The Enchantment of Agriculture: State Decentering and Irrigated Rice Production in Bali

This article explores state involvement in the ‘enchanted’ aspects of irrigated rice production in Bali, Indonesia. Modernising states invariably forward what Max Weber called the rationalisation and disenchantment of the world. In irrigation management, the Indonesian colonial and postcolonial states operated staunchly on this model. ‘Enchanted’ elements of Balinese rice production involving temples and rituals were assumed irrelevant and sidelined. Recently, however, bursts of state-funded construction of irrigation temples and shrines suggest a surprising shift. The post-Suharto decentralised state appears to be supporting the enchantment of irrigated agriculture. This article deals with the relationship between legislation under the decentralised state and ritual building activities in Balinese irrigation associations (subak). We examine how contemporary farmers view the new emphasis on ‘ritual technology’. Does it constitute decentralised support of the farmers' world, of local priorities and variance, or a new homogenising project?     

Balinese cultural identity and global tourism: the Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park

ABSTRACT

The island of Bali has been inextricably bound up with the tourism industry. This article examines the dynamic Balinese cultural identity and its ever changing relationship with tourism in the age of globalism through the analysis of a case study: the construction of the Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park (between 1993–2018), containing an enormous statue of the Hindu God Wisnu mounting the magical bird Garuda. The park and statue can be seen as a new cultural landmark for the Indonesian nation and for the Balinese tourism industry. However, the case study of the park also shows how Bali has changed its role within the Indonesian archipelago since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998 while dealing with new challenges of global tourism. Representations of a Balinese cultural identity have evolved from national, top-down level constructions of ‘cultural tourism’ into a global tourist destination through hosting international events at the park.     

Reframing Tri Hita Karana: From ‘Balinese Culture’ to Politics

This article takes issue with the uncritical way in which claims of ‘culture’, ‘tradition’ or ‘local knowledge’ are used in science and policymaking around the Balinese irrigators' association (subak). The growing problems of Balinese irrigated agriculture are increasingly framed in ‘cultural’ ways that are not neutral: such accounts of irrigated agriculture in relation to Balinese culture deeply influence the world of policymaking. In this article we discuss the emergence of Tri Hita Karana (THK; ‘the three causes of well-being’) as an ideology, scientific concept and policy concept in irrigated agriculture and the subak domain. We argue that this ideological concept is not simply ‘local wisdom’, ‘tradition’ or ‘culture’ but requires critical scientific scrutiny as part of wider processes of socio-political change. How is it mobilised? What does its growing popularity mean for our knowledge of Balinese irrigated agriculture, of policy processes directed at the subak and of the workings of policies in real-life contexts?     

The urban design of a Balinese town: placemaking issues in the Balinese urban setting

This research considers the role of indigenous institutions and conceptions of space in the urban design process for producing culturally appropriate designs for Balinese towns. Employing a pluralistic approach (The Image of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1960; Planning a Pluralist City: Conflicting Realities in Ciudad Guyana, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1976; House Form and Culture, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1969, Human Aspects of the Built Form, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1977), a case study of the town of Gianyar, Bali, Indonesia explores the popular accounts on the operative indigenous conceptions of space in contemporary Balinese urban settings. This exploration aims at providing a ground for reconnecting urban design proposals with their cultural context, thus promoting the spatially expressed localism originating from the diversity of cultures which is currently undermined by the highly standardized process of the Indonesian planning system. In particular, for the town of Gianyar, such an exploration provides a set of placemaking issues which is useful in devising urban design guidelines for achieving a town with more pronounced cultural identity.The research concludes that to achieve culturally appropriate places, the design process has to acknowledge the Balinese Hindu psycho-cosmic concept as the core principle in the design of Balinese townscapes. As such, the existing indigenous cosmic territory, which accommodates the relationship between human (microcosm) and environment (macrocosm), along with its adat law and institution, has to be incorporated in contemporary urban design processes. As a result, urban spatial organization, structure and form will significantly reflect the Balinese cultural identity.     

