Sub-Project “Water” as a Contested Element Between Cosmological, Environmental and Economic Ascriptions and Knowledges: Indonesian Perspectives (MC 9.3)

Project Leader: Annette Hornbacher

Access to water is crucial for every society, and this applies to Indonesia in a specific way. With its thousands of islands, the Indonesian republic represents a unique ‘waterscape’ that is characterized by great cultural and ecological diversity. Many of these cultural differences are directly related to ecological differences and particularly to the distinctive availability, use, technologizing and significance of water. On the Western and central islands including Bali, tropical rain forests and wet rice cultivation correspond to a distinct cultural history, which is the result of its location along the maritime trade route between India and China. The abundant wet rice economy of Bali reflects the connection of ecological and geographical aspects with a sophisticated irrigation technology, which correspond to an extravagant ritual tradition that integrates local animism with Hindu-Buddhist ideas of purity and a geocentric cosmology that is based on the flow of water between the holy mountains and the sea. Balinese regard water not merely as a natural resource but simultaneously as a manifestation of divine presence and purification. However, the worship of water is by no means a distinctive feature of Bali or of Indian influence rather it connects the different religions and cultures of Indonesia. The islands east of Bali are predominantly savannahs with regular droughts. Wet rice cultivation is almost impossible and instead of Hindu-Buddhist cosmologies, ancestor worship and animism are practiced along with Christianity or Islam. Notwithstanding such fundamental differences with regard to religion, water is venerated in all of these regions in different ways: Whereas for Balinese springs and rivers are centers of worship, the Muslim society on the island of Komodo venerates confluences of freshwater and seawater, which are regarded as ancestral places.
The anthropological Sub-project MC 9.3 investigated the complex culture specific significance of different concepts of water with respect to two islands: Bali and Komodo. The challenges of the global ecological water crisis and the influence of mass tourism have caused severe pollution and scarcity of water resources; impacts which are locally mediated with reference to local ideas and practices that address water as a holy element.
First, we examined how the Balinese deal with the fact that freshwater which is venerated as the paradigm of purity and divine abundance, is in fact polluted and has become a scarce resource as a result of agribusiness and mass tourism. We further investigated the relation between a modern Western paradigm of ecology and water sustainability on the one hand, and on the other hand the culture specific ideas of environment and water in the small society of Komodo island, which is the center of the national Marine park of Komodo that is also a UNESCO biosphere reserve.