Being deaf in Bengkala : the Koloks’ social representations of deafness, Hearing and Kata kolok

There has been a long-standing debate in Western societies when it comes to deafness on whether it should be represented as being a disability or if it should be represented as being a difference (Davis, 1995 ; Lane, 1995 ; Brueggemann, 1999). These opposing representations have been dominating Western discourse for decades claiming that the d/Deaf body should be considered in its biological state rather than in its cultural state or vice versa. Hence, the Deaf space in the public sphere has been largely decided by the hearing society which has opted to either allow the deaf to integrate the dominant society through medical intervention leading to the acquisition of varying levels of speech and hearing, or allow the Deaf to organize themselves in the fringes of society through the creation of Deaf communities where they can communicate with each other using sign language. That said, there are a few rare exceptions of isolated villages where a high incidence of multi-generational genetic deafness has initiated a community-based approach to deafness which developed independently from the dominating Western ideas. Bengkala, a small farming village located in the mountainous region of northern Bali, Indonesia, is one of these exceptional villages. In Bengkala, the deaf residents, known locally as koloks, have been present in the village for over 200 years. Since then, there have been many community-based adaptations, notably the widespread use of the shared sign language, Kata kolok, as a way to include the koloks in all village activities. The shared use of Kata kolok by the koloks as well as more than half of the hearing, or normal villagers as they are identified in the village, has been praised internationally in academic and media publications for being indicative of the inclusion of the koloks in the larger community. However, in order to have a more in-depth understanding of just how well integrated the koloks are in their native community, this ethnographic research applied both participant observation and one on one interviews in order to document the koloks’ social representation of deafness, the hearing and the local sign language. Social representations (SR) are frames of reference to which individuals are continuously referring themselves to in order to identify objects, to determine the best actions to take in any given situation and to understand the world around them. And so, by studying the koloks SRs, the objective of this thesis is to explore the existence of a possible alternative path to the two opposing dominant social representations of deafness in Western societies. As a result, the first article studies the koloks’ SR of deafness through their dual identity. By maintaining simultaneous membership to the kolok ingroup as well as the village ingroup as a way to represent themselves as fully integrated members of the community, the koloks attest to the compatibility of the two groups. The second article examines the koloks’ representation of the normals, which highlights the parity between the two groups while also acknowledging the hearings’ unwavering support throughout the years. And the third article focuses on the koloks’ SR of Kata kolok as being one of many linguistic variations in the area which unifies and distinguishes them from the normals simultaneously. Thus, this research highlights the positive outcomes of having an unadulterated perception of deafness through community-based adaptations as opposed to prescriptive beliefs of the Deaf persons social identity and social inclusion from the hearing society. Keywords: Social Representations, Social Identity, Deafness and Deaf Communit