Interaction Ritual Chains and Religious Participation1

This article explores congregational‐level influences on religious participation by adding a distinctively sociological approach to the debate through the application of Collins’s interaction ritual chain theory—a reinterpretation and integration of Durkheim and Goffman—at a congregational level of analysis. Arguing that the congregational worship service can be understood as an interaction ritual, this article offers an initial exploration of the role of effective ritual in increasing religious participation rates. Using the National Congregation Study (1998) data set, the findings from the multiple regression analysis offer support for both interaction ritual chains and religious economies predictors on a congregational attendance ratio.     

The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic: A Sociological Analysis

A new type of sex crime was discovered in the United States in the 1980s – the sexual abuse of young children in ghastly rituals performed by devil worshippers who happened to be their day care providers. ‘Ritual abuse’, as this new sex crime came to be termed, appeared to be epidemic during that decade; hundreds of day care centers were investigated and scores of providers were arrested and prosecuted. This article asserts that the day care ritual abuse scare was a moral panic, in fact, the ‘purest example’ of a moral panic in that the putative threat to children had to be wholly constructed. Using the key sociological elements set out by Cohen (1972/2002), this article analyzes the day care ritual abuse moral panic and concludes by discussing additional key elements that will facilitate future sociological analyses of moral panics.     

"Weapons of the Meek": Ecstatic Ritualism and Strategic Ecumenism among Tamil Hindus in Malaysia

This article examines the politics of Hindu revivalism among Tamils in Malaysia. In examining the dramatic pilgrimage and ritual of Thaipusam and the activities of a leading Hindu reform and performing arts organization, it is argued that the present resurgence of Hinduism is related to a growing sense of displacement experienced by Tamils in Malaysia. Thaipusam, while representing a collective assertion of Tamil and Hindu identity, also signifies "Indian" within an Islamic-modernist discourse of the Malaysian nation. Becoming an ethnic subject within a multicultural nationalist discourse, in turn, produces ambivalence among some Tamils which is manifested in status concerns and social distancing within the Tamil community. Many elite Hindus, in turn, are drawn to the apparently ecumenical and modernist teachings within Hindu reform organizations. The vicissitudes of Malaysian Hinduism bring into focus some of the complex ways that diasporic sentiments are produced and differentiated along lines of status and class within and against modernist state-ideologies.     

Ritualizing the Routine: Collective Identity Affirmation

Groups use rituals to create and preserve collective identities. Separation of sacred practices from customary activities has long been considered a key property of ritual. However, customary activities form the basis of some ritual celebrations. We explain how a different process of identity creation results: identity affirmation. We find that groups affirm their customary practices on ritual occasions when they intend to celebrate practices already associated with the sacred, and we explain the structure of such rituals using a case study of a university centennial celebration. We argue that attention to variation in ritual casts light on the values and collective identity of groups.     

‘The Rule of Men Entirely Great’: Republicanism,Ritual, and Richelieu in Melville’s ‘The Two Temples’

Abstract

This article explores the complex and multifarious reasons behind Herman Melville’s decision to refer to the English playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1839 work Richelieu, or The Conspiracy in his 1854 diptych ‘The Two Temples’. It responds to a critical consensus that has seen the reference merely as a sarcastic attack on William Macready (whose rivalry with the American actor Edwin Forrest was the nominal cause of the bloody 1849 Astor Place Riot in New York), by contextualizing the play within traditions of antebellum American Anglophilia. By using a combination of new critical work on Anglo-Americanism and anthropological ritual theory, I show how Bulwer-Lytton’s play was significant to Melville’s artistic development. In particular, I demonstrate how the play influenced his increasing engagement with republican and theatrical forms of expression that emphasized the importance of filial relationships between America and Britain in a period of increasing hostility between the two nations.     

