Bali's Cosmopolization in the Economy of Pleasure

The Bali bombing attacks occurred as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia were preparing to invade Iraq and extend the parameters of the global war on terror. The perpetrators, members of the Islamist militant organization Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), explained their actions in terms of U.S. incursions into holy Muslim lands, especially the Middle East and Indonesia itself. The JI leadership viewed America and its allies, including Australia, as moral contaminants and infidels, whose cultural values and practices were deeply offensive to the purity of the Muslim faith (Barton Reference Barton2004; Hitchcock and Putra Reference Hitchcock and Putra2007; ICG 2003, 2004; Lewis and Lewis Reference Lewis and Lewis2009a; Sidel Reference Sidel2006; UNDP 2003).

In this context, the militants regarded the Balinese as collusive and treacherous allies of the West and its imperial disposition (Lewis and Lewis Reference Lewis and Lewis2009a; Nordholt Reference Nordholt2007). However, purist Islamist groups like JI tend to view Bali's cosmopolization as merely the apex of an ongoing, historical betrayal. This betrayal began in 1949 when Sukarno's new nationalist government rejected the Jakarta Charter, the precepts of sh'ariah law, and Islam as the official national religion. In order to maintain the integrity of the new state and support non-Muslim territories like Bali, the national government's pluralist principles inevitably incited a range of violent secessionist movements from Darul Islam to Jemaah Islamiyah itself (Intan Reference Intan2006; Nordholt Reference Nordholt2007; Robinson Reference Robinson1995).

Bali's engagement with global tourism, which has brought vast numbers of non-Muslim peoples into Indonesia, has clearly served to intensify these political passions. The aggregate number of mostly Western international tourists grew from a few hundred in 1970 to around sixty thousand by 1980. From this period, with the inception of Suharto's own personal investment strategy, the numbers and accompanying tourism infrastructure grew exponentially. By 2002, tourist arrivals had grown to a record 1.2 million but the militant attacks in 2002 decimated visitor numbers in the following year; while not as dramatic, the 2005 attacks also contributed to a significant decline in visitor numbers. A snapshot of the impact of the attacks is illustrated in figure 1 below.

Figure 1.

Annual direct foreign tourist arrivals (Bali Provincial Government, 2009).

While originally attracting travelers from the advanced Western states of Europe, the United States, and Australia, Bali's tourist cosmopolis has evolved to include visitors from Japan, Eastern Europe, East and Southeast Asia, and various parts of Indonesia itself. This diversification in recent years is related, at least in part, to the bombing attacks. In response to the sudden downturn in tourism numbers after the 2002 bombings, especially from Australia, the Indonesian government embarked on an extensive recovery and tourism promotion campaign (Hitchcock and Putra Reference Hitchcock and Putra2007; Pambudi, McCaughey, and Smyth Reference Pambudi, McCaughey and Smyth2009; UNDP 2003). With money provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, government agencies developed a new strategy that sought to stimulate domestic tourism and diversify the source of international visitors. This diversification was accelerated even further after the 2005 bombings, as the number of Australian visitors declined again and travel warnings in the United States and Europe were reiterated.

The execution of three of the Bali bombers late in 2008 provoked another dip in Anglophonic arrivals, as Americans, Australians, and Britons heeded their governments' travel warnings about the likelihood of Islamist reprisal attacks. While some of this relative decline in Anglophonic visitors might also be explained in terms of the emergence of alternative, developing world tourism destinations, it is also very clear that a new wave of non-Western visitors (both Muslim and non-Muslim) are now arriving in Bali. Figure 2 shows a 76 percent increase in foreign tourist arrivals between 2006 (the year following the second bombings) and 2009. The figure also presents a breakdown of the top nine national groups arriving in Bali over the past few years. During this period, tourist arrivals from Australia gradually recovered and by 2009 this country was ranked first, followed by Japan.Footnote ⁵ The balance of other nationalities is also changing quite markedly. The proportional increase is far greater from non-Western countries such as China (390 percent) and Malaysia (83 percent) than for the United Kingdom and Europe (average of 58 percent).

Figure 2.

