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The town of Labuan Bajo in Western Flores, Eastern Indonesia has experienced rapid changes in the past decade, primarily associated with the development of tourism. This paper engages with the ideas of Jacques Derrida on hospitality and sovereignty, to explore the shifting landscapes of hospitality in this Manggaraian town. His musings on 'the question of the foreigner', the 'conditions' of hospitality, and the idea of the threshold are used to capture the way that hospitality is experienced as a struggle, as a contradiction, as an 'aporia'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies of decentralisation and democratisation since the end of the New Order of Indonesia in 1998 have seen a major shift of economic and political attention to the regions and widespread clamouring from local communities for more power in decision making and control over local resources. This regionalisation has led to a resurgence in interest in ‘tradition’ and a shift in the understanding of ‘culture’ as it was formed during the New Order. This article looks at contestations over the use of traditional culture in the regency of Manggarai (in Flores Island, Eastern Indonesia) and how, while political elites retain an image of culture similar to the New Order, local communities struggle to reform tradition in their own way and to regain local governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at a touristic culture that has emerged in Labuan Bajo, Western Flores, Indonesia', and how this becomes the space in which people of differing cultures communicate and miscommunicate. The paper explores the meeting of different cultural values in this touristic space, and how what has emerged as a "touristic culture" is something different, but related to the Florenese culture from which it has departed. Various categories and notions have taken on distinct and different meanings in the context of tourism, and these become the source of conflicting values and ambiguous moral relationships between tourists and locals, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]