Ritual as regulatory technology: governing change and the embedded circular economy in Balinese living heritage

Balinese temple restoration is commonly interpreted through symbolism, belief, and architectural tradition, yet such readings leave how ritual regulates material action insufficiently examined. This article reconceptualises ritual as a regulatory technology: a procedural infrastructure that authorises intervention, defines thresholds of acceptable change, and structures material circulation within living heritage. Drawing on qualitative interpretive research across three temple restoration contexts in Bali, this study integrates observations of ritual sequences, interviews with undagi and religious authorities, and process analysis of decision-making pathways. The findings show that conservation is oriented less towards stabilising fabric than towards maintaining legitimacy. Reuse, selective replacement, dismantling, and ritual deposition become possible only after passing through recognised authorisation gates. If change is the norm rather than the exception, conservation theory must move away from paradigms centred on arresting alteration and instead examine infrastructures that make transformation culturally acceptable. Circularity, therefore, is not engineered through optimisation but produced through cosmological order, distributed authority, and moral accountability. This article argues that if conservation is to engage seriously with living heritage, analytical attention must shift from controlling change to understanding how change becomes legitimate. In this view, conservation concerns not how transformation is prevented but how it is socially organised, authorised, and remembered.