination, by the longing to travel to imagined worlds that are still inhabited by a noble savage. These tourists want to experience the (hyper)real -an experience of reality that is born out of fantasy and desire (Appadurai 1996, Bunten 2008, Bruner 1991, Spracklen 2011). In this sense for certain types of tourists traveling has become a search for authenticity, for a journey towards the experience of authentic culture and otherness.
The focus of this thesis is upon the ways in which authenticity becomes constructed within interactions between actors, culture and difference and sameness. For this reason the
24 theoretical approach to authenticity is focused upon its constructiveness, its subjectiveness and the ways in which authenticity is something mad-made. It thus can be stated that objects and cultural aspects are not authentic because they are original but because they are constructed as symbols of such authenticity by its consumers (Wang 1999). An addition is needed here, I assume that the producer constructs them as such symbols as well. This ‘constructed authenticity (Wang 1999)’ in the Lombok tourist-landscape takes place within the exchange of objects and ideas between the Indonesian and local government, the local actors of Lombok, and the tourist across makeshifts link of difference and distance. As such the “authentic” objects and culture produced by the Lombok Other regain value, not because they are real and original, but because they are part of the real experience the tourist is after (Appadurai 1996, Bunten 2008, Bruner 1991, Spracklen 2011). Tracing the way in which this process is formed on, and forms, Lombok will ultimately yield insight in the ways in which authenticity is constructed and sought after.
4.2 The Front- and Back- Stage of the Lombok tourist-Landscape
Te tourists discussed in this thesis try to gain access to “real” authentic experiences at the destinations they visit. As such the Lombok tourist-landscape is the setting where the construction of authenticity takes place relationally and symbolically. Following MacCannell’s (1973, 1976) adaption of Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) I to argue that any tourist setting, in this case the Lombok tourist-landscape, is characterized by front- and back-regions based upon a subjective understanding of what entails an authentic social structure in culture and even society at large.
MacCannell (1973, 1976) sees the front- and back-region distinction as a six stage continuum in which the extremes are “real” and the middle four stages are in one way or another staged for tourist consumption. The mystified front region, or the fake back region, breathes an aura of authenticity, which according to MacCannell (1973) is staged. Thus, for the authenticity seeking tourist “[i]t is always possible that what is taken to be entry into a back region is really entry into a front region that has been totally set up in advance for touristic visitation (ibid.:597).” This means that it is possible that the producers of a certain touristic setting have staged the front stage, what the tourist is able to see and experience, in such a way as to give tourists the impression that they have entered an authentic back region, thus mystification is used by these actors to give a “show” on the front-stage that gives the tourist a sense of “real” reality (ibid.:591). MacCannell states that “[s]ightseers are motivated
25 by a desire to see life as it is really lived, even to get in with the natives, and, at the same time, they are deprecated for always failing to achieve these goals (ibid.:592).”
While I have to agree with MacCannell (1973, 1976) that tourists are fueled by a desire for authentic life, their constant failure of experiencing this authenticity is overstated by him. The model presented by MacCannell (1973, 1976) for understanding the difference between front- and back- regions is very structuralistic and is a perfect illustration of his idea that there is an objective authentic dimension to culture that we as researchers can pinpoint, but which is unachievable for shallow superficial tourists. It is here that the concept of constructed authenticity (Wang 1999) becomes problematizing for MacCannell’s staged authenticity in front-stage, which are disguised as back-stage, regions. If we follow the tenets of constructed authenticity (Wang 1999) it can be stated that front stages arranged to appear as back-stages, or anything based on this continuum really, can be authentic, albeit in a subjective sense. The question then is; makes the unoriginality of this staged authentic encounter the overall experience inauthentic?
In the end MacCannell’s (1973, 1976) model of staged authenticity in front stages is a useful way for thinking about the construction of authenticity and the manipulation thereof, but his insistence that those settings are inauthentic because they are staged in some form or another unrightfully presupposes that there is some universally static, objective, and natural form of authenticity in the world. If we look at authenticity as subjective, the manipulation of becomes much more complex and realistic in the man-made world of social interaction and its constructions.