Mediatized Ritual – Expanding the Field in the Study of Media and Ritual

The purpose of the article Mediatized ritual – Expanding the field in the study of media and ritual is to identify the key debates in present‐day scholarship on media and ritual and bring them into dialogue with current theorizing on the mediatization of society and culture. The article consists of three parts. The first presents a short outline of the study of media and ritual in modern life. The second discusses the idea of mediatized ritual as an evolving concept in the field. The third provides an empirical illustration of the mediatization of ritual by applying the concept to the analysis of the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013). In conclusion, it is argued that to study mediatized rituals in today's society is to face the theoretical and empirical challenge of engaging the two social realms of ritual and media in a close interplay. This intellectual venture changes our understanding not only of rituals and media (what they are and what they do) but also of society. This said, to study mediatized rituals is, in fact, to study society in action.     

Fighting words? Joning as conflict talk and identity performance among African American preadolescents

This study examines how preadolescent African American students in Washington, D.C., used a linguistic practice called ‘joning,’ a style of verbal play similar to ritual insults, in peer interactions. Sociolinguists have focused on how children socialize each other into vernacular styles appropriate for peer group use but often assume that they disalign with social and linguistic norms for classroom behavior. Drawing from a nine‐month ethnographic study that the author conducted in an after‐school program, this article analyzes the structure and function of joning as a vernacular style of African American Vernacular English and its uses in constructing classroom identities. Joning often facilitated student learning, but it was perceived as a socially and physically risky linguistic practice because of its uses as conflict talk in the local community. Focusing on preadolescence as a key stage of language socialization, this article shows how minority students modify peer‐learned linguistic practices to pursue academic success on their own terms.     

Paperwork,rotas, words and posters: an anthropological account of some inner London childminders' encounters with professionalisation

An association with mothering is viewed as the greatest stumbling block in the path to raising the quality and status of childminding. As a broadly conceived rite de passage, this article suggests, professionalisation offers childminders a symbolic route out. It is a ritual process which demands the production of ‘fabrications’; particular artefacts, special words and appropriate modes of behaviour which are produced specifically to meet the regulatory gaze. When childminders engage in performative professionalism, it is proposed, they gain recognition as bona fide members of the children's workforce, but their work is changed in ways which make it less meaningful for them. Presenting a phenomenology of their encounter with a widely diffused ‘technology of quality’, the paper reveals how childminders' collective identity is both endangered and engendered in struggles over particular cultural forms. Interpreting data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork with childminders in inner London, the article draws on and extends work focused on audit culture and performativity in secondary schools by synthesising it with feminist work on women's knowledge and the ethics of care.     

Fabric that weaves stories: Pua kumbu and contemporary Iban identity construction in Sarawak,Malaysia

This article examines the process of identity construction among the Iban indigenous people of Sarawak in Malaysia through pua kumbu – their sacred and ritual cloth. Although the Ibans are popularly known for their headhunting practices and longhouse dwellings, these cultural practices are in major decline and therefore pua kumbu is brought to the forefront as a significant means of identity construction. By illustrating the meanings, narratives, and ceremonies associated with pua kumbu, this article demonstrates that pua kumbu is not just a piece of sacred or ritual cloth; rather, it has significant meanings in the everyday life of the Ibans. It connects the Ibans with distinctly eternal meanings of their life and cosmology, past histories, and their connections to the physical environment. It thus helps the process of maintaining a boundary and identity construction of the Ibans by distinguishing between ‘us and them’ – the Ibans and others.     

Participation Structures as a Mediational Means: Learning Balinese Gamelan in the United States Through Intent Participation,Mediated Discourse,and Distributed Cognition

Participation has presented a complex unit of analysis for interactional sociolinguistics. In this study I add another dimension to participation by considering recent theories related to sociocultural activity theory—mediated discourse analysis and distributed cognition. Drawing on examples from maguru panggul, the traditional pedagogy of Balinese Gamelan music, I argue that participation structures are a mediational means that enable students to augment their learning. Focusing on two participation structures that involve keen observation and listening-in, I also consider how intent participation is a part of these participation structures and maguru panggul pedagogy. What emerges is an understanding of how participation structures used as mediational means can have an effect on the division of cognitive labor within a classroom.     

