ABSTRACT
The municipal Department of Culture and Tourism, together with other government departments and independent businesses, organized Pekan Gemilang Yogya, a week of public festivities, from the 1st through 7th of October, 2003, celebrating the 247th anniversary of Sultan Hamengku Buwono the author founding and moving into the Yogyakarta Palace. Moreover, local and regional officials used these idealized models of local cultures and corresponding public cultural forms as marketable tourist resources, "tourist objects". The greater openness, freedom of expression and hopeful public discourses reflects the potential for the growth of a more "civil" and "democratic" society, in which the access to resources will be more equitably distributed and utilized. In the case of the special territory of Yogyakarta, the traditions and customs of the palace, Islamized Hindu-Buddhist culture, often reproduced in district ceremonies, represent the "culture" and customary characteristics of the city and region.
