Locating nation in a village: fusion of local and nation voices in Penglipuran Bali, Indonesia

The purposes of this study are to investigate: 1) how the local people in a cultural heritage village imagine the nation through the space of heritage in their community; 2) how the heritage village community preserves cultural identity and performs the idyllic concepts of village for the nation. An ethnographic approach was employed. Interviews with 24 local leaders and participant observations were conducted in the cultural heritage village of Penglipuran in Bali, one of the top models for village preservation in Indonesia. Penglipuran works as a state of remembrance for local people to imagine their own local identity, to interpret the nation's spirit, and to perform their local heritage. Three practices are used to imagine the nation: designing a landscape for the construction of social membership, performing the loyalty of imagined community practice, and implementing the Indonesian nation brand in the village. This study contributes to the exploration of the interpretation of landscape, local story, and cultural materials as the remembrances of the nation's symbols in the village and how those materials help to maintain the obedience of locals to the nation by fulfilling the idyllic construction of village.