Keboan: Emik, Syncretism, and Negotiation

The traditional Keboan ritual is accelerating and articulating the culture of the Using community in Aliyan village, Banyuwangi, East Java. Cultural axioms manifest the articulation of ancestral traditions that are thick with values. This article will explore the conception and the treasures of local knowledge from the Keboan ritual in Aliyan village from the landscape of identity and the realm of actualization. Describing and compiling the Keboan Aliyan tradition from the socio-cultural, historical, religious, and political perspectives represent the social transformation scheme in fulfilling the Keboan ritual. A series of research procedures, such as observations and interviews, were conducted with resource persons ranging from the community and traditional activists to village youths to uncover the concepts of the Keboan ritual from various perspectives. Collecting this information becomes empirical knowledge about discourse in the socio-cultural transformation of the Keboan ritual, which produces axioms in framing cultural structures that have undergone cultural fixation. Transformation and socio-cultural fixation are significant articulations in understanding the Keboan ritual as the customary tradition of the Aliyan community, which has a particular nomenclature, undergoes a process of reification, intersects with post-traditional discourse, and opens up dialectics in its various transformation possibilities.