Claudia Liebelt
Research Institute for Law, Politics & Justice, Keele University

Living room decoration in the home of a Filipino family, whose grown up daughter left to work in Israel

In recent years, consumption and possessions have been recognised as important themes in migration studies. The short history of migration between the Philippines and Israel has indeed produced a rich material culture of its own, with fascinating stories yet to be told. Since Israel started to recruit Filipina care workers in large numbers in 1995, numerous objects have travelled back and forth, while many were created along the way. Within this process, these objects have changed their meanings and transformed their functions. In both countries, they now mark the homes of those who travelled, as well as the homes of their loved ones, employers, and neighbours. In Manila and Tel Aviv, the respective cultural centres, they have entered the public space, sometimes visible only for those, who themselves have travelled.
Rather than providing a complete account or thorough investigation, this essay highlights some stories and material objects of migration from the Philippines to Israel and back, as well as the social space between them.

Altars
Given the fact that most airlines provide only about twenty to thirty kilogramm of baggage allowance on flights between Manila and Tel Aviv, there’s not much one can carry either way. However, Filipinos travelling in between Tel Aviv and Manila typically have their suitcases filled not with objects destined for their own use, but with commodities to be sold, things to be consumed with relatives or friends at the place they travel to, as well as gifts to deliver. Lots of gifts. Even if they have never been to Israel before, they are likely to have former neighbours, classmates, or relatives who left ahead of them and who will now wait for their arrival, as well as for the arrival of the Filipino food, much cheaper sandals or whitening creams they ordered to be brought along from the Philippines.

This is why one has to really set priorities in choosing what to take to Israel from among one’s own objects. So what, apart from some clothes (many of them gifts, too…) and pictures of loved ones in the Philippines could be more important than objects, which will protect and bless you on this journey to a far away land?

Catholic Altar in the shared flat of Filipinos in Tel Aviv, Israel

Being predominantly Catholic, most Filipina migrants on their way to work as carers in Israel carry along little devotional objects, that is prayer books, icons, or figures from the shrines they visited before leaving. Most importantly perhaps items from the shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in Antipolo, which for so long has protected the colonial galleon trade between the Philippines and Mexico and nowadays blesses the many Filipinos, who visit it before setting off for work abroad. Sometimes also brought along is an icon of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, the first and only Filipino Catholic Saint, who until recently was rather unheard of in Israel’s few Catholic Churches, but now even has fiestas being celebrated in his honour. These objects are put onto altars, which Catholic Filipino newcomers to Israel set up as soon as they manage to have a place of their own - typically a bed space in a shared flat with other Filipino care workers to be used on their one day off work. As they stay on, these altars increasingly bear witness to their devotees’ religious journeys and spiritual endeavours, not only in the Philippines, but in Israel as well.

Back in the Philippines, house altars too are being transformed in the process of migration: they come to include Virgin Mary icons from Nazareth, bottled water from the Jordan River, as well as rosaries, crosses, figures and candles from the ‘Holy Land’.

A large Santo Niño figure and devotional objects from Israel set up on the home altar of a Catholic migrant to Israel in the Philippines

Balikbayan boxes
Perhaps the most prototypical object of Filipino migration is the balikbayan box. Created in the early 1970s by the Philippine dictator Marcos, the term balikbayan (Filipino, literally ‘homecomers’) was intended to strengthen ties between the Philippines and its diaspora by stimulating the economic support and financial investment of overseas Filipinos in their economically weak ‘motherland’. Filipino migrants all over the world were (and still are) encouraged to send gift boxes free of duty up to a value of $1,000 to the Philippines. In Israel, balikbayan boxes can be found in practically every shared (weekend) apartment of Filipinos, often half packed, since things may be collected over long periods of time.

Gina’s balikbayan box seen on the picture, contains packages of salt, sugar, pasta, corned beef, Israeli instant coffee and tea, as well as six video cassettes, four on ‘The Holy Land of the Bible’ and two on the life of Mother Teresa. As in other balikbayan boxes, a great deal of space is taken up by hand-me-down clothing Gina received from her employer’s extended family. In her case these include baby clothes, even though there are no small children in her family in the Philippines. In addition, she sends a TV set to her father, bought second hand for US$65 in Tel Aviv.

Gina’s balikbayan box, Tel Aviv, Israel

The foodstuffs frequently sent from Israel in other boxes comprise food that, in the Philippines, is commonly associated with the Middle East, like dates or ‘Arab’ sweets, as well as food that migrants have become used to in Israel, but which are uncommon in the Philippines, for example mixed pickles. As in Gina’s case, balikbayan boxes contain objects that migrants are expected to send (the corned beef; even though these might be more expensive in Israel than in the Philippines), gifts in the more classical sense, and things that help family members have a picture of life in Israel. And, of course, there are the many ‘Holy Land’ souvenirs: seven-armed chandeliers, ‘Holy Land’ calendars, place-sets, rosaries, Christian DVDs and video tapes…

Each balikbayan box allows deep insights into and understandings of the varying degrees of social status, prosperity, misery, insecurities and tastes of both the senders and the recipients. Some migrants explained that the content of their boxes provided substantial support for their families, who were otherwise unable to buy clothes or ‘extravagant’ food like dates or sweets. One Filipina interviewee, Marian, whose extended family lived in a Manilan slum-like neighbourhood in nearly complete dependency on money remittances sent by family members from overseas, jokingly remarked that, due to her balikbayan boxes, which she filled with her affluent employers’ second-hand clothes, ‘they still can’t afford a warm meal three times a day, but at least they wear Prada and Gucci’.

Origami paper swan in an Israeli living room in Kibbutz Ein Gedi, Israel

Origami Paper Swans
If there is one single object, which in Israel signifies the immigration of Filpina women for the care of the elderly, it is an origami paper swan. Origami paper swans have conquered Israel in all sizes, shapes and colours: They adorn book shelves in the living rooms of children of elderly cared for by Filipina migrants, as well as desks of Ministry of Interiour officials, who decide about Filipinos’ permits of residence and employment; they are used to collect the tip on counters of Tel Aviv’s many bars and coffee houses, and, displayed in shop-windows, signal that Filipino customers are welcome. Crafted out of the pages of old magazines, the swans are fabricated by Filipina care workers during their often tedious working hours with the elderly in private homes.

It is