Custodians of the Sacred Mountains : : Culture and Society in the Highlands of Bali / / Thomas A. Reuter.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UHP eBook Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Reuter, Thomas A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2002]; ©2002
• Year of Publication: 2002
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (424 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Banua Ritual Domains and the Status Economy of Highland Bali -- 1. The Banua as a Category and a Social Process -- 2. Pura Pucak Penulisan: A Temple at the Tip of the World -- 3. Gebog Domas: The Congregation of Pura Penulisan -- 4. The Ritual Process of a Domain -- 5. Beneath and Beyond Penulisan: Three Related Domains -- 6. A Ritual Map of the Highlands -- 7. The Status Economy of Highland Bali: From the Banua to Smaller Spheres of Social Organization -- Part II: In the Shadow of Paradise: The Bali Aga and the Problem of Representation -- 8. Representation Beyond the Highlands: Preliminary Reflections -- 9. People of the Mountains and People from the Sea: A Balinese Model of Society -- 10. The Anthropological Coproduction of the Bali Aga: A Mirror of Changing Relations -- 11. Representation and Society: A Bali Aga Perspective -- Notes -- References -- Index -- About the Author