Other Example

Another example of the ‘imposed etic’ (Bery, 1990; in Sofield) may be found with reference to Bali, where numerous analyses have criticized tourism as a destructive agent of change (Hanna, 1972; in Sofield, 2000). However, the research of Picard (1995) and McKean (1989) inter alia, both working independently in Bali over a twenty-year period, demonstrates that by using a more actor-oriented (emic) approach the interrelationship between tourism change and culture change cannot be viewed as a ‘one-way street’; the host communities adapt to and in turn modify that tourism which takes place within their social space. Picard has termed this ‘touristic culture’: through tourism, culture has been transformed into the main economic resource of Bali and by the same token Balinese culture has become a major bargaining point with the central Indonesian Government, tourism authorities and tourist operators (Picard, 1993; in Sofield).

Picard chronicled the way in which the Balinese elite responded to the imposition of a tourism development plan from Jakarta which was based on an ‘outsider’ view of their culture by defining and refining in a comprehensive way their ‘Balinese-ness’. Over a period of eighty years, from 1971 to 1979, they held a series of seminars under the joint auspices of the Directorate General of Culture and the Directorate General of Tourism which resulted in the formulation of the ‘doctrine of cultural tourism’ for Bali and the signing of an agreement between the two Directorates General. This established the Balinese Commission of Cooperation for the Promotion and Development of Cultural Tourism (Komisi Kerjasama Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Wisata Budaya) whose chief objectives were to:

        i.            increase and extend the use of culture for the development of tourism; and

      ii.            to use the proceeds of tourism development for the promotion and development of culture.