Selling your relatives: The impact of cultural tourism on Balinese ritual life

Since the West's discovery of Bali, tourism has played an increasingly vital role in the development of the Balinese economy as well as the social construction of its history. Infiltrating almost every aspect of its art, performance, and ritual, tourism has invaded even one of the most important facets of Balinese religion: secondary funeral rites and cremation. Cremation is situated as the culmination of Bali-Hindu's understanding of the process of death and the ancestral cult cosmology; it is the final act of transition whereby the soul is interred in the afterlife as a non-venerated or venerated ancestor. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the impact of cultural tourism on traditional Balinese ritual focusing on the process of cremations. It aims to understand how tourism is affecting the belief-system underlying the performance of traditional Balinese cremation and ancestor cult rites as well as how the Balinese perceive the presence of tourists at their most important ritual occasions.