Custodians of the Sacred Mountains: Culture and Society in the Highlands of Bali (review)

Book Reviews133 Custodians ofthe SacredMountains: Culture andSociety in the Highlands ofBali. ByThomas Reuter. Honolulu: University ofHawaii Press, 2002. 400 pp. Bali is a fascinating island. Within one cultural sphere major contrasts exist side by side and form as such an ideal laboratory for anthropological research. Only a few hours drive from the centre ofglobalized tourism at Kuta beach, which was in October 2002 hit by a terrorist attack, one can find in the mountain area ofinland Bali ancient temple systems and ritual networks which date back to the ninth century AD. The mountain Balinese, or Bali Aga, who managed to reproduce these old structures, have by and large been ignored by Western scholars who focused their studies mainly on south Bali with its distinct flavour of Hinduism and aristocratic court culture. Seen from the south, the Bali Aga looks like a cultural backwater, a relic ofthe past. Thomas Reuter reverses this image by arguing that mountain Baliwas actually die breeding ground ofthe first Hindu-inspired kingdoms, centuries before the influences oftheJavanese kingdom ofMajapahit took root in the southern part of the island. He also demonstrates that mountain Bali was never isolated and marginalized. Instead, there was a complex relationship in which new power holders in the south recognized and respected the ritual authority ofthe sacred mountain temples. Some ofthese ritual networks maintain their autonomy and show a remarkable degree of continuity. Reuter claims tiiat his book is die first comprehensive ethnography ofthe BaliAga, but this is somewhat misleading because he fails to mention the monograph by his colleague Samuel Wälty on the area of Kintamani which was published in 1997. Despite this minor omission, Reuter's book is not only a milestone in the anthropology of Bali but also an important contribution to the comparative study ofAustronesian societies. Theoretically embedded in what we may call the "Canberra School ofAustronesianAnthropology" the book analyses the ritual domains, or banua, ofmountain Bali in terms ofdualism and precedence. Dualism 134Book Reviews (predominantly expressed in paired male-female oppositions) is a recurrent ordering principle; the dynamic status economy which is characterized by co-operation and competition is founded on a time-based and process-oriented notion ofprecedence, depending on a degree oftemporal proximity to a shared origin or ancestor. The relevance of this analytical model is elaborated in the first part ofthe book which offers a detailed study ofritual domains, the most important ofwhich has its centre at the temple ofPucak Penulisan in the village ofSukawana. This part of the book is solid ethnography, consisting of a convincing and theoretically informed representation ofthe dynamic structures ofthese ritual networks, based on an impressive amount ofempirical data. This ethnography is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of Bali. I am less impressed by the second part of the book. Here the study ofmountain Bali is correctly situated within various Balinese, anthropological , and state discourses which are critically examined. This could have been a good closing chapter ofthe book, but Reuter wanted more. He also launches an ambitious theory ofan intersubjective representation of human interaction in the field of the cultural production of knowledge. He even calls in this respect for a fundamental and general critique ofall representation systems (p. 310). Seen against the backdrop of the subject matter of the book, this statement seems to me a bit oversized . Reuter needs a lot ofwotds and tends to become repetitive in what is basically a crusade against a postmodern anthropology, which is mainly concerned with itself. Instead, Reuter argues in favour of an anthropological description of a shared cultural system as it is represented by Bali Aga themselves. Anthropology is thus an intersubjective co-production ofgeneralized knowledge. His rathet exaggerated representation of postmodern anthropology (pp. 254-55) looks a bit outdated as it is primarily based on Marcus and Fischer's 1986 book. Meanwhile , other people have said some relevant things on the production of knowledge as well — for instance, Cohn (1987) and Pels and Salemink (1999) on colonial ethnography; Kuper (1999) on anthropological knowledge; and Barth (1993) on Bali. Book Reviews135 I do not only fail to see the innovative aspect ofReuter's theory but I have also a problem with the way he elaborates his...