Women in the Shadows : Gender, Puppets, and the Power of Tradition in Bali

Authors

• Jennifer Goodlander

Files

Series

Research in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series

Description

Wayang kulit, or shadow puppetry, connects a mythic past to the present through public ritual performance and is one of most important performance traditions in Bali. The dalang, or puppeteer, is revered in Balinese society as a teacher and spiritual leader. Recently, women have begun to study and perform in this traditionally male role, an innovation that has triggered resistance and controversy.
In Women in the Shadows, Jennifer Goodlander draws on her own experience training as a dalang as well as interviews with early women dalang and leading artists to upend the usual assessments of such gender role shifts. She argues that rather than assuming that women performers are necessarily mounting a challenge to tradition, “tradition” in Bali must be understood as a system of power that is inextricably linked to gender hierarchy.

She examines the very idea of “tradition” and how it forms both an ideological and social foundation in Balinese culture. Ultimately, Goodlander offers a richer, more complicated understanding of both tradition and gender in Balinese society. Following in the footsteps of other eminent reflexive ethnographies, Women in the Shadows will be of value to anyone interested in performance studies, Southeast Asian culture, or ethnographic methods.

Copyright Statement

Women in the Shadows © 2016 by Ohio University Press is licensed under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language

eng

ISBN

9780896804944

Publication Date

10-31-2016

Publisher

Ohio University Press

City

Athens

Keywords

Wayang kulit, shadow puppetry, Bali, Indonesia, dalang, women puppeteers, gender roles, gender hierarchy, ritual performance, performance traditions, Balinese culture, performance studies, ethnography, Southeast Asian culture, tradition and modernity

Disciplines

Anthropology | Asian Studies | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Social and Cultural Anthropology | South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies | Women's Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Goodlander, Jennifer, "Women in the Shadows : Gender, Puppets, and the Power of Tradition in Bali" (2016). Ohio University Press Open Access Books. 115.
https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/115