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Paper short abstract:

Through skillful performance and recreation of normalized Javanese traditional arts practices and rituals, practitioners become endowed with the tradition's delegated power. They wield the Shield of Tradition to obtain more freedom for their communities in times of pandemic restraint and control.

Paper long abstract:

This paper stems from ongoing collaborative ethnography research that involves a PhD candidate from The University of Newcastle working within and with rural communities in Magelang, Indonesia. The project investigates the role of Javanese traditional arts within three selected villages.

Collected ethnographic data suggests that the prevalence and cultural resonance of traditional arts practices within rural Javanese society and politics, allow those able to skillfully perform and recreate the tradition’s normalized practices and related rituals to become ‘endowed with its delegated power’ (Yurchak, 2006).

Traditional arts studios and senior practitioners obtain a sense of freedom by cleverly stepping into zones of delegated power that the tradition has created. Through exploring a variety of events wherein tradition was used to harness increased freedom, the paper will shed light on how, and to what ends, this ‘shield of tradition’ was wielded. Together, these stories will illustrate how in pandemic times of restraint and restriction, the shield of tradition afforded certain villages, namely those with strong traditional arts communities, the opportunity to gather and perform, whilst this was unattainable for other villages.

A close analysis of the ‘spaces occupied or transversed’ (Foucault, 1975) by traditional arts practices in pandemic times, portrays an ever-present complex web of power relationships and looming threats of covid-19 disciplinary action, wherein the tradition was forced to tread during the pandemic. The careful, confident steps of practitioners venturing into these unchartered, yet familiar spaces, sheds unique light on the contemporary position of Javanese traditional arts in Magelang's rural society.