From ritual to resilience: Youth-led cultural continuity in Bali’s Ogoh-Ogoh ecosystem

This qualitative study examines how youth associations, ritual artisans, and customary leaders co-produce multigenerational cultural resilience through the Ogoh-Ogoh tradition in Badung Regency, Bali, amid intensifying pressures of globalization and cultural tourism. Using an iterative–interpretive design, we draw on Multigenerational Resilience Theory, enriched by Tri Hita Karana, to analyse in-depth interviews, participant observation across the full Ogoh-Ogoh cycle, and documentary materials such as awig-awig and competition archives. Thematic analysis in NVivo 12 maps emergent themes onto MRT’s pillars of transmission, cohesion, and adaptation. Findings show youth associations as a primary arena of intergenerational learning, where youth move from informal involvement in childhood to full organisational responsibility, sustaining ritual practice while developing leadership, financial stewardship, and collective efficacy. Ritual artisans and customary leaders act as ritual–aesthetic and governance anchors, reviving narrative repertoires, guarding spiritual boundaries, and mediating between customary obligations and tourism-driven expectations. Cross-cutting patterns reveal that narratives, collective rituals, and spiritual–ecological philosophies link family, banjar, and state institutions in a layered social ecology of resilience, while also reproducing tensions around gendered labour and the commodification of sacred practice. The study advances MRT by demonstrating how locally grounded philosophies such as Tri Hita Karana infuse multigenerational resilience with spiritual and ecological dimensions, and offers an “ecosystem” perspective on youth agency in ritual continuity. Practically, the findings provide a basis for youth-focused, culturally sensitive community development and tourism policies that seek to sustain Ogoh-Ogoh as both living ritual and adaptive cultural resource.