Alliances Across Ideologies: Networking with NGOs in a Tourism Dispute in Northern Bali

This paper explores how local actors form alliances and join networks with (inter-)national NGOs working on religious, political and environmental issues in a dispute over tourism development in northern Bali. All of these actors construct a particular concept of landscape which serves their respective goals to contest or defend the planned large-scale tourism projects. Three of these conceptual framings are identified as playing a major role in the conflict: (1) a spiritual Hindu-Balinese perspective mobilised by tourism protesters and NGOs; in alliance with (2) views on landscape based on sustainability and conservation powerfully represented by international NGOs; clashing with (3) a material and economic view of landscape by international investors, who consider land primarily as a commodity generating economic value. These three contrasting views and resulting networks provide an instrument of moral and political pressure for the contending parties in this conflict over natural resources and tourism development.