BALILAND

The Lost Narrative

At the heart of the Indonesian archipelago, Bali was long perceived as a sanctuary of beauty and harmony, where traditions and spirituality intertwined with nature in an almost perfect balance. As sociologist Jean Couteau recalls, "forty or fifty years ago, Bali was a space of absolute order. Everything was managed according to natural norms. The architecture was made of natural elements – stone, bamboo, raw brick... There was nothing imported, nothing industrial. Everything was connected to nature!"

Bali has transformed from an agrarian society into a capitalist one where traditional values crumble under the pressure of mass tourism and globalization. In 2024, Bali welcomed more than 6.3 million foreign tourists, representing 80% of the local economy. This transformation has turned the island into an eldorado for entrepreneurs of all kinds, influencers and digital nomads, all attracted by an idealized vision of the "island of the gods." Ironically, this development occurs under the guise of a narrative centered on personal development and spirituality, even as Balinese people are progressively dispossessed of their own cultural narrative.

The Western Paradise

The commercialization of Eastern spirituality began in the 1970s, when Ubud was labeled the "Mecca of New Age" and became an attraction center for Westerners seeking spiritual experiences. Today, this phenomenon has considerably amplified: the island has become the privileged backdrop for digital tourism where image takes precedence over authentic experience. Terraced rice fields serve as backdrops for Instagram photos while spiritual practices are simplified for rapid Western consumption.

Ubud has transformed into a veritable yoga industry focused on profit and owned by Westerners, where visitors from Paris, Moscow, or New York take flights solely to participate in trainings or retreats – a paradox for a spirituality advocating harmony with nature. The phenomenon of "swings" installed in spectacular panoramic locations reinforces this trend: constructed solely for photos, they cause considerable environmental damage.

This perpetual staging transforms Balinese culture into a permanent spectacle. Religious ceremonies become tourist attractions, while the vocabulary itself adapts to this commercialization: the term "sacred" is now attached to all sorts of products, from ice cream to cacao ceremonies, and restaurants offer "healing food," blurring the line between authentic practices and marketed experiences.

The Invisible Market

Behind this glittering façade lies a troubling socio-economic reality. Javanese migrant workers, predominantly Muslim, constitute the invisible workforce building the Balinese tourist paradise. These workers live in extremely precarious conditions, crowded five to a prefabricated shelter of 5 square meters. As seasonal workers, they alternate several months on construction sites before briefly returning to their villages. This flexible and underpaid workforce, earning about six euros per day, is preferred by entrepreneurs over Balinese workers, who with their numerous ceremonial obligations and religious festivities throughout the year, are considered less reliable than these uprooted migrants, thus creating an ethnic stratification of labor where Javanese form a veritable sub-proletariat invisible to tourists.

The "Green Revolution" of the 1960s-70s constitutes a tragic turning point in Bali's agricultural history. Presented as a humanitarian initiative aimed at eradicating hunger, this revolution imposed, sometimes by military force, the adoption of hybrid rice varieties and chemical products. The army would come directly to the rice fields, guns in hand, ordering farmers to abandon their traditional organic methods. Those who resisted were considered enemies of progress and could face reprisals.

Chemical products, insidiously called "obat" (medicines) in Indonesian, destroyed the biodiversity of rice fields that previously constituted complete ecosystems providing not only rice but also animal proteins and vegetables. Rice farmers became totally dependent on hybrid seeds they cannot harvest and replant, unlike traditional varieties. Unable to live from their production, many yield to real estate pressure and sell their ancestral lands.

These sales often trigger a destructive cycle. In Balinese tradition, lands do not really belong to the living but are transmitted by ancestors for future generations. When they sell these sacred lands, Balinese are seized with deep cultural guilt that drives them to spend between 50 and 80% of the proceeds on religious ceremonies to appease ancestral spirits. Once these considerable sums are swallowed up in these rituals, they quickly find themselves without resources, pushed to sell more land to subsist. The environmental consequences are equally concerning. Indonesia, the second largest ocean polluter by plastic, sees this crisis amplify in Bali with the multiplication of non-biodegradable waste. Tourist villas, by drilling deeply to obtain water, sometimes deprive traditional "Subak" irrigation systems of this vital resource for the benefit of their swimming pools.

Entrepreneurship and Resistance

The real estate expansion in Bali is largely propelled by an influx of amateur or professional entrepreneurs who, with their savings, associate to erect villa complexes on former rice fields or natural areas. These investors are attracted by the promise of quick profits, whether through speculative resale or rental on Airbnb. More recently, there has been an increased presence of Russian investors who, seeking to diversify their assets since the beginning of the Ukraine war, deploy considerable capital in the construction of hotel parks, wellness centers, and "spiritual" complexes. The cynicism is flagrant: these projects tout harmony with nature and respect for local traditions, while transforming the island into a simple product of tourist consumption. More worryingly, about 80% of tourism revenues leave the island, captured by international hotel groups or investors from Jakarta, while local infrastructure becomes overloaded.

Faced with these challenges, local initiatives are emerging: organic agriculture favoring traditional non-hybrid rice varieties, beach cleaning operations, ecotourism centers voluntarily limiting the number of participants. These ancestral rice varieties, more nutritious and ecological, allow farmers to improve their income by marketing them at better prices. These projects, often developed in partnership between Balinese and expatriate Westerners aware of the ongoing ecocide, testify to the capacity of civil society to organize to defend this unique heritage. However, these resistances remain marginal against the power of a global economic system that continues to transform the island at a frenzied pace. The Indonesian government, for whom Bali represents a substantial source of foreign currency, shows little inclination to implement significant protection measures that could curb the profits generated by this intensive tourist development.

Bali finds itself today at a decisive moment in its history. Its destiny illustrates the ravages of a globalized capitalism that transforms everything into merchandise – rituals, spirituality, landscapes. Neoliberal logic has not been content with concreting over rice fields; it transforms social practices, reducing a millennial culture to backdrops for selfies. Ancestral practices become accessories of digital narcissism, where tourists, smartphone in hand, transform culture into décor for their selfies.

The ecological footprint of tourism development deepens inexorably: destroyed mangroves, overexploited water tables, threatened marine biodiversity. This environmental degradation goes hand in hand with the erosion of ancestral knowledge and the dismantling of community structures that maintained the island's balance for centuries. The challenge surpasses the simple protection of an ecosystem – it is an entire cosmovision, a way of being in the world elaborated over millennia, that is disappearing before our eyes. What we are losing in Bali is not just a landscape, but an embodied wisdom, a way of inhabiting the Earth that could be precious to us at the very moment when our own models are showing their limits.