In Bali, a broken temple stone does not get replaced just because it is broken. According to a qualitative study published in the journal Built Heritage, material intervention in Balinese temples begins only after passing through a chain of ritual authorisations, a finding that reframes ritual not as symbolic decoration but as an operating system for conservation decisions. The research, conducted by I Kadek Pranajaya and colleagues, argues that ritual functions as a regulatory technology: a repeatable procedural infrastructure that determines when change may occur, who may act, and what happens to the materials involved.
The study draws on qualitative interpretive research across three temple restoration contexts in Bali: the Kentel Gumi temple in Klungkung, the urban Jagatnatha temple in Denpasar, and the Petilan Kesiman temple. The researchers combined direct observation of restoration phases and ritual events with semi-structured interviews involving eighteen informants, including undagi (traditional architects), pemangku (temple priests), sulinggih (spiritual authorities), pengempon (temple custodians), customary authorities, and participants in ngayah, a customary system of collective labour. Documentary sources such as awig-awig and perarem (customary legal texts), restoration reports, and visual archives provided additional depth. The authors note that a single researcher conducted the study, so formal inter-coder reliability testing was not applicable; instead, they relied on triangulation across observations, interviews, documents, and images, together with cross-case comparison.
The central empirical claim is that conservation in these living temples is oriented less towards stabilising fabric than towards maintaining legitimacy. At Kentel Gumi, restoration unfolds through a sequenced chain of ritual authorisations: matur piuning, a formal request for permission; a symbolic transfer of the building’s sacred status; construction phases including nyukat genah (measuring the building location) and ngaruwak (ritually authorised commencement of physical work); and completion through ngenteg linggih and piodalan, which re-establish sacred function. Each stage operates as a gate. Physical work does not begin after technical assessment alone; it begins only once the relevant ritual procedures have been completed and recognised by the appropriate authorities.
The researchers identify three principal forms of what they call ritual gates. Temporal authorisation establishes when intervention may legitimately take place, using ritual calendars and auspicious days. Action authorisation determines whether an element may be dismantled, removed, stored, reused, replaced, or ritually deposited. Status authorisation revalidates the restored structure so that its sacred function can resume, typically through consecration rites such as pemlaspasan. One undagi interviewed in 2025 put the logic plainly:
“We cannot decide to dismantle or replace an element simply because it is damaged. Without ritual permission, even a broken stone must remain in place. It is the ritual that determines what action is allowed.” The researchers report that this statement was offered in response to proposals for immediate replacement, illustrating that technical reasoning alone was insufficient to justify intervention. In their reading, minimum intervention in this setting is not a doctrinal import from international conservation charters but a practice enacted from within ritual governance itself. Visible decay may prompt attention, yet it does not by itself justify action; deterioration alone is insufficient to trigger replacement, because decision-making authority rests with procedural validation rather than with material symptoms.
Once elements are removed, their pathways remain regulated. The study documents that dismantled components are recorded, labelled, and inventoried before any decision on reuse or deposition is finalised, with tagging, grouping, and temporary storage areas indicating anticipation of reintegration. The authors describe this as closed-loop circulation that is technically enabled but ritually conditioned: replacement is pursued only when deterioration can no longer be negotiated within ritual parameters. The photographs they present show workers removing specific stones or timber members while adjacent elements remain untouched, a pattern of selective, sequential dismantling rather than total removal.
A substantial part of the article examines how these authorised procedures produce circular outcomes without any formal sustainability framework. In dominant discussions of the circular economy within heritage conservation, material circulation is typically framed through performance indicators, life-cycle efficiency, and technical optimisation. The Balinese evidence, the authors argue, compels a different reading. Across all three cases, materials were retained, reused, stored, reintegrated, or selectively replaced through procedures recognised by the community, not organised through sustainability targets or performance indicators. Because the study did not measure circularity through quantitative life-cycle assessment or material-flow accounting, the authors identify circular outcomes through observable material pathways: retention of sacred fabric, selective dismantling, reuse of bricks and timber members, reintegration of fragments, ritual deposition of materials no longer suitable for reuse, controlled inflow of new materials, and preservation of modular construction systems that allow future disassembly.
One particularly striking inherited practice is pengeresek, an ancestral custom in which bricks and fragments are intentionally stored within the body of the structure for use in later cycles. The authors interpret this not as accumulation but as anticipatory conservation: embedding material inside the building creates a temporal bridge, enabling future custodians to inherit usable fabric while maintaining genealogical continuity. In their analysis, this demonstrates that circular logic is not a recent import from sustainability discourse but an inherited feature of the infrastructure, persisting because practice is normalised, remembered, and ritually validated rather than because actors optimise resources.