4.3 Forms of capital and the language of the elite actors
It should be clear that there are imminent power-relations present in the construction of, and argument over, authenticity. Authenticity, as a discourse on and over Lombok thus incorporates forms of political, cultural, social, and religious capital through its symbolizing character and the contestation thereof. It can be argued that authenticity is a resource that is mobilized and constructed through and by the actors in the Lombok tourist-landscape as a way to claim, resist, desire, and dream about the political, cultural, social, and religious capital it symbolizes. The reasons for this differ from group to group, even from actor to actor. Wang (1999) already discussed this subjectivity and the fluidity of the symbols its begets. In the end how authenticity becomes symbolized and constructed in the Lombok tourist-landscape informs us about the norms, values, and desires of those actors that are
26 entangled in its structures and the power it yields. Tracing the construction of authenticity tells us what the Real Lombok is, and if there is only one version of this reality.
The construction of authenticity, and the symbolization thereof, is thus based on ideas surrounding various forms of capital and more importantly so on the exchange of these ideas through language. As always there are groups of actors that are more profound in utilizing the language surrounding these forms of capital and in structuring their ideas as the dominant ones. Thus these dominant actors are better equipped at constructing which spaces, objects, and ideas are to be seen as authentic and as symbols of it. While others, with lesser capital, are placed within the structure the discourses of the dominant actors have created through language. This is not to say they are powerless, they express their agency and their claims over these forms of capital by resisting, defying, and appropriating the elite language used to express their own assertions over what is authentic and why. Language -when seen as an expression of cultural, social, political, and religious capital- is thus able to structure and relocate objects, symbols, and subjects into the canon of culture, heritage, and finally authenticity. As such language is able to structure and restructure social practices and locations
The above is what Adinolfi and Van de Port (2013) call museumification. what Adinolfi and Van de Port (2013) set out to illustrate that museums are not only places where experts relocate objects into a canonized form of culture, rather they argue, we should see museum-like qualities as an expressive elitist language that endows objects with a sense of prestige; it lifts the object from the ordinary and gifts it special abilities, it makes the object extraordinary (ibid.:287). I would like to add to this that objects and subjects relocated through the use of this elite language thus become symbolic repositories for the expression of cultural, social, religious, and political capital and ultimately the symbolization of authenticity in the Lombok tourist-landscape. While not explicitly about tourism the article by Adinolfi and Van de Port (2013) touches upon one of the main theme’s in the tourism literature, namely the objectification of heritage and tradition.
My understanding of Adinolfi and Van de Port’s (2013) argument is that the museumification of the most famous Candomblé priestess’ living quarters offers visitors an insight into the Goffmanian backstage of public life that remains hidden for most outsiders. For the Candomblé the museumification of the living quarters thus gives them a mechanism through which they can take the creation Afro-Brazilian heritage in their own hands by means of appropriating the language of the Brazilian cultural elites. Rather than the iconizing gaze perpetuated upon the Candomblé culture by museums at large the priestess’ living quarter
27 now becomes an empowering act in which they take the representation of their own culture into their own hands (ibid.:301). They continue on to argue, based on an analysis of reviews of those who visit such heritage sites, that this museum-like backstage enables visitors to perceive an intimate encounter with the aura of the person who once lived there; it enables them to imagine an encounter with what is “really real” (ibi.:285). It offers the visitor a way to overstep their fantasies and to see the everyday reality of the objectified site, to see the “authentic” back-stage.
This view allows Adinolfi and Van de Port’s (2013) a way out of the objectifying qualities of museumification. In the end the article allows us to see the objectification of culture in a more positive light, it shows us that the elite language of the museum can serve dominated subaltern people to protect their traditions, culture, and space from outside objectification and as a safeguard against the iconization of small portions of a culture. While Adinolfi and Van de Port’s (2013) paint us a picture of a group with the power to construct their own depiction of heritage towards visitors vis-à-vis the power of state and cultural elites, one remains to wonder what about those groups that aren’t as endowed with agency as the Candomblé? What about those groups of actors on Lombok working in the tourism-sector that are dominated by state and cultural elites of Indonesia and Lombok itself. How can they control their depiction to the outside world? In this thesis two opposite case-studies will be used as examples to show the difference between museumification through state and cultural elites, in which the local population of Sade is placed in the canon of Indonesian Otherness, and the process of self-museumification, in which the actors of the Orong Gerisak Kampung Resort take matters in their own hands and position themselves in a position of power vis-à-vis the political and cultural elites.
