‘A Green and Sumptuous Garden’: Authenticity,Hybridity,and the Bali Tourism Project

Abstract

The Bali Tourism Project, begun in the mid-1970s as a joint effort of the Indonesian central government, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Program, has generally been portrayed as a success by the major actors involved in its implementation. Yet running parallel to the story of success is another story, a story of local residents' reactions to this ‘master plan’ and its attempts to control tourism ‘for the good’ of the Balinese. Most significantly, the logic of this plan – to create an enclave zone for wealthy tourists on the previously barren Bukit peninsula, who could then be shuttled around the island via a network of excursion roads that would allow carefully controlled access to an ‘authentic’ Bali – failed to take note of its own unintended consequences: what was (from a planning point of view) unplanned development undertaken by local residents as a means of gaining access to tourism benefits.