Negara: The Theatre State in 19th Century Bali

by Clifford Geertz

Overview

Combining great learning, interpretative originality, analytical sensitivity, and a charismatic prose style, Clifford Geertz has produced a lasting body of work with influence throughout the humanities and social sciences, and remains the foremost anthropologist in America.

His 1980 book Negara analyzed the social organization of Bali before it was colonized by the Dutch in 1906. Here Geertz applied his widely influential method of cultural interpretation to the myths, ceremonies, rituals, and symbols of a precolonial state. He found that the nineteenth-century Balinese state defied easy conceptualization by the familiar models of political theory and the standard Western approaches to understanding politics.

Negara means "country" or "seat of political authority" in Indonesian. In Bali Geertz found negara to be a "theatre state," governed by rituals and symbols rather than by force. The Balinese state did not specialize in tyranny, conquest, or effective administration. Instead, it emphasized spectacle. The elaborate ceremonies and productions the state created were "not means to political ends: they were the ends themselves, they were what the state was for.... Power served pomp, not pomp power." Geertz argued more forcefully in Negara than in any of his other books for the fundamental importance of the culture of politics to a society.

Much of Geertz's previous work—including his world-famous essay on the Balinese cockfight—can be seen as leading up to the full portrait of the "poetics of power" that Negara so vividly depicts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691007786
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	01/21/1981
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

	Illustrations	ix
	Preface	xi
	Introduction Bali and Historical Method	3
Chapter 1	Political Definition: The Sources of Order
	The Myth of the Exemplary Center	11
	Geography and the Balance of Power	19
Chapter 2	Political Anatomy: The Internal Organization of the Ruling Class
	Descent Groups and Sinking Status	26
	Clientship	34
	Alliance	39
Chapter 3	Political Anatomy: The Village and the State
	The Village Polity	45
	The Perbekel System	54
	The Politics of Irrigation	68
	The Forms of Trade	87
Chapter 4	Political Statement: Spectacle and Ceremony
	The Symbology of Power	98
	The Palace as Temple	109
	Cremation and the Struggle for Status	116
	Conclusion Bali and Political Theory	121
	Notes	137
	Glossary	259
	Bibliography	267
	Index	289

Editorial Reviews

The main purpose of Geertz's study is to delineate the general structure of the Negara by focusing on one particularly well-documented case, that of Bali in the era preceding the Dutch invasion of 1906. The outcome is a fascinating and remarkable book.

The New York Review of Books

"The main purpose of Geertz's study is to delineate the general structure of the Negara by focusing on one particularly well-documented case, that of Bali in the era preceding the Dutch invasion of 1906. The outcome is a fascinating and remarkable book."—The New York Review of Books

From the Publisher