Paradise Fabricated:Networking of Local Strongmen in Bali

Abstract

The centralised and predatory strongmen of the Suharto era have been displaced by local strongmen who originate from the old, collectively run and patriarchal networking system of customary law (“adat”). In Bali, the new strongmen drew heavily on what Vickers called “paradise created” and expanded it within a local media campaign around Balinese uprightness (“ajeg”) to “fabricate” both cultural resistance against global challenges to the traditional culture and commodification of their culture as a tourist attraction. More recently, the chief of police has threatened to disband the gangs but this does not mean that they have turned soft, nor taken a low profile. They are just waiting for the right time to come back. They may return to prominence around the Benoa Bay reclamation issue, which mixes issues of identity politics with control over economic developments.