"Pembangunan" or "development" is a national slogan of
contemporary Indonesia. Since 1968, President Suharto has
pursued a successful development policy, and the rate of economic
growth has accelerated remarkably. His political power has
been strengthened by the integration of technocrats and government
officials into his party, Golkar. In the cultural field, the
building-up of "Indonesian national culture" has been the most
urgent task, since Indonesia requires a distinct national culture
in order to become a nation-state in the complete sense.
In the general scheme of developmental change in the relations
among economics, politics and culture, a drastic cultural
restructuring has been underway in which diverse ethnic cultures
are being integrated as parts of the now emerging national
culture. Based on my own field-observation, in this paper I
examine the case of the Toraja people of the South Sulawesi
Highlands, and trace their development with special reference
to tourism.
In 1969, the Indonesian Government designated the Toraja
area as one of ten regions for intensive promotion of international
tourism. The Government expected to obtain hard currencies
to support the First Five-Year Development Programme.
Throughout the 1970s tourism developed successfully, to the
extent that the Toraja area became referred to as a second Bali.
It is noteworthy that the peculiar feature of tourism in the Toraja
area was an emphasis on "traditional rituals." The Toraja's
"ancient
, animistic" religious performances are now placed at
the center-stage of the nationally authorized scheme of development.
"Tradition" and "development" or "the ethnic" and
"the national" have not been opposed , but rather have been in
dialog.
This paper is in three parts. First, the background of Toraja
tourist development is analyzed. It must be understood that
Toraja tourism is a political phenomenon in which the "commercialization"
of local culture is underway. The response of
Toraja intellectuals to this development is discussed in the second
part. They have written about their own culture for the wider
national (even international) community. Their writings exemplify
the fruits of a conscious objectification of their own ethnic
culture. Third, ethnographic accounts of re-conversion to
traditional faith, traditional ritual performances by the Christian
and local re-interpretation of folk beliefs are examined. They
reveal the highly flexible capacity of the Toraja people and their
culture in response to the new situation. In these processes, the
Toraja cultural tradition is not only being reproduced but also,
to quote Eric Hobsbawm, "invented."
The analysis and examination of contemporary Toraja
cultural dynamics also contributes to current anthropological
theory with the proposition that micro-social studies should be
integrated into a larger macro-social framework.
国家的過程のなかの民族文化 : インドネシア，トラジャにおける伝統的文化の現代的位相
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