4.4 The Construction of Authenticity (and Other Discourses) Through Language
For the reasons discussed in the previous paragraph it is important to use a model of analysis that incorporates this elite language of the museum and the discourses surrounding the expression and construction of cultural, social, religious, and political capital. To use a model that has confined in its own language a method to explore the meanings of objects, subjects, and the construction of culture and heritage as symbols of authenticity. Such a model that focusses on how reality becomes materialized through interaction is found in Ter Keurs’ Condensed Reality: A Study of Material Culture (2006). Ter Keurs himself worked as the curator for Indonesian collections at the ‘Rijksmuseum voor Volkerenkunde (National
28 museum of Ethnology)’ in Leiden, the Netherlands. As such Ter Keurs is fluent in the elite language of the museum and can be said to write based on the elite discourses surrounding it when tracing the meaning of objects and the canonization thereof. Ter Keurs himself states that:
“… my own position as a museum curator probably influences my views on material culture. Material culture is certainly not the only valuable entry to culture. I do not want to advocate a neglect of other ways of looking at culture since I still consider language, social structure, politics, religious and /or cultural norms and values to be very legitimate entries for research (Ter Keurs 2006:201,202).”
For this thesis, this view is of great importance as Ter Keurs outlook on culture focusses on the relocation of objects in the canon of culture and heritage, while at the same time using the power-dynamics that can be found in the symbolic construction of authenticity and its contestation through his focus on the object. Thus, in the fashion of museumification as described by Adinolfi and Van de Port (2013), Ter Keurs sees objects as repositories of meaning -a cultural elite view of the process. Ter Keurs however leaves open other possibilities for research. In this thesis not only what museumification is will be included, but more importantly how language is used as to endow objects and subject with certain meanings.
As can be read above Ter Keurs writes based on the tradition of the museum, thus using the elite language it uses, meaning that his focus is more on the object itself then on cultural phenomena surrounding material culture. While the focus of this thesis is more on the cultural phenomena and the material construction thereof through language and discursive practices. Using Ter Keurs his model, uncritically and without placing the symbolization of cultural phenomena) at its center, will give a very one-sided view of the construction of authenticity, the view of the cultural elites - as if the one true reality and the materialization thereof can be known. Ter Keurs seems to see reality as straightforward and absolute, as only existing out of one possible outcome. As such I will be using a modified model based on his work, a model that incorporates reality as consisting of cultural, social, religious, and political capital and the contestation thereof by different groups of actors.
Ter Keurs (2006:58) puts forward a model for the study of material culture in which the object is placed in an assemblage-like process in between the ideational construction of
29 reality. Reality is dynamic and a changing subject influences the object as an idea-matter-idea process (ibid.:64). Ter Keurs conceptualizes this assemblage in the following way: “with material evaporation we indicate the process of deriving meanings from physical objects, and with material condensation we indicate the process of materializing already existing meanings in objects (ibid.:59).”
The object itself and the meanings derived and instilled in it thus form what ter Keurs calls a material complex, which is never a pure material thing; the objects matter and the subjects meaning collide in the entity of the material complex. Ter Keurs thus wants to “…search for ideas or concepts that have been materially condensed and for meanings that are derived from the objects (ibid.:133).” Time, place and context influence the material complex since intentions, choices and strategies of producing and consuming subjects the consumer change.
The illustration above shows that Ter Keurs (2006) develops a model which enables us to comprehend the world of objects and its relations with the world of ideas, to see how material objects with subjective elements construct material and social reality (ibid.:58,70). This is similar to the aim of this thesis; to see how material objects, or symbols and space in this case, construct and are constructed by material and social realities. Only in this thesis there is not only a focus on materiality, but a broader focus on the language, discourses, and power of actors that construct and change what is authentic and why. Thus, based on an adaption of Ter Keurs (2006:60) schematically illustration of the creation of material complexes in interaction between producers and consumers, it can be stated that “[t]he processes of the construction of meaning [authenticity] and the change of meaning are processes that shift from idea to matter [symbol] and from matter [symbol] to idea (ibid.:60).” This is in line with what Wang (1999) calls constructive authenticity as an the
30 exchange of symbols and ideas between the productive Other and the tourist consumer across makeshifts link of difference and distance based on language, discourse, and the capital of various actors within the setting.
