Sasak Tribe of Segenter

Segenter is the oldest traditional village of the Sasak people in northern Lombok and the village has been preserved as a show case of the traditional way of life of the Sasak people. According to Cole (2007 – http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/11994/), the Indonesian government has a strategy of identifying and commodifying traditional villages as tourist attractions. Cole gives an interesting discussion on the topic, presenting 10 years of surveys of tourists and villagers in a series of remote villages in Flores, eastern Indonesia. At its extreme Cole documents villages where residents were forbidden to use windows in their dwellings or connect electricity to the village because tourists considered the village to be less traditional if electricity lines passed through the village.