Ethnic Tourism and the Renegotiation of Tradition in Tana Toraja (Sulawesi, Indonesia)

This article examines some of the political and symbolic issues inherent in the touristic renegotiation of Torajan ritual and history, chronicling the strategies whereby Torajans attempt to refashion outsider imagery to enhance their own personal standing and position in the Indonesian ethnic hierarchy. The author suggests that the Toraja case challenges the popular assumption that tourism promotion brings a complete loss of agency to indigenous peoples: Torajans not only engage in ingenious political strategies to enhance their group\u27s image, but vigorously contest perceived threats to their identity and power. The author argues that such processes of self-conscious cultural reformulation do not necessarily imply a collapse in meanxngor emotive power; rather, the Toraja case lends support to recent calls to rethink the discourse of authenticity and staged authenticity

Local Strategies for Economic Survival in Touristically Volatile Times: An Indonesian Case Study of Microvendors, Gendered Cultural Practices, and Resilience

This article utilizes a qualitative ethnographic approach to examine the economic survival strategies pursued by Indonesian souvenir artisans and handicraft microvendors in touristically turbulent times. Resilience-oriented approaches have offered promising frameworks for understanding regions\u27, destinations\u27, and communities\u27 capacities to adjust and adapt to challenges: this article complements these broader approaches by offering a fine-grained analysis of individual strategies for finding creative solutions to the economic challenges thrust upon them. My approach melds a constructivist approach accentuating local peoples\u27 creative responses with gender-aware and practice-oriented approaches. These findings draw from data collected over three decades of ethnographic research in the Toraja highlands of Sulawesi, Indonesia