Would the Real Undagi Please Stand up? On the Social Location of Balinese Architectural KnowledgeThe 'beautiful structures of wood and stone' (Lansing 1983:51) which constitute the traditional architecture of Bali are one of the more visible signs of the tenacity of tradition on the island, and a consistent source of pride to locals, delight to visitors and profit to tourism operators. While there is a substantial body of literature on the other arts in Bali, that on architecture is surprisingly sparse. Such literature as there is -English and Indonesian, popular and scholarly -tends to recycle, sometimes less than critically, a few themes that have been fairly well-worn for over sixty years. These are: a system of orientarion to cosmic axes, a three-fold hierarchical division of space, a corresponding layout of buildings within courtyards, and a system of measurements based upon the human body (

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This essay examines how the significance of ancient South Asian monuments is transformed when reframed by the practices of cultural tourism, which are grounded in the values of a modern, globalizing, economic cosmology. Ethnographic evidence collected on a visit to the archaeological park and museum at Sarnath, site of the Buddha's first discourse and home to some of the most celebrated masterpieces of ancient Indian sculpture, are here analyzed to support and illustrate a broader, social-constructivist argument about the representation of reality in Indian visual culture. I will argue that the version of 'reality' presupposed by modern economic practices, such as tourism, works to objectify ancient South Asian forms and meanings, previously precipitated out of older living practices, into reified, collectable entities. Such objects and their objectified meanings further contribute toward naturalizing and universalizing economically grounded projects of self-construction among the practitioners of an economic worldview, wherein the self is shaped by routines of production and consumption: I am what I do for a living and I am the goods-including here, the touristic experiences-that I collect. It is this economic cosmology that moves to the foreground when ancient Indian 'art' is re-presented and consumed in the form of tourism products. Meanwhile the cosmology of dharma is pushed into the background. I hope to persuade the reader that the 'cost' of doing this is too high to justify the narrow economic benefits.

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