Agama, Adat, Budaya: The Dialogic Construction of Kebalian

International audienceSince the incorporation of their island into the Dutch colonial empire, the Balinese have engaged into a dialogic construction of their identity - what they call Kebalian - in terms of agama, adat and budaya. Far from expressing a primordial essence, as they would have it, these conceptual categories were alien and had to be appropriated and interpreted by the Balinese according to their own references and concerns. This article traces the history of the construction of Kebalian by means of an investigation of the dialogical interaction between the Balinese and their diverse interlocutors throughout the twentieth century. Now, with their adat secularized and marginalized by the Indonesian state, with their budaya regionalized and converted into a tourist attraction, the Balinese have made their agama the emblem of Kebalian