Power and the Security Organisations in Bali: Drug Gangsters, Neighbourhood Watch Groups, or What?

Crime is a serious problem for Bali because it can discourage tourism and threaten the livelihood of many people. Securing public safety, however, poses complicated issues of power around which groups provide what forms of security for whom. In this chapter, we briefly survey concepts of power and then reflect on recent tensions between the police and the three largest security organisations. These reflections are informed by interviews with leaders of diverse security organisations, journalists, politicians, village leaders, and senior police. How the crime and public safety problem is represented is central to the ways in which the security organisations are understood and power is wielded. Interpretations of the problem are a matter of discursive power but such interpretations are also embedded in long standing social relations between the armed forces, business interests, the political parties, the police, and the security organisations. We argue that it is important to interpret the nature and roles of the security organisations both in terms of the social relations in which they are embedded and in terms of discursive power.