Title: "Daily Domestic Offerings versus Tourism
in Bali"Date, Time, Place: 03/05/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Is this small offering basket presented daily in every Balinese home a religious „priming device" that contributed to the perpetuation of Balinese religious traditions despite the general presence of tourism?
In this talk, I will present the main
ideas of my PhD, a work in progress, on daily offerings in Bali.
Drawing on both my education and experience as anthropologist who did
"real" fieldwork, and my education in cognitive sciences, I
am presenting a case study about Balinese domestic rituals.
Using the anthropological methods,
through participant observation, I am analysing how domestic rituals
shape domestic ritual geography, "reactivate" domestic altars,
create social and economic networks in the neighborhood, and shape
the belief in the ancestor's influence on people's life.
To get a clearer image about belief in
the aftelife, linked with belief in the ancestors, I chose to use
experimental methods. I replicated Astuti and Harris's study (2008) on the effect of
religious context on after-life beliefs. Astuti's findings show that
in Madagascar, the context priming (a hospital story versus a ritual
story) had a significant effect on the mental capacities attributed
to the dead. In Bali, I did not find a significant context effect.
Instead of claiming that my results go against Astuti's findings, I
claim, based on my fieldwork observations, that the daily rituals
have a strong context-creating power, stronger than the
context-creating prime stories used in Astuti's study.
Approaching the same object – the
daily offering ritual – from two angles, on different levels, using
social anthropology and cognitive approach, I aim to gain a deep
understanding of the complex implications of having offering ritual
performed daily in mostly each Balinese home.
I claim that these rituals, creating a
strong context effect, also account for the adaptability of Balinese
people: daytime, they work for tourists who are mostly atheists. In
the evening, they go home and find altars, and offerings. They move
successfully between two different contexts, that call for different
implication and behaviour.
Reference:
Reference:
Astuti, R., and Harris, P.L. (2008). Understanding mortality and the life of the ancestors in rural Madagascar. Cognitive Science 32, 713–740.
