Reaffirmation of Identity Through Ritual Practices in Tenganan Balinese Old Village, Bali I Wayan Suyadnya 1* 1 Center for Culture and Frontier Studies & Department of Sociology Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia * Corresponding author. Email: iway.s@ub.ac.id ABSTRACT This paper explores how ritual practices working on identity issues at the Balinese old villages. Ritual practices are an important part of a lifespan of community. These activities that structure the whole lives of the community are relevant on shared by and to a member of the community. Specifically, I ask whether these activities inform the extent to which individual experience of the practices as a meaningful factor for expressing their social identities. This paper believed that habitual practices are significant to reaffirm their identity in a globalized world, both in their group or what they performed in public. In the indigenous community more of those habitual practices are closely linked to important events. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews in Tenganan Pegringsingan Bali, Indonesia, the paper is dealing with how the local institution are, ritual and festive practices help reinforce a sense of identity. By considering the ritual such as meteruna nyoman (the young non-formal education), the paper present that these practices are strongly affected by the change of community because they depend so much on the participation of others. My research shows that processes such as the introduction of formal education, migrations, and the spread of Agama Hindu Bali have a particular effect on their ritual practices. My findings resonate with the sociological and anthropological literature on identity theories that the ritual practices as a meaningful experience in negotiating their identity. The paper concludes that ritual in practices is strongly serve as a socialization process and reaffirmation of identity Keywords: Affirmation, Identity, Ritual Practices, Culture, Bali 1. INTRODUCTION Several young boys, with bald heads, came out of their houses. They walked hand in hand past several sacred buildings in Tenganan Pegringsingan, Bali. They lined up neatly, walking in line in a row guided by one of the eldest of them. Their ages are between 14-23 years. From behind, the parents let them go to follow traditional rituals. On that day, the boys will enter the “academy” held by customary village (desa adat), a ritual education terminology where they will learn a full year about the villages structure, socio-cultural life, rituals, and all things related to responsibilities as members of the group (krama desa adat). For this purpose, they must follow the customary rules strictly enforced by the village council. This is a very important basis in their life cycle before they will join the village youth association. It also became a momentum to test their readiness as an important part of the “republic” autonomous village government in Bali old villages [1]. During the development of modernity, this village is returning to a ritual that most outsiders might question. Tenganan people, although their image was built up as traditional (kuno), actually most of them are open- minded people. In the many literature about the village, they are commonly seen life in two world, modern and traditional [2]. Their children, some of who participated in a ritual were those who had a college education. Two of them worked and settled in another city, choosing to return ‘home’ of their community to follow some of ritual initiated by village council. This phenomenon develops a meaning of ritual explanation but also as an experience of individuals to engage with the community. Ritual has a pivotal position because it has full meaning experience for the continuity of the community [3]. Ritual is a symbol of the value and meaning of community, it is the collection of myths, tales, and explicit beliefs which it supposedly enacts [4]. A ritual can not only be understood as a regular activity repeated by a group of people that emphasizes the continuity of tradition in society. Some literature in anthropological Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 540 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Technology and Educational Science (ICTES 2020) Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 66