Direct foreign tourist arrivals and market rank 2006 and 2009 (Bali Provincial Government, 2009).

In a peculiar way, the increase in non-Western tourism in Bali might seem to approximate one of the primary objectives of the Bali bombers and purist Islam more generally, that is, the diminution of Euro-American imperialism and influence in Indonesia and the (re)colonization of Hindu Bali by Muslims from Java, Malaysia, and beyond. It is certainly clear that domestic tourists are increasingly dominating the shopping malls and main beach areas of Kuta, especially during peak Indonesian holiday periods and outside peak Australian holiday periods. The number of Indonesian tourist visits to Bali each year is now estimated to be approximately three times that of international visitors. Indeed, Asian peoples are outnumbering European-based peoples and cultures across much of Badung, including the new developments from Dreamlands through Kuta, Seminyak, and Tanah Lot. With the accelerating integration of the Chinese middle classes into the global economy of pleasure, the exponential increase in PRC tourists to Bali is likely to continue, even in the face of the global financial crisis. Along with new arrivals from places like Belarus and Russia, the domestic and other Asian tourists who now come to Bali have radically altered the island's cosmopolitan mix and cultural ethnoscape. Not surprisingly, this cosmopolization of Bali is having a direct effect on the spatial and cultural vista of Bali, and the ways in which the Bali monument is being used and understood, that is, the ways in which the meaning of the site is being ideologically fostered.

Shaping the Monument Homology

As indicated in the introduction to this paper, the Bali monument has been imagined and established as a communal totem around which a complex aggregation of beings might find their common humanity. This commonality is constituted not simply through a shared compassion or conceived enemy (terrorists-terrorism), but through a distinctive and powerful imaginary of Bali itself. The core of the homology, that is, is an imagining of Bali's own durable and self-projected conception of tradition, religion, ritual practice, and cultural harmony. These cultural conceptions of tradition are thereby mobilized through the island's transformation into a global tourist destination and integration into the global economy.

In this sense, the homology that is shaped into the monument site is bound to the sense of Balinese tradition and its commodification in the modern tourist economy (Lewis and Lewis Reference Lewis and Lewis2009b). This is not to suggest that the Balinese rituals and traditional practices are in any way artificial; it is rather to note that the imaginings of the past have been re-rendered into the island's transformations, including the pleasures and vicissitudes associated with modernization, cosmopolization, and global integration.

It is precisely these imaginings that are also central to the conception and design of the bombings monument. In particular, the Balinese notion of harmony-in-contention (duality and balance) was critical to the design. Balinese-Hindu mythology is strongly focused on the spiritual interdependence of good and evil. Within this mythology, the bhuta kala demons are not considered entirely evil, nor are their spiritual nemeses considered entirely wholesome. Rather, the dialectic of evil and good that characterizes Balinese Hinduism and the older forms of ritual culture is formed through an eternal contingency; evil is not subjugated, redeemed, or eradicated from the human body or spiritual world more generally since it is the predicate of good. The principle of rwa bhineda or “two in one” conceives of good and evil in terms of a mutual identification that seeks merely to minimize the harm that evil may inflict on the living (and the dead).

While many Balinese communities and individuals have been able to sustain this imagining of a rwa bhineda harmony, even through the shock of rapid (post)modernization, the horror of the bombings tested the island people's theological, ethical, and social resolve. Like the revenge massacres perpetrated in Bali against Chinese and alleged Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI; Communist Party of Indonesia) sympathizers in 1965–66, the Bali bombings left the local people raw and disturbed (Hitchcock and Putra Reference Hitchcock and Putra2007). Since the 1970s, of course, the Balinese had been compelled to marshal the ideal of harmony and its cultural imagining both in support of rapid tourism development and against its excesses. While delivering significant economic benefits to the island and Indonesia more generally (Pambudi, McCaughey, and Smyth Reference Pambudi, McCaughey and Smyth2009), tourism and global integration also challenged Bali's ecological, social, and cultural sustainability; the bombings, in this sense, were simply the apex of a more enduring and less visible crisis that perpetually destabilized the ideal of harmony and Balinese cosmopolitanism (Howe Reference Howe2005; Lewis and Lewis Reference Lewis, Lewis, Grenfell and James2009a, Reference Lewis and Lewis2010).

