The Grave Goods Ritual

The Balinese culture acknowledges and provides socio-religious meaning to grave goods rituals as a practice related to the belief in a soul’s passage to the afterlife. The practice, both globally and locally, has undergone change as modern additions, such as packaged food, photographs, gold replicas, and other contemporary items of the modern world, become part of such processions. This research focused on the type of hybrid values arising from a traditional modernity perspective concerning the grave goods ritual. This research also sought to understand the implications of such hybrid values for the Balinese people. This research was descriptive and qualitative, using participant observation, structured interviews with traditional leaders and ceremony-hosting families, and analysis of lontar and customary texts. The approach also included thematic analysis for the transcription, coding, and categorization of data, with source and method triangulation serving to validate the findings. The findings show that contemporary additions to the goods do not hybridize and hence nullify the social and spiritual purposes of social goods. Rather, the value of such goods in the “social goods funeral” context is expanded within a traditional perspective. In a “third space” intersection of tradition and contemporary practices, new symbols and identities are formed. This study represents the first attempt to interpret the practice of grave goods through the lens of Bhabha’s theory of cultural hybridity, viewing it as an adaptive strategy rather than as a cultural regression. It illustrates the deep spiritual expression of the Balinese people as they grapple with cultural identity in a globalized context.