The three cases also reveal how the same governance grammar produces different material strategies. At the Petilan Kesiman temple, where ritual intensity is high, priority is given to retaining older stones and timber members even when a technically simpler repair would involve substitution, a configuration the authors call a preservation-priority loop driven by sacred attachment and an ethics of continuity rather than cost or efficiency. At the Jagatnatha temple in Denpasar, by contrast, large-scale dismantling was undertaken to restore the city’s Bebadungan identity through reconstruction. Yet even there an exception remained: the Padmasana, constructed of white coral stone from a coral outcrop known locally as tombong, stayed intact because its sacred value was considered irreplaceable. Circularity, the authors conclude, operated differently across material categories depending on ritual status and sacred significance, and the introduction of new materials does not negate circular logic when inflow is subordinated to ritual authorisation and cosmological coherence.
The Jagatnatha case additionally shows that ritual legitimacy alone does not make reuse possible; the construction system must also permit dismantling, storage, and reinstallation. The Bebadungan brick system, especially an articulation known as peciren, contains what the authors describe as a logic of modular reversibility: elements can be separated, classified, and reassembled without losing coherence, with joints conceived not as permanent fusions but as connections anticipating reopening. In their account, ritual procedures and construction technique are mutually constitutive. Without ritual authorisation, dismantling cannot begin; without a reversible system, authorised reuse cannot be sustained. A component is not reusable simply because it can be detached; it becomes reusable because detachment occurs within a recognised moral and cosmological order.
The article also maps how authority is distributed rather than centralised. Decisions were discussed through sangkep, deliberative meetings involving community members, temple custodians, and cultural heritage practitioners, and validated through ritual procedures involving different actors. Undagi hold constructive knowledge; ritual leaders safeguard cosmological legitimacy; pengempon and customary institutions organise consensus, labour mobilisation, and compliance with customary law; and community members provide maintenance labour through ngayah, which the authors characterise not as voluntary assistance but as fulfilment of customary responsibility. Although governance is customary, they argue it is not opaque: responsibilities are widely recognised, repeatable, and traceable across intervention cycles. What appears informal is in fact highly procedural, and accountability circulates depending on the decision at stake rather than residing in a permanent authority holder.
The study notes that these community-based practices are not insulated from contemporary technology. Field evidence showed that conservation selectively incorporates digital documentation within ritually regulated procedures, with tools such as photogrammetry, three-dimensional scanning, building information modelling, and uncrewed aerial vehicles supporting condition assessment, element identification, and the recording of ornamentation and spatial configuration prior to intervention. In this setting, digital technology does not constitute authority; it serves as knowledge support that strengthens the interpretive capacity of the undagi, ritual leaders, and the community, leaving legitimacy and authority with ritual and customary governance.
To position these findings more broadly, the authors develop a conceptual comparison with ritualised conservation elsewhere. In East Asian contexts, conservation is often organised through periodic reconstruction, as in the Shikinen Sengū renewal tradition in Japan, where dismantling and rebuilding follow ritual institutional rhythms and authenticity is anchored in the continuity of transmission, skill, and sanctioned repetition. Across parts of the Global South, sacred structures are sustained through maintenance inseparable from belief and obligation. Bali, in their framing, sits between institutional formalisation and diffuse custom: legitimacy rests on customary governance and distributed authority, but procedures generate traceable decision architectures that remain informal yet auditable.
The authors draw policy implications cautiously. They suggest that formal conservation guidelines should recognise community-based procedures of authorisation as part of the decision architecture of conservation itself, incorporating ritual timing, recognised decision-making forums, and culturally defined thresholds of replacement and reuse alongside material evaluation, and that sustainability metrics may need complementing with indicators of procedural legitimacy. They are explicit about limits: observations did not always span complete ritual cycles, access to specialised knowledge was hierarchically mediated, certain ritual meanings were not treated as data unless publicly explained or corroborated, and cosmological and legal specificity limit direct transferability to other contexts. The framework is offered as a heuristic for analysing how legitimacy becomes materially operative under specific conditions, not as a universal model of conservation governance.
Subject of Research: How ritual authorisation governs material change and circular reuse in Balinese temple restoration
Article Title: Ritual as regulatory technology: governing change and the embedded circular economy in Balinese living heritage
Article References: Pranajaya, I. K., Dewi, N. M. E. N., Artayasa, N., & Rihadiani, R. R. (2026). Ritual as regulatory technology: governing change and the embedded circular economy in Balinese living heritage. Built Heritage, 10(1), Article 78. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43238-026-00312-5
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1186/s43238-026-00312-5
Keywords: Balinese temples, living heritage, ritual, conservation, circular economy, customary governance, undagi, material reuse, heritage policy, Bali, restoration, procedural legitimacy
News Source: Courtney Benton. (October 27, 2026). Ritual, Not Metrics: How Balinese Temple Restoration Governs Material Change. Scienmag.
