Land for sale at Balangan Beach, Jimbaran Bali
headline »
Thu, 5/06/14 – 9:52 | No Comment

Total area of 38000 square meter of land is nestled in Tanjung Balangan; on the beach, white sand, magnificent cave, cliffs ocean view. And Airport in distance is blinking with lights. New Kuta Resort and …

Read the full story »
Arts & Culture

There is probably no place in the world with such a high density of craftsmen and artisans in Bali.

Bali News & Events

Bali’s latest news and upcoming events

Dance, Drama & Music

It’s all about Bali’s art performance

Guides

What you need to know when exploring the paradise island of Bali

Religion

Patchwork of insights into the soul of Bali

Home » Arts & Culture

Through the Eyes of Researcher: Balinese Household  

by on Thursday, 18 September 2008No Comment | 1,731 views

Here is an interesting excerpt on Balinese Household that is taken from Ayami Nakatani’s Paper entitled “Private or Public? : Defining Female Roles in the Balinese Ritual Domain”.

Apart from communal temples, public offices, schools and shops, the territory of a banjar (a sub-unit of the village) is divided into walled house compounds (pakarangan) with high and narrow gates facing each other on opposite sides of alley ways. These enclosed compounds house one or more households and a small family temple.

penglipuran

It is difficult to devise a unified definition of the Balinese household. 7) The vernacular term,
“kuren,” denotes a domestic group consisting of a married couple who constitute an elementary unit of social organisation, and of their dependants who eat from a single kitchen or hearth (paon).
The formation of a new household as defined above takes place when the son gets married. The post-marital residence is normally virilocal; all married sons and their wives establish separate kuren, though the newly-weds may eat with the husband’s parents for a while until they build a new kitchen.

From an administrative point of view, village households are represented by male heads, termed kepala keluarga (Ind., “head of the family”) or simply KK. This is based on the national marriage law (Undang-Undang No. 1/1974) which stipulates that the husband is the head of the family (kepala keluarga) , while the wife is the matron of the household (ibu rumah tangga) (Article 31). KK is also held to mean the household itself as it appears in the official census. For example, Banjar Tengah of Singarsa village counted 172 KK according to the village record in 1989.

Given an official assumption that kepala keluarga should be male, a female-headed household is automatically incorporated into the woman’s father’s or married brother’s household, even when the former operates independently from the latter. Moreover, being fixed from birth and modified only by marriage, official membership of KK does not correspond accurately with the shifting composition of the household [Cole 1983: 194]. When an unmarried daughter, for instance, moves into her aunt’s household, contributing to the household production and sharing consumption, she is still counted as a member of her father’s household (KK) in the official record.

The composition of KK largely overlaps with kuren under normal circumstances. According to the local regulations, however, a widowed woman whose son is still unmarried remains as a half member
(panyeIe or asele) of the hamlet council (banjar). In other words, her household is acknowledged as an independent one. She is also subject to the prescribed duties of the banjar, though the amount of material contribution is half of married members and total exemption from labour service is allowed. She also performs all other ritual obligations incurred by her relations with various temples and other households.

In any case, individual households form economically autonomous units in the day-to-day context, though they may rely on co-operation from other households within the same compound or beyond on some ritual occasions or for the children’s education.

House Compounds
When two or more households occupy the house compound (pakarangan), heads of the component households normally trace common ancestry through their fathers. They are together responsible for worshipping at and maintaining the family temple (mrajan or sanggah) in their compound. Importantly, the compound as a whole often acts as a unified unit in the ritual context. Apart from the implementation of prescribed ceremonies for their family temple, one of such occasions is the ceremonial gift-giving to distantly-related households. Instead of taking gifts individually, one of the wives may represent all the households in her compound in visiting the hosts of the ceremony and giving them the gift. The cost of the gift is then divided equally among the represented households. One can also observe a high degree of co-operation and intimacy between these households in other contexts, such as the exchange of cooked and uncooked food, joint-preparation of certain offerings, and the mutual care of young children

Clusters of House Compounds
When a married son wants to establish his own household with a separate kitchen and his parents’ compound is already over-crowded, he will move to a vacated or newly built compound. The residents of the new compound then worship at and maintain the new family temple in their own compound, but they also retain ritual ties with the temple in the original compound, which is now regarded as their kawitan or “origin-point” [ibid. : 47, 52]. Members of descending households continue to worship at the original temple; thus a cluster of house compounds is formed through a process of fission over time. These compounds are linked by mutual obligation toward the temple of their origin-point (mrajan gede or sanggah gede, both meaning “great family temple”).

Those households and compounds which can trace an immediate genealogical link (through fathers and grandfathers) are called sawaris or warisan, because they are entitled to claim the inheritance (warisan) from one another, if a particular family has no sons. The internal relationships of this inheritance group is generally close and corporate. At the same time, disputes over inheritance or other matters are not uncommon; the ties between the compounds concerned may be suspended (puik) as a result. In such a case, all the individuals of the opposing compounds, even though not directly involved in the conflict itself, must cease to socialize with one another. Such breaches of the relationships are normally healed by subsequent events, but may last for years or even for generations.

Your Ad Here