4.5 The Analysis of Existing Discourses Present in Language
It should be clear by now that the construction of authenticity is based in interaction and that these interaction are grounded in the position actors have within society and the setting, the cultural, political, religious, and social capital of these actors, and the overall power-relations present in language. Thus the construction of authenticity is related to modes of power. Based on the adaption of Ter Keurs (2006) his model it is now possible to trace the construction of authenticity and its symbols in language, at least the interaction that actors use to construct these symbols. However, a theoretical backbone to analyze the discourses that are expressed in language and the power-relations that are part of it is still needed to supplement this endeavor.
To analyze and substantiate the impact of the social practices created in the Lombok tourist-landscape and the power-relations that are part of it Critical Discourse Analysis as conceptualized by Fairclough (1992), with underpinnings from Jørgensen & Phillips (2002), will be used. I will be tracing the:
“… overall progression from (i) analysis of discursive practises, focusing upon the intertextuality and interdiscursivity of discourse samples; to (ii) analysis of texts (plus ‘micro’ aspects of discourse practise); to (iii) analysis of the social practise of which the discourse is a part. These three dimensions of analysis will inevitably overlap in practise (Fairclough 1992:231).”
Fairclough (1992:225-227) defines his version of discourse analysis as an interdisciplinary undertaking in which the textual production and consumption of the text are related to power relations inherent to the social practices to which the analyzed discursive practices correspond. Based on an analysis of the popular travel guides from Lonely Planet I will analyze, through the use of critical discourse analysis, the social and cultural impact the discourses communicated in guidebooks have on the Global South. Plus I will trace the discourses that are present in the social practices of the political, cultural, and religious elites, the actors working in tourism, and the tourist. This method of analysis will provide “…a
31 detailed example of the way in which existing, macro-level power structures are replicated at the micro-level of discursive practice (Thompson 2004:103).”
Fairclough argues that it is only possible to explain why the discourse practice is as it is through analyzing and specifying the social practices of which the discursive practices form a part (Fairclough 1992:237). This contextualization is needed to understand the two foregoing dimensions of the critical discourse analysis in its broader social light (Jørgensen & Phillips 2002:86). This contextualization has three parts, namely: 1) the order of discourse – the relationship between social practice and discursive practice on the basis of interdiscursivity (Fairclough 1992:237-238, Jørgensen & Phillips 2002:86). 2) The social matrix of discourse – “… the aim is to map the partly non-discursive, social and cultural relations and structures that constitute the wider context of the discursive practice (Jørgensen & Phillips 2002:86 on the basis of Fairclough 1992:237).” 3) The ideological and political effects of discourse – what are the effects on systems of knowledge and belief, social relations, and social identities (Fairclough 1992:238)?
Based on the analysis of modality “… the discursive practices upon which [the text] draws [are] identified, and linked to the underlying power relations which may be reproduced by the interaction (Thompson 2004:108).” As with the model of Ter Keurs (2006) this form of Critical Discourse Analysis focusses on the relation between matter and idea -on the relationship between the partly non-discursive practices, the structures present in the setting, and unlike Ter Keurs (2006) has an eye for the underlying power structures that make up reality and the discourses itself. There is a direct relationship between the construction of reality and the discourses that are part of this reality. Based on the analysis of discourses we should look at these realities, then back at discourses. It can be stated on the above sections that the construction of authenticity moves from idea or discourse, to symbol, object, or reality, back to idea or discourse and as such changes depending on the change of the context: there is a move from language or text such as the Lonely Planet, to the reality of forms of capital and power structures of Lombok, to language.
Thus to understand the discourses present in the Lombok tourist-landscape, and the construction of authenticity through these discourses, one first has to understand and specify the social practices, the contextualization of reality, of which these discourses are part. As such we first have to understand the actors, their place, and their roles within the Lombok tourist-landscape before we can understand how authenticity is constructed in interactions between these actors. The following chapters will focus on contextualizing the actions of these actors, their role within the tourist setting of Lombok, and the power structures they
