Pergeseran Nilai Budaya dalam Tradisi Nyongkolan: Rekonfigurasi Syiar Perkawinan Sasak di Desa Kotaraja Lombok Timur

Abstract

The nyongkolan tradition is an important part of the Sasak marriage cycle because it operates simultaneously as a customary event, a space for social encounter, and a public medium for announcing the legitimacy of a married couple. This study reconstructs the history and ritual process of nyongkolan in Kotaraja Village, analyzes the shifting cultural values embedded in the tradition, and explains its social and economic consequences. A historical method was employed through heuristics, source criticism, pluralistic interpretation, and historiography. Data were collected from observations, documents, and interviews with 13 informants, including village officials, customary and religious leaders, community figures, young people, women, and cultural-economy actors, between February and August 2023. The findings show that local collective memory associates nyongkolan with historical Balinese influence and narratives of the village founders, while the ritual itself consists of pre-procession, procession, and post-procession stages. It embodies the values of public religious communication, tolerance, mutual cooperation, social bonding, and courtesy. The most visible shift concerns the value of public announcement: marriage recognition, formerly materialized through bodily presence and a public procession, is increasingly replaced or complemented by modern receptions and digital communication. This change is driven by modernization, household economic capacity, and habits formed during COVID-19 restrictions. Its consequences include concerns about social suspicion, reduced public entertainment and symbolic recognition for the couple, and declining income for make-up artists, traditional-clothing rental providers, and gendang beleq groups. The study argues that nyongkolan should be preserved adaptively by maintaining its relational functions while simplifying costly ceremonial components.