Thus, while the Indonesian government and the IMF focused on the social and economic conditions of recovery after the bombings (UNDP 2003), Balinese community leaders sought to restore harmony through the rebalancing of the rwa bhineda. Indeed, as Michael Hitchcock and Darma Putra (Reference Hitchcock and Putra2007) have clearly demonstrated, the Balinese themselves were concerned about the outbreak of evil that rapid development and cosmic imbalance had generated. To this end, the Bali Tourism Authority, Hindu priests, and other community leaders embarked on an intense program of ritual cleansing, much of which was constituted around interfaith congregation and religious dialogue.

The Bali bombings memorial and the first commemoration service were conceived in terms of these broader processes of economic restoration, social appeasement, and cosmological cleansing. Within a week of the attack, the idea of a memorial at the site of Bali's “Ground Zero” was reported in the Bali Post. An academic from Udayana University, Luh Ketut Suryani, argued at a meeting with the Badung Regency that the bombings were a “strong warning” (peringatan keras) and “punishment” (hukuman) from the gods because Bali's rapid tourism development had deviated radically from religious values (Bali Post 2002). Thus, while the construction of the monument was clearly motivated by “modernist” and secular concerns about the Balinese tourism economy and the circumvention of religious or sectarian violence, the monument was also sanctified in the island's religious and spiritual aegis.

Indeed, for the Badung Regency, which commissioned the project, the secular and religious functions of the memorial were largely indistinguishable; the bombings had critically damaged Bali's reputation as a safe tourist destination, but this harm was itself integrally linked to cosmological imbalance. This interdependence of secular and cosmological conditions was clearly a part of the design brief and the propagation of the monument's ideological homology—a harmony that collapsed political, ethnic, and religious difference. As illustrated in figure 3 (above), the design is composed of three elements: a memorial wall, a replica of a Balinese-style temple, and a fountain. The structure is set on a raised stage or gallery that has steps on the east and west sides. In the front of the structure at street level is a small, decorative amphitheater that is illuminated at night and appears as a beacon guarding the approach from the nightclub district of Legian Street.

Figure 3.

The Bali bombings monument prior to modifications in 2010. Photo: Belinda Lewis.

While there were minor modifications to the monument in 2010, the design principles have remained constant. These principles have been outlined in various forums by the architect, I Wayan Gormuda:Footnote ⁶

• • As with most Balinese temples, the shrine is marked as an elevated site, moving the visitor toward a more transcendent perspective of heaven and purity. The monument is therefore set on a raised platform or gallery, with steps approaching from the east and west sides. There is also a small amphitheater set at street level. This marks the symbolic approach to the memorial and the gateway from material to spiritual conditions.

• • The large “tree of life” (kayon) represents the lives of the bombing victims and the prayers that will guide them to heaven. The tree brings together the material and spiritual conception of life and the peace that returns, even through tragedy. The fearsome Bhoma image, which appears at the base of the tree, is the ubiquitous guardian of holy shrines in Bali; the Bhoma drive away evil spirits.

• • The altar is a hybrid design space. The backdrop is a huge memorial board displaying the name and nationality of each of the 202 identified victims. On either side, the altar provides space for flower offerings, messages, and prayers. As with domestic and public shrines and temples, the altar is a significant site for spiritual cleansing and daily libation.

• • The Balinese compass rose in the pond at the approach to the monument orientates the memorial and the visitor toward Mount Agung, the holiest landsite in Bali and the home of the gods.

• • The triangle connecting the three half circles represents the Hindu trinity of the three most significant deities—Brahma, Visnu, and Siva.

While the kayon, Bhoma, temple, deities, and fountain were conceived and constructed as symbological references within the religious traditions of Bali, the memorial board, gallery, altar, and location of the memorial have connections with Western religious and secular symbology. Moreover, the memorial board and the victims' names were presented in a distinctly Western style, applying European-derived functional elements; these include the gold lettering set against a polished black background, and the names that are ordered according to nation and alphabetical listing. These rational and lineal structures, in fact, directly challenge the universalism and cyclical nature of the rwa bhineda and the monument's Vedic elements.