Deliberative democracy in the real world,the contribution of the capability approach

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Amartya Sen’s writings, this article presents the capability approach to democracy and shows its relevance for the sociological reflection and research on democratic processes conceived as ways to convert individual preferences into collective norms or decisions. Two moments are key in this respect: the formation of individual preferences and their translation into collective norms in the course of public debates. The initial sections present Sen’s conception of democracy, particularly emphasizing its articulation with the notions of ‘positional objectivity’ and ‘conversion’. Then, this conception is compared with two other mechanisms that may be used to coordinate individual decisions or preferences, namely the market and idealistic views on deliberative democracy. The article emphasizes how the capability approach departs from these two conceptions with regard to the two key concepts of capacity to aspire and capability for voice. The final section shows how Sen’s notion of democracy may open up a new field for research, namely the sociological investigation of the informational (or knowledge) basis of democracy.     

Creativity,brands, and the ritual process: Confrontation and resolution in advertising agencies

The intensity of modern business has increased pressure for innovation, which places greater emphasis on creativity. This article explores one of the central sites of creativity in the American corporate world, the advertising agency. We examine how creativity in agencies is managed, controlled, and channeled to produce advertisements. We contend that the brand advertised and the agency’s creative collaborations have properties of ritual symbols and that rituals mediate tension inherent in two forces, stability and change, which define the brand and the advertising collaboration. The article offers an analytical perspective on creativity and a new perspective on rituals and ritual symbols.     

Towards Greater Recognition of the Right to Play: An Analysis of Article 31 of the UNCRC

Children’s right to play is formally enshrined in Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). However, few research studies have explored children’s experiences of play from an explicit rights‐based perspective. Using children’s views to illustrate the multi‐dimensional relationship Article 31 holds with other key children’s rights, this article shows how a rights‐based classification of play emphasises issues such as freedom, safety, choice and inclusion. The article highlights the fact that while Article 31 has provided an impetus for play policies throughout the UK, these have not been developed from an explicit rights‐based perspective. The article concludes by suggesting that the Committee on the Rights of the Child could take a greater lead on this issue through more robust monitoring and enforcement of Article 31.     

Divine Development: Transnational Indian Religious Organizations in the United States and India

This article examines how Indian Americans’ religious organizations send not only financial remittances to India, but also social remittances that shape development ideologies. Comparing Indian‐American Hindu and Muslim organizations, I find both groups draw from their socioeconomic experiences in India and use their position as elite immigrants in the United States to identify and empower their respective religious constituencies in India and overturn different social relations (not just religious practices). Hindu Americans draw from their majority status in India to overturn India's lower position in the world system and support poverty alleviation efforts within a neoliberal development framework. Indian‐American Muslims draw from their poor status in India to overturn economic inequities within India by shifting India's development rhetoric from identity to class. Collective religious identities (expressed through organizations) not only affect the intensity of immigrants’ development efforts, but also their content and ideology. These findings urge us to fold transnational religious organizations into contemporary discussions on migration and development.     

From ritual to drama and back in a rehabilitation day-care center

In this article, the intention is to present the form and meaning of a specific, private, unofficial ritual among a group of elderly people in a geriatric day-care center. The aim is to demonstrate how ritual activity germinates the emergence of spontaneous drama and how this drama itself is transformed back into ritual and vice versa. This pattern takes its shape through the transformative power of play, which keeps the axis of options for elderly people to express themselves with ever open. This ritual event thus becomes a resource for self-empowerment by elderly people.     

Ritual,and child sexual abuse,but not ritual child sexual abuse

Central to the controversy over ritual (satanic) child sexual abuse have been claims concerning agency ‘diagnoses’ of cases. Specifically, it has been alleged that agency findings of ritual abuse have been erroneous and are the product of poor practice. There is, though, little systematic information regarding agency assessment of suspected ritual abuse cases. This paper presents two cases where there was evidence both of child sexual abuse and ‘ritual’ but where agencies adjudged that these aspects occurred independently of one another and were not indicative of ritual child sexual abuse. The existence of these cases underlines the need for a broader and more balanced debate in respect of ritual abuse in general and the agency handling of these cases in particular. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.