The State as Surrogate Tourist: Tourism Competitions and State Recognition in Indonesia

ABSTRACT: In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia’s Ministry of Tourism launched the Tourism Village Award (ADWI), which expanded from 1,200 villages in 2021 to over 6,000 in 2024. Drawing on fieldwork in Lombok villages competing in the 2023 round, this talk examines how state recognition circulates as a resource in the absence of tourists. I trace the work of “local champions,” unpaid volunteers who craft narratives of village potential through filmmaking, coordination, and relationship-building. I then turn to a Lombok village that received a visit from Minister Sandiaga Uno, who briefly embodies the absent tourist’s gaze. Although the state promotes inclusive tourism aesthetics, local leaders must tirelessly demonstrate readiness for investment as they navigate opaque bureaucratic channels with uncertain results. If headlines warn of overtourism, this talk instead highlights tourism development in Indonesia as aspirational and precarious, where the state itself stands in for the absent tourist.

Connor is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Cornell University whose research examines how value circulates in Indonesian state tourism initiatives. His dissertation, Tourism without Tourists: State Performance and Regional Development in Indonesia, draws on extended ethnographic fieldwork in Jakarta and on Lombok, a Muslim-majority island located between Bali and Sumbawa.