Mark Hobart

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Mark Hobart

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Biography

In English

Mark Hobart is Emeritus Professor of Critical Media and Cultural Studies at SOAS, University of London. Mark's research interests include philosophical issues in Anthropology, Cultural and Media Studies. Currently he is running a project on cultural styles of argument and rhetoric entitled 'How Indonesians Argue', which aims to explore the practices that constitute what we usually call 'culture' or 'society'. Having carried out over eight years of intensive ethnography in Indonesia, his interest is driven by awareness of the unappreciated gulf between academic theorizing and concepts on the one hand and how people act, judge and interpret their own actions.

Bali-related publications include:

Hobart, Mark (2017) 'Bali is a battlefield Or the triumph of the imaginary over actuality'. Jurnal Kajian Bali (Journal of Bali Studies), (7) 1, pp 187-212.

Hobart, Mark (2011) 'The relevance of cultural and media studies to theatre and television in Bali'. Jurnal Kajian Bali (Journal of Bali Studies), (1) 2, pp 63-75.

Hobart, Mark (2011) 'Bali is a brand: a critical approach'. Jurnal Kajian Bali (Journal of Bali Studies), (1) 1, pp 1-26.

Hobart, Mark (2010) 'Rich kids can’t cry: reflections on the viewing subject in Bali'. About Performance, (10), pp 199-222.

Hobart, Mark (2007) 'Rethinking Balinese Dance'. Indonesia and the Malay World, (35) 101, pp 107-128.

Hobart, Mark (2000) 'The end of the world news: television and a problem of articulation in Bali'. International journal of cultural studies, (3) 1, pp 79-102.

Hobart, Mark (1997) 'The missing subject: Balinese time and the elimination of history'. Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, (31) 1, pp 123-172.

In Balinese

In Indonesian

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https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Hobart

Examples of work

Scholars Room Bali is a Brand: A Critical Approach

Scholars Room Cultural Studies and Everyday life, A Balinese Case

This article aims to bring the intellectual rigour of Cultural Studies to Balinese ideas about culture which confuse culture with ideology. Cultural Studies is not the study of culture, but its critique which deconstructs culture as misrepresenting actuality as an Imaginary convenient to regimes of power. The New Order articulated ‘kebudayaan’ to create a submissive populace happy to embrace global tourism. Culture is no longer how how people do things but marketable commodities posturing as ‘ancient tradition’. Bali as paradise is a cliché. The island now fulfils Madame Suharto’s dream of Disneyland. The capitalist fantasy of endless cost-free growth bears no resemblance to the sophisticated Balinese cosmology of Kali-Yuga, which ends in cataclysmic dissolution; or to popular ideas of the world as ceaseless transforming. Although kebudayaan dismisses ordinary people as stupid masses, they often escape the ideological straitjacket of kebudayaan by just getting on with culture as everyday life.

Scholars Room How Balinese argue

The Imaginary of Bali as paradise stands in stark contrast to what is actually going on. To understand the split requires examining who is authorized to represent Bali as what under what conditions. The issue concerns the nature of argument – whether argumentation and disagreement – and how it disarticulates and marginalize alternatives. The preferred, hegemonic style of argument in Bali is monologue, favoured by those in power, which effectively anticipates and prevents contradiction. By contrast, dialogue is open, democratic and widespread in daily life, but often passes relatively unnoticed. Whereas dialogue enables discussion and problem-solving, monologue re-asserts ideology in the face of uncomfortable actualities. In Bali, the form ideology takes centres on fantasies about an imaginary ‘age-old culture’. The drawbacks are evident in how claims over the cultural antiquity of Tri Hita Karana disguise its grave shortcomings in practice.

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