ABSTRACT
The pre-eminent and powerful position of the Puri (royal house) is a singular feature of Brassika, and a description of this position is the centrepiece of this chapter. The story of my entry to the Puri and village reveals the ability of the Puri to speak for the village as well as some of the articulations of the state and the local community in New Order Bali. It also explicates the channelling of the foreign researcher that hierarchical Balinese social relations enforce and the ways in which my own subject position as researcher was shaped.
