and even older sources (van Bloemen Waanders, 1859; Korn, 1932;
Stutterheim, 1930) can be regarded as very important.
WHY SHOULD ANYONE OUTSIDE OF BALI CARE?
The details of the temple festival and the calendar (upon which it is
based) are rather complex. So why should anyone care? If we are North
Americans and read about “dumpster diving” (Ferrell, 2005)in the United
States, we have a frame of reference. To many Europeans it may seem
different enough to be interesting but not so different as to be irrelevant.
After all there are comparable kinds of symbolic interaction in Europe,
too. But Balinese religious rituals may seem to be rather exotic and unfami-
liar. Some may even think that such a topic merely belongs to cultural
anthropology and has no relevance to Symbolic Interactionist sociology,
much less sociology in general. Why should someone in Europe or North
America be at all interested in a ritual that may be very old but that hardly
seems relevant in this secular age? Why should anyone read Jane Belo’s
detailed ethnographic account from before the war? Most Symbolic
Interactionist research has involved the study of subcultures and small
groups in today’s societies. There has been very little study of foreign
places. To some extent that has been left to the anthropologists, people
like Benedict Anderson, Jane Belo, Leo Howe, Clifford Geertz, Stephen
Lansing, Margaret Mead, and Adrian Vickers. None of them were
Symbolic Interactionists. Some Symbolic Interactionists are interested in
sexuality and may want to consult anthropological studies to get a sense of
the wide variety of sexual practices and sexual identities found around the
world (Lyons & Lyons, 2004). But the study of religious ritual has not been
a key part of Symbolic Interactionist research, especially rituals involving
quite different sets of religious beliefs. So why study a Balinese Hindu
Buddhist temple anniversary ritual?
The answer is partly a matter of the intrinsically interesting nature of
Balinese society. But we have to be very careful not to romanticize Bali
as some kind of mysterious “Bali Hai” or confuse the purposeful creation
of the image of Bali as a “paradise” with the reality on the ground
(Vickers, 1996 [1981]).We should not be interested in Bali simply because
of the allure of an “exotic” tropical paradise, a destination depicted on
travel posters and a false image sustained by short stays within the
restricted ambience of air conditioned and heavily guarded five star
Geertz’s “Thick Description” and a Balinese Temple Ritual 91