Even so, the Regency and the Indonesian government wanted the monument to be ready for the first commemoration ceremony of the bombing in October 2003 when world attention would again be turned toward Bali. As Lewis (Reference Lewis2006) notes, this commemoration was particularly important for Australia and the Australia-Indonesia relationship. The Indonesian government and Badung Regency wanted to promote a sense of “restored harmony” that would in turn revivify Bali's reputation as a safe holiday destination. Along with other things, the Australian government used the commemoration ceremony to promulgate its own sense of nation and validate policies on the “war on terror” (Lewis Reference Lewis2006). With Australian troops engaged in warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sense of national destiny was fortified in 2003 by news video footage of the monument and the commemoration ceremony, which was broadcast directly into Australia.

These respective national, security, economic, and ideological claims were thereby inscribed into the complex bricolage of design elements and the ceremonial politics of the first commemoration (Lewis Reference Lewis2006). In prescribing an alignment of communal, ethnic, national, secular, and religious claims, the homology of the monument sought to foster a miraculous ideological commonality. Not surprisingly, the precarious convolution of design and cultural elements threatened to fracture as the various meanings of the monument within this secular setting began to struggle for primacy in the cosmopolitan cacophony of the Legian streetscape.

Beyond the Homology: Balinese Narratives of Memory and Harmony

The Balinese themselves, in fact, identified this volatility. Many in the Balinese community opposed the construction of the memorial, rejecting its claim to universal value and reverence. There was much public debate about the issue through local radio and newspapers, particularly the Bali Post. Among the opponents, some believed that the memorializing of a catastrophe would simply perpetuate the negative spiritual and social impact of the “tragedy” (Asmara Reference Asmara2002).Footnote ⁷ In an interview conducted in 2009, Bali's governor, I Made Mangku Pastika, former head of the Bali bombings investigation team, reflected on the local and transnational value of the monument and its detractors. With the prospect of further developments on the memorial site and the establishment of an international “peace park” on land at the site of the Sari Club bomb blast, Governor Pastika noted:

In many ways, contentions over the meaning of the site for Balinese and “outsiders” is not surprising since the “traditions” of Vedic-Balinese culture are inscribed by the divine cycle of purity, contamination, and renewal. Within this perspective, “memory” exists within the hierarchy of the ephemeral material world and spiritual eternity; to fix memory beyond the natural or cosmological rhythms of time is to interrupt the inevitability of life, death, and rebirth.

Indeed, this Western notion of “cultural preservation” has always been problematic in Bali since it seeks to create an atavistic relic that resists the necessity of decay. In her discussion of Bali's colonization, Margaret Wiener (Reference Wiener1994) points out that it was the Dutch who imposed concepts of preservation and tradition as they supported the colonizer's administrative and political interests (see also Lewis and Lewis Reference Lewis and Lewis2009a). In more recent times and as we intimated above, this idea of an authentic or traditional Bali has been mobilized in tourism discourses in order to identify the island as a distinctive product in the global economy of pleasure. This remodeling of Balinese tradition for consumption by domestic and international tourists represents the integration of “tradition” (as strategically conjured elements of the past) with modern economic and cultural practices. Bali's tourism boom and integration into the global economy of pleasure is neither arbitrary nor ideologically neutral. It is an interpellation within a broad cultural history that is replete with struggle and violence, as much as harmony and cosmological balance.

Thus, debates among the Balinese about the meaning and value of the memorial—and its related Peace Park—are clearly influenced by these historico-cultural elements and also by claims to a modern, global cultural politics (Turmakin Reference Turmakin2005, 21–82). The Balinese, quite rightly, contemplate whether the homologous “memory” that the monument is designed to represent is either culturally or morally generative—whether the monument actually speaks for the hosts and host culture, or is simply an extension of the global economy of pleasure and the ambiguous interests of the cosmopolis. In this sense, the monument resembles the hybrid dance forms that have evolved to serve the interests and pleasures of “outsiders,” most particularly as entertainment for the resort guests in Sanur and Nusa Dua. For many Balinese, in fact, the monument has added very little to the cleansing and interfaith rituals that local communities themselves have initiated. The memorial seems more credibly like a gesture of appeasement, or even apology, to those foreign nations whose citizen-consumers have powered the tourism economy.

Fragile Cosmopolitanism: Counter-Narratives of Pleasure and Displeasure

While Balinese traditional conceptions of history and memory are challenged by the presence of the monument, these anxieties are linked to even deeper and more durable concerns about the loss of autonomy associated with global integration—including global geopolitics. As noted above, Jeff Lewis (Reference Lewis2006) argues that the Australian government and media used the first commemoration of the 2002 attacks to support national grieving and justify policies associated with the global “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq. The monument was an ideal backdrop, as it propagated a sense of East-West harmony and a collaborative grieving that inspired an impression of multilateral approaches to transnational terrorism. Through this symbolic amplification of its own national interests and perspective, Australia was able to “imagine” the memorial space as a site of reverence and remembrance, a place in which the holy force of the war on terror could be articulated as a transnational, ideological, and even cosmological mission. Retribution, in this sense, could be reconfigured in terms of a divine purpose that transcended national, ethnic, or religious difference: terrorists are the enemy of all humankind.

As Aristotle duly noted, memory is the most powerful faculty in the creation of narrative. In this context, the commemoration service sought to overlay the monument with a moral and political aesthetic, by which the memory of the attacks became ossified as pure ideology and Western knowledge systems were elevated as collective salvation. Thus, the gaps and threads of the design and construction process became sanctified through the public presentation of the monument and the broad discourse of glory. The discourse of the commemoration, that is, sought to seal or obscure the gaps in an extravagant invocation of a unity that was propagated by the ideals of “Bali harmony,” economic cosmopolitanism, and a politics that transcends national, ethnic, religious, and secular boundaries. History was wound into a perfect and unitary thread that defied, as it mobilized, those excesses of violence upon which it was predicated, that is, the Western model of global domination and hierarchical economic and knowledge systems. The economy of pleasure, upon which the original violence and the site itself were constructed, was thus laminated into the concrete edifice, deflecting the vision of visitors away from the West's own disposition of violence and toward a more benign transnational and transcendent projection. Through the monument's homology of cultural elements, the West was able to imagine itself as the progenitor of global pluralism, innocence, and universal freedom.

Since the first commemoration, however, this claim to ideological purity has been continually tested by the immanent dynamic of culture and Bali's own intrinsic crisis of transformation. As Henri Lefevbre (Reference Lefebvre and Nicholson-Smith1991) continually reminded us, spaces can never be fixed or unified, but are besieged by cultural mutation and the counter-narratives that human groups perpetually generate through social change. In particular, the further cosmopolization of the Kuta-Legian tourist zones of Bali have brought new cultural practices and consumer modes to the area. As noted earlier in this paper, the increasing diversification of the Kuta tourist ethnoscape has contributed further to the island's complex cultural contiguities and the contentions arising from such transient and intense modes of territorialization. Amidst this assemblage of bodies, desires, practices, and beliefs, the monument's propagated ideological purity seems extraordinarily discordant; its claims to unity and totemic cosmopolitanism sit in a peculiar disjunction with the swarm of human typologies and their respective claims to primacy and pleasure.

These complexities and the fragility of Bali's cosmopolitanism are evident in the perceptions and practices of visitors to the monument site. In order to examine this complexity in contrast to the monument's propagated homology, the authors conducted a series of empirical studies from 2008 until 2010. The research included participant observation and open-ended interviews with visitors to the site. While this research does not claim to be exhaustive, it illustrates the ways in which a disjunctive mix of counter-narratives is being generated around the monument and it highlights some important issues that reflect more broadly on new modes of transient territorialization and cultural transition in Bali.

While the aims of the research were outlined in the introduction, further detail on participants and methods is provided below. The findings from both the participant observation and interviews have been synthesized and presented as an integrated discussion.

In 2008–2009, the research was undertaken at various times across the given year; including local Indonesian school and religious holidays and the peak periods for international visitors. This phasing of the research was designed to connect researchers with the various ethnic and national groups who visit Bali. Thus, while Australians are the most numerous visitor group overall, they only dominate the ethnosphere of Kuta during identified peak holiday periods. Other national groups—including Indonesians themselves—are more numerous at quite different times of the year. A further phase of the research, conducted from June until September 2010, aimed to capture the changing nature of people's perceptions and practices following the implementation of new security measures and modifications to the monument site undertaken by the Badung Regency in April of that year. Discussion of the findings from the 2008–2009 phase illustrates some of the counter-narratives being generated around the monument. This is followed by discussion of the findings from the 2010 phase, which reveal new layers of complexity in the context of official attempts to restrict the practices of local and international visitors.

2008–2009

Most visits to the memorial occurred during the evening (6:00–10:00 p.m.) with up to one thousand visitors per hour during Indonesian school holidays and/or Muslim holiday periods. In the heat of the day, the average was around one hundred per hour. These numbers do not include pedestrians observing the monument from a distance as they passed by. The vast majority of visitors to the monument were Indonesian nationals (around 55 percent), most of whom were from Jakarta, although there were also visitors from other parts of the archipelago. Other major visitor groups included Malaysian, Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese nationals. In the course of an evening, around four tour buses per hour would bring these visitor groups directly to the monument. At other times of the year when Japanese and Europeans were relatively numerous in Kuta and the surrounding tourist zone, the numbers of these visitors at the monument were relatively low compared with those from Asian countries. At any one time during the evening, Australians would comprise approximately 5 percent of the total visitor numbers, with this increasing to almost 50 percent during peak Australian holiday periods. Visitors would spend an average of twelve minutes at the monument site.

Other than the numbers and ethnic derivation of the visitors, perhaps the most significant aspect of the research is the ways different groups use the monument as a public space. As a general observation, the behaviors and identifiable practices of visitors to the site are influenced by the level of ethnic-national presence of the group; behavior is often modified, depending on the numbers of similar and different ethnic-national groups present at the site.

Very clearly, the space has become a tourism memento site for the majority of visitors. The design of the site ushers visitors through a form of gallery experience, directing them from one part of the site to another. At each point of interest in the gallery, the majority of visitors would pause and arrange themselves for personalized photographs. The non-Western visitors, in particular those from Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, and China, would take photos of their various assemblages of family and friends at the fountain, the altar, and the amphitheater at the front of the monument. Only the memorial board, which is raised above head height, was photographed without human interpellation. The two Australian authors were also frequently conscripted as transnational props in the memento photographs, providing further proof of the tourists' exotic experiences in Bali.

For most of these visitors, it is a happy occasion. The monument provides some of the cultural nuance that renders their holiday exotic and memorable. The Balinese cultural elements are well received, though the Bhoma are not particularly recognizable at night and they are not as frequently photographed as one might expect. There is virtually no solemnity in the visits by these groups, even though most understand the significance and purpose of the monument.

The monument, in fact, is one of Kuta's few noncommercial public spaces, other than the beach. And it is one of the few spaces in which a visitor feels welcome and comfortable. Virtually every other open space in the Kuta-Legian tourist zone is privately owned, a legacy perhaps of former President Suharto's appalling indifference to responsible development planning and his government sponsorship of Bali's rapid and poorly planned tourism development by voracious private developers. As the Balinese were largely excluded from planning and development of the Badung area, community needs were disregarded and public space subsumed by private interests.

To this end, the bombings memorial is quite unique. For all its very obvious aesthetic and cultural failings, the space represents a new phase in Balinese autonomy in the aftermath of the Reformasi, especially in terms of decentralization and the capacity of Regencies to be more active in local planning. While many community members may have objected to the structure and its informing ideas, the memorial has at least stimulated the sorts of civic debate that had for so long been prohibited in Indonesian public life. Moreover, the site manages, miraculously perhaps, to function as a multivalent totem that attracts a diverse range of visitors. Indonesian nationals, in particular, feel as though the memorial is legitimately their own public space (see figure 4).

Figure 4.

Every day, domestic tourists from across Indonesia gather in droves at the monument to make a photographic record of their visit to Bali, 2010. Photo: Belinda Lewis.

Australians, on the other hand, seem less comfortable in the site, especially during the local Indonesian holidays and religious festivals, when they become a distinct minority group among so many Indonesian nationals. While Australians are often solemn or at least quiet in their demeanor, their informal clothing style (sarongs, thongs, shorts) also marks a cultural distinction from the Asian visitors, especially the Indonesians who are generally far more covered and formal, with many women wearing the Muslim hijab or headscarf (see figure 5).

Figure 5.

Informally dressed Australian visitors to the monument, 2010. Photo: Belinda Lewis.

Australians also appear quite bemused by the joyful and happy demeanor of the Asian groups, especially local Indonesians:

Tensions are also evident in the narratives of monument visitors around recent events like the arrest and conviction of Australian and other Western drug couriers in Bali, the passage of ambiguous anti-pornography bills in the Indonesian national parliament, and the execution of three of the Bali bombers (Lewis and Lewis Reference Lewis and Lewis2009a; van Liere Reference van Liere2009).Footnote ⁹ For some visitors, these new events are linked to the causes of the original “tragedy.” People's experience at the monument is being reintensified by these events and the ways they represent discordant and at times dangerous claims over pleasure and displeasure:

When interviewed, several Australians expressed a level of offense at the perceived lack of respect for the meaning of the memorial, though this was generally fortified by a peculiar sort of cultural superiority that regarded the Indonesians as culturally underdeveloped or ignorant. In a moment of acidity, one Australian bemoaned, “Oh my god, what do the Balos [Balinese] think of all this?”— suggesting that the behavior and practices of other Indonesians would somehow offend the Balinese and this notionally “sacred” place.

For the Balinese, of course, the monument is not sacred, despite the aggregation of sacred symbology. Few Balinese take an interest in the monument, except as a meeting place or a site to engage with tourists (see figure 6).

Figure 6.

Local young women using the memorial as a meeting place, 2010. Photo: Belinda Lewis.

Drug users and prostitutes often frequent the areas around the site in the hope of attracting the interest of a (usually male) tourist. On several occasions, we observed a young female addict using the monument site as a relatively safe place to sleep among the guides and other local Balinese sitting on the gallery steps. Indeed, the steps themselves appeared to be the most popular part of the site for local Balinese youth, as they gaze at passing traffic and listen to the rising volume of electronic music in the nightclubs preparing for another night of euphoria.

Over recent years, the authorities in Bali have become increasingly concerned about the diverse ways in which the homology of the Bali bombings monument is being challenged and subverted. In April 2010, the Badung Regency implemented new security measures and modifications to the monument site that substantially altered public access to the space. A steel fence was erected around the entire perimeter of the monument gallery with a single entrance gate placed at the base of one set of steps. The gate is now locked in the evening, preventing visitors to the site from sitting on the steps, gathering on the raised mezzanine, or approaching the memorial board. Numerous flowering potted plants have been added to soften the visual impact of the fence and mask this new restriction on public access and people's practices. According to the Lurah (village head of) Kuta, I Gede Suparta,

This attempt to impose order over visitors' experiences and practices—what they see, do, think, and feel in the space surrounding the monument—reflects a new phase in Bali's cosmopolization. Clearly, the modifications are an official strategy to regulate what might be seen as the “abuses” of the monument. The fence and security measures minimize the mixing of visitors in the gallery and they separate visitors from the activities of locals who had previously been informally using the public space. By substantially reducing access to this public open space, this attempt to marshal the various “uses” of the monument into less diverse and more acceptable modes raises questions about whose freedoms and security are being privileged.

As noted by Logan and Reeves (Reference Logan and Reeves2009), a substantial body of research acknowledges that memorials are critical means of preserving the history of violent events and that they have the potential to affect the ways in which we confront past, present, and future. Our research suggests that the claims and counter-claims on the Bali bombings monument are reshaping this space in ways that reflect a new uncertainty about cultural contiguity, belonging, and territorial legitimacy. Within the context of Bali's rapidly expanding pleasure economy, the diverse mix of counter-narratives around the monument demonstrates a growing sense that this evolving cosmopolization is both precarious and easily disrupted.