Course Description
Students learn about Balinese culture through first-hand experience, visiting communities, temples, and cultural sites throughout Bali. We seek out a diversity of perspectives on the challenges that tourism and development create as the people of Bali and its neighbors strive to maintain their rich natural and cultural heritage.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
For those taking the course as a Graduate or Honors option, in
addition to being responsible for the same assignments as
undergraduates, graduate students taking this course will be
required to produce a 15-page research paper on a topic of their
choice, chosen in consultation with the instructor.
Athena Title
Culture and Tourism in Bali
Non-Traditional Format
This course is offered as one of two required courses in the Bali and Beyond Study Abroad program. In addition to a one-hour daily class, students participate in a range of field-based activities, including visits to Balinese villages, temples, and historical sites.
Corequisite
ANTH(CMLT) 4235W/6235W
Semester Course Offered
Offered summer semester every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Course Objectives: The island of Bali is the source of many classic ethnographic studies and the birthplace of visual anthropology. It is famed for its visual exuberance and for its elaboration of the arts and ritual. There is also a long legacy of western portrayals of Bali as an exotic Paradise, and this continues to be a foundation of touristic portrayals of the island. This program brings Balinese culture alive and allows students to see first- hand what it is like to experience another way of being and to see what the world looks like through another cultural lens. The Bali and Beyond program takes students outside of the “tourist bubble” and, through first-hand field-based experiences, exposes them to the contradictions that arise in the encounter between culture and tourism. This course addresses these concerns through a focus on issues of representation and perspective. There is a rich legacy in Anthropology of confronting issues of representation; how do we represent another culture, and what are the politics of representation when anthropologists study other societies? Students are exposed both to existing representations of Bali – from local people, from tourist literature, etc. – and through photography and writing they are encouraged to examine their own practices of representing what they experience and observe. At each place we visit we will seek out a diversity of perspectives on the challenges that tourism and development create as the people of Bali strive to maintain their rich natural and cultural heritage. Through writing and photography, students will be encouraged to examine and analyze a series of historical and contemporary representations of Balinese culture and tourism. We will approach ethnographic observation as a collaborative project, sharing and reflecting on our observations on a daily basis. Through journaling, the keeping of ethnographic field notes, and other written and visual assignments, students will track their progress from initial observation, to written description or visual representation, to analysis. Learning Outcomes: • Students will be encouraged to reflect on and analyze the complex challenges of balancing culture and tourism in Bali from a diversity of perspectives. • Students will focus their efforts on learning the art and science of ethnographic observation through a range of guided and individual activities focused on culture and tourism. Course activities will be devoted to learning active seeing and listening, which are fundamental to ethnographic research. • Students will be provided with a series of conceptual tools, particularly from the interdisciplinary field of Political Ecology, that will promote critical analysis of processes of globalization as they occur in the cultural context of Bali. • Students will critically examine the practices and legacies of representation by a range of different actors, written and visual, as they have occurred in the context of Bali. They will apply this critical perspective to the representations they produce in course assignments. • Students will be encouraged to acknowledge, analyze, and understand the complexity of challenges associated with tourism and development in Bali and to develop an integrative perspective on issues of culture and tourism by exposure to a range of disciplinary lenses.
Topical Outline
Orientation 1: Introduction to Program; Health, Safety and Etiquette Orientation II: Program Themes: Culture and Tourism/Representation and Perspective Photography and the Politics of Representation The Tourist Gaze Bali from Colonialism to Tourism The Balinese Cultural Landscape Marketing Bali as Paradise Sekala and Niskala: The Seen and Unseen in Balinese Religion and Cosmology Managing Water, Growing Rice The Forms of Tourism in Bali The Effects of Tourism in Bali Responses to Tourism in Bali Transformations and Appropriations of Balinese Spirituality and Aesthetics Art and Aesthetics in Balinese Society The Villa in Bali: Gentrification, Exurbanization, and Amenity Migration The Political Ecology of Marine Conservation in Bali Gender in Bali