Custodians of the Sacred Mountains: Culture and Society in the Highlands of Bali

Custodians of the Sacred Mountains: Culture and Society in the Highlands of Bali
ISBN-10
0824824504
ISBN-13
9780824824501
Category
Social Science / Customs & Traditions
Pages
400
Language
English
Published
2002
Publisher
University of Hawai'i Press
Author
Thomas Anton Reuter

Description

Custodians of the Sacred Mountains is the first comprehensive ethnography of the Bali Aga, a large ethnic minority that occupies the island's central highlands. The Bali Aga are popularly viewed as the indigenous counterparts to other Balinese who trace their origin to invaders from the Javanese kingdom of Majapait, who have ruled Bali from the fourteenth century A.D. Although Bali remains one of the most intensely researched localities in the world, the Bali Aga have long been overshadowed by the more exotic courtly culture of the south.

A closer analysis of the changing position of the Bali Aga within Balinese society provides a key to understanding the politics and social process of cultural representation in Bali and beyond. The process is marked by a blend of representational competition and cooperation among the Bali Aga themselves, among the Bali Aga and southern Balinese, and later among the island's aristocratic elites and foreign colonizers or scholars, and state authorities. The study of this process raises important issues about the establishment and maintenance of status and power structures at regional, national, and global levels.

Custodians of the Sacred Mountains explores the marginalization of the Bali Aga in light of a critical theory of cultural representation and calls for a morally engaged approach to ethnographic research. It proposes an intersubjective and communicative model of human interaction as the foundation for understanding the relative significance of cooperation and competition in the cultural production of knowledge.

Other editions

Similar books

  • Indian Myths & Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America: A Translation of Franz Boas' 1895 Edition of Indianische...
    By Franz Boas

    This volume of Native myths and legends is an indispensable document in the history of North American anthropology.

  • Culture and Customs of Cuba
    By William Luis

    Discusses Cuban traditions, culture, religion, media, literature, and arts.

  • The Oldest City
    By Paul O'Neill

    His daughter Elsie, with her brother, opened a studio on the north side of Henry Street, at Bates Hill, with an entrance angled between the two streets. The brother soon took off for points west and the sister was forced to carry on ...

  • Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy
    By Richmond Pearson Hobson

    A true adventure story of a man who built a four-million acre cattle empire in the remote ranges of the British Columbia Interior.

  • Organization And Innovation: Guru Schemes and American Dreams
    By David Knights, Darren McCabe

    While the KM literature takes licence with Polanyi, it also seems to ignore Nonaka and Takeuchi's rejection ofthe idea that knowledge can be managed as opposed to created (see also Von Krogh et al. 2000).5 Von Krogh et al.

  • The 1980s
    By Bob Batchelor, Scott F. Stoddart

    In another first , Diahann Carroll joined the cast as Dominique Devereaux , a chanteuse once involved with Blake . Carroll's became the first African American to appear as a series regular on a major serial drama .

  • Culture and Customs of Peru
    By César Ferreira, Eduardo Dargent-Chamot

    An important film director of this period was Sigifredo Salas , who made a number of popular films including Gallo de mi galpdn ( The Rooster in my Shed ; 1938 ) , El guapo del pueblo ( The Good - looking Man of the People ; 1938 ) ...

  • Culture and Customs of Thailand
    By Arne Kislenko

    ... musical ensemble khruang lang khong khlang amulet khruang muk process of design in mother-of-pearl inlay khruang ... frequently in Thai art and architecture klang medium size kluey buah chee bananas and palm sugar dessert krajappi ...

  • The American Dimension: Cultural Myths and Social Realities
    By W. Arens, Susan P. Montague

    ... John H. Wood * Federal Reserve Bank of New York , New York , NY , USA Economics Department , Wake Forest University , Winston - Salem , NC 27109 , USA Received 1 April 2002 ; received in revised form 13 August 2002 ; accepted 20 ...

  • Socioeconomic Background and Achievement
    By Otis Dudley Duncan, David L. Featherman, Beverly Duncan

    Otis Dudley Duncan, David L. Featherman, Beverly Duncan. Coombs , L. C. , Freedman , R. , Friedman ... In N. Smelser and S. Lipset ( Eds . ) , Social structure and mobility in economic development . Chicago , Illinois : Aldine , 1966 .