Some Reflections on How the Research Went in Practice

Before leaving for fieldwork, information had been gathered on the official permissions needed to conduct research. Official written permission is required at the provincial and regency level, and in some cases also at the administrative village

53 level, and each takes around 1-3 days to be issued, depending on the completeness of supporting documents and availability of the local government staff. The office of the secondary level local government is in the capital of the regency, and a long distance from the village research sites. Considering that the research was conducted in four different regencies spread out across Bali, it was a rather vigorous task and lengthy process to secure all official permissions. Permissions were also sought from the support organisations to approach the villages; whereas Bali CoBTA did this by way of verbal communication with the local managers of the tourism initiatives, the Wisnu Foundation prepared support letters for the JED or local managers to submit to the head of the villages.

Pancasari was the first village visited as it is closer to the capital Denpasar than the other village case studies. After two days in Pancasari, there were no tourism activities in the village to be observed. After 4 interviews in the first 3 days, it became clear that the CBT initiative in the village is not fully operational and was still in the very early stage. However, switching to another village would have meant getting a new research permission which would involve traveling back to the capital, going through the procedure and delaying starting up the research project. So I stayed in the village and conducted more interviews than initially planned – from the intended 5 it became 10 – in an effort to find answers to my research questions, especially so after a questionnaire respondent told me that my questions were ‘irrelevant’.

Fortunately, the second case study village, Blimbingsari, demonstrated longer engagement in and more activities of CBT. I was able to have my research questions answered as I had hoped for. Since I had done 10 interviews in the first village, I aimed for the same number in Blimbingsari. The visit to the supposedly third case study village, Dukuh Sibetan, however, had to be re-scheduled as the locals were fully occupied with religious ceremonies. So Ceningan became the third village to be studied. Before doing so, Wisnu Foundation invited me to join a monitoring site visit as part of a programme with the organisation’s partner, a Jakarta-based NGO called

Indonesia untuk Kemanusiaan, ‘Indonesia for Humanity’. The purpose of inviting

54 interviewee, and to give me an idea of the current situation on the island so that I could re-consider my selection of the village. It was also intended to submit a support letter for research and introduce me to the head of the village, but time did not allow this to take place. After this one day visit, I stayed for a couple of days at the Wisnu Foundation office to collect printed materials, have briefings and hold interviews with the Wisnu Foundation management as well as the JED coordinator. I also had the chance to interview the chairman of Bali CoBTA during this week. Although I was informed of the challenges I might face due to the past and present circumstances involving conflicts arising in Ceningan, I was determined to stay and carry out the research in the village – if not for pragmatics, partially it was driven by curiosity. It turned out that finding willing participants to my research was difficult on this tiny island. Fortunately I had the help of my host, who introduced me to some of the people involved in the original group responsible for the community-based (eco) tourism initiative. Because of this, and also due to family obligations that made me leave Bali for a while (fortunately in Jakarta I was able to arrange 2 interviews with 2 NGOs who had been involved in early JED programmes, however in the end I did not use the data), I had to return to Ceningan for more information and finally managed to obtain 10 interviews.

Following an observation of the mid-year meeting of JED attended by the owners and managers of the CBT in three villages (Tenganan Pegringsingan was absent due to religious ceremonies), I carried on my research in the fourth location, Dukuh Sibetan. Due to time and budget constraints, my stay in this village was shorter. I conducted 5 interviews as originally planned in the research design, however, no questionnaires were administered. Nonetheless, the interviews contained information that I was searching for. Additionally, I met with a tour operator manager (who used to be the assistant of the chairman of Bali CoBTA), Bali province tourism officials and hospitality management academics for interviews (data from the latter are not being used).

The interviews were carried out in semi- structured fashion to draw out attitudes, perceptions, opinions and beliefs, with the goal to obtain rich information. In some

55 settings, topics were prepared instead of questions. In most cases, the interviews took form in fluid conversations led by the informant. The dynamic of the interview was a two-way communication in which the researcher responded to the informant as much as the other way around (Berg & Lune, 2012 pp. 110-111). The frameworks/tables developed based on the literature served as a guideline to keep the conversation relevant to the line of inquiry, and the questions generated are impromptu. Informal unstructured interviews can provide additional data to direct observation and are suitable for situations in which there is a wide range of respondents with a wide range of responses. Opting for a “how” question to the participant to ask a “why” question was frequently done to maintain a conducive ambience for flowing storytelling.