Michelle MacCarthy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824855604
- eISBN:
- 9780824872175
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824855604.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book provides an anthropological analysis of the encounter between local residents and tourists in the Trobriand Islands, a place renowned in anthropology and represented in various media as ...
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This book provides an anthropological analysis of the encounter between local residents and tourists in the Trobriand Islands, a place renowned in anthropology and represented in various media as “culturally authentic.” Through an examination of four arenas of interaction between Trobriand Islanders and tourists (formal performances, informal village visits, souvenir shopping, and tourist photography), this monograph explores the relationship of tourism to the commoditization of culture. A critique of concepts of authenticity, tradition, primitivity, and cultural commodification shows how these notions, which have particular meanings as analytical concepts in anthropology, are appropriated and strategically deployed in the discourses of both Trobriand Islanders and tourists. These tropes are employed in ways that fit with prevailing metanarratives which each side holds about the other, and are reproduced both in individual narratives of tourists’ and Trobrianders’ experiences and in their interpretations (often misconstrued) of the lives of cultural others with whom they interact. I argue that cultural commodities in this type of tourism are conceived of as singularities, a special category whose commodity status is downplayed in order to generate an increased sense of authenticity and to perpetuate the myth of a “primitive” economy and way of life more generally. In touristic encounters, experience itself is a sort of commodity, but relationships (real or imagined) are central to investing these experiences with meaning and value. This analysis brings new understandings of the role and significance of authenticity in the anthropology of tourism, as well as how meaning and value are ascribed to the cultural products produced and consumed in the cultural tourism encounter.Less
This book provides an anthropological analysis of the encounter between local residents and tourists in the Trobriand Islands, a place renowned in anthropology and represented in various media as “culturally authentic.” Through an examination of four arenas of interaction between Trobriand Islanders and tourists (formal performances, informal village visits, souvenir shopping, and tourist photography), this monograph explores the relationship of tourism to the commoditization of culture. A critique of concepts of authenticity, tradition, primitivity, and cultural commodification shows how these notions, which have particular meanings as analytical concepts in anthropology, are appropriated and strategically deployed in the discourses of both Trobriand Islanders and tourists. These tropes are employed in ways that fit with prevailing metanarratives which each side holds about the other, and are reproduced both in individual narratives of tourists’ and Trobrianders’ experiences and in their interpretations (often misconstrued) of the lives of cultural others with whom they interact. I argue that cultural commodities in this type of tourism are conceived of as singularities, a special category whose commodity status is downplayed in order to generate an increased sense of authenticity and to perpetuate the myth of a “primitive” economy and way of life more generally. In touristic encounters, experience itself is a sort of commodity, but relationships (real or imagined) are central to investing these experiences with meaning and value. This analysis brings new understandings of the role and significance of authenticity in the anthropology of tourism, as well as how meaning and value are ascribed to the cultural products produced and consumed in the cultural tourism encounter.
Bernhard Siegert
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263752
- eISBN:
- 9780823268962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263752.003.0005
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
According to Sophocles, seafaring is the very first cultural technique which makes possible all other cultural techniques. The chapter analyzes shipbuilding and navigational practices among the ...
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According to Sophocles, seafaring is the very first cultural technique which makes possible all other cultural techniques. The chapter analyzes shipbuilding and navigational practices among the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands as a complex actor network comprising many highly heterogeneous actors, including creepers, myths, several kinds of magic, taboos, flying women, and the threat of shipwreck. For the Trobriands the canoo is a technology which proves seaworthy inasmuch as it incorporates elements which are attributed to the evil eye of flying witches which personify the horrors of the sea. The canoo uses magic related to these medusas in an apotropaic way. The ship therefore articulates the difference between land and sea as a system of differences between eye and gaze, shape and shapelessness, unity and disunity, good and evil woman, the imaginary and the real, the salvation and disintegration of reality.Less
According to Sophocles, seafaring is the very first cultural technique which makes possible all other cultural techniques. The chapter analyzes shipbuilding and navigational practices among the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands as a complex actor network comprising many highly heterogeneous actors, including creepers, myths, several kinds of magic, taboos, flying women, and the threat of shipwreck. For the Trobriands the canoo is a technology which proves seaworthy inasmuch as it incorporates elements which are attributed to the evil eye of flying witches which personify the horrors of the sea. The canoo uses magic related to these medusas in an apotropaic way. The ship therefore articulates the difference between land and sea as a system of differences between eye and gaze, shape and shapelessness, unity and disunity, good and evil woman, the imaginary and the real, the salvation and disintegration of reality.
Bruce Lincoln
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199372362
- eISBN:
- 9780199372393
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199372362.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Taxonomy is not just a neutral means to organize knowledge, but inevitably serves as a means to establish and naturalize hierarchic structures. Classification of this sort may be established ...
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Taxonomy is not just a neutral means to organize knowledge, but inevitably serves as a means to establish and naturalize hierarchic structures. Classification of this sort may be established indirectly, as with seating arrangements (the dinner table of the author’s family), myths of origin (Trobriand Islands), or philosophical theory (Plato on the soul). The social order is always the most significant object for such treatment, but within complex multimodular taxonomies such as that of the Chandogya Upanishad, this can be accomplished indirectly by extrapolation of a pattern established through other examples, but implicitly treated as universal. When legitimated and naturalized in this way, discriminatory patterns of social organization are extremely difficult to identify, contest, and dislodge.Less
Taxonomy is not just a neutral means to organize knowledge, but inevitably serves as a means to establish and naturalize hierarchic structures. Classification of this sort may be established indirectly, as with seating arrangements (the dinner table of the author’s family), myths of origin (Trobriand Islands), or philosophical theory (Plato on the soul). The social order is always the most significant object for such treatment, but within complex multimodular taxonomies such as that of the Chandogya Upanishad, this can be accomplished indirectly by extrapolation of a pattern established through other examples, but implicitly treated as universal. When legitimated and naturalized in this way, discriminatory patterns of social organization are extremely difficult to identify, contest, and dislodge.
Karen J. Brison
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520077003
- eISBN:
- 9780520912182
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520077003.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter argues that rumors reflect a situation in which unsubstantiated stories can have far-reaching consequences socially and in politics. In Kwanga villages, and in small, relatively ...
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This chapter argues that rumors reflect a situation in which unsubstantiated stories can have far-reaching consequences socially and in politics. In Kwanga villages, and in small, relatively egalitarian communities everywhere, no one can automatically command respect or obedience, and autocratic attitudes tend to arouse resentment. Consequently, people try to prompt others toward certain conclusions and courses of action without seeming to do so, by casting interpretations of recent events in public meetings or in private conversations. They suggest that their rivals are lazy and ignorant, or that they are involved in nefarious secret plots. In this way, individuals try to influence others but avoid the appearance of ordering them around. It has been clear since Bronisław Malinowski's work on the Trobriand Islands that there is a close link between sorcery, magic, and leadership in many areas of lowland and insular Melanesia.Less
This chapter argues that rumors reflect a situation in which unsubstantiated stories can have far-reaching consequences socially and in politics. In Kwanga villages, and in small, relatively egalitarian communities everywhere, no one can automatically command respect or obedience, and autocratic attitudes tend to arouse resentment. Consequently, people try to prompt others toward certain conclusions and courses of action without seeming to do so, by casting interpretations of recent events in public meetings or in private conversations. They suggest that their rivals are lazy and ignorant, or that they are involved in nefarious secret plots. In this way, individuals try to influence others but avoid the appearance of ordering them around. It has been clear since Bronisław Malinowski's work on the Trobriand Islands that there is a close link between sorcery, magic, and leadership in many areas of lowland and insular Melanesia.
