Homes, Home Lives and Precarious Privilege: Older Western Residents and Differing Lifestyle Mobilities in Ubud, Bali

Abstract

This article explores later-life subjectivities and experiences of precarious privilege through the ethnographic lens of home life and the material culture of homes. Based on long-term fieldwork with older white foreigners in Ubud, Bali, I examine the role of building projects and vernacular architecture in forging moral connections across self, local culture and place-myth. These subject positions of belonging and identity are nourished yet unsettled by the growing presence of younger foreigners and modern housing forms in Ubud. I argue that experiences of privilege and precarity coexist and evolve across time, in places such as Bali that are transformed by lifestyle mobilities and tourism ..