Sustaining Cultural Legitimation through the Theatrics of Power in the Gong Kyai Pradah Ritual

Abstract

This article examines the ritual traditions that are reconstructed to fit within a tourist agenda in the Blitar Region of Indonesia. The ritual is the purification of Gong Kyai Pradah. Tourism in local areas is a phenomenon that rises with the cultural projects used to create identity. Then, the consequences that arise are the issues of how local elites have touched and absorbed rites in the community’s life to represent their power at the site of cultural events. In this case, the rite of tradition has a high historical setting, which is significant in interpreting the discourse of sociocultural changes. Although the changes cannot be rejected, the crucial aspects that need to be highlighted are the elite’s strategies and the configurations of power that play roles to determine the sustainability of the ritual. Thus, perspectives are built with the theoretical concept of the theatrics of power and the idea of power in Javanese tradition; hereafter, the thick description method was used as a tool to narrate the heritage governance. Then, this article argues that the clash of elites is formed by the need to maintain their power to gain cultural legitimacy. Nonetheless, the position of elites with their basis of power did not have an equal authority; therefore, the traditional elite became marginalized while the modern elite used their ability to flex their formal, legal power through ritual.