Migrating Masculinities: Balinese Men in the Netherlands
Ana Dragojlovic, Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, Australian National University
From the early 1970s, the promotion of mass tourism to Bali resulted in many Balinese men entering into intimate relationships and occasionally marriage with non-Balinese, mostly western women. I consider masculinities among Balinese in the Netherlands, both hetero- and homosexual, who live with a Dutch partner. I see masculinities as relational, performative, and historically situated (Jolly 2007 forthcoming). Balinese masculinities must be situated historically in relation to long-term encounter of Bali and Indonesia with the Netherlands. First, I examine how past and present models of gender and sexuality have been shaped by power relations in those encounters and resonate with them in the present. Second, following Butler, I consider how Balinese masculinities are differently performed in relation to these geographical and social settings. Third, I examine how Balinese masculinities are developed and maintained in lives of migrants living with Dutch partners. In these relationships, Balinese and Dutch, dominant and alternative, expected and desired, models of masculinities jostle together. Analyzing masculinities in cross-cultural intimate encounters contributes to understanding of the complexities of gender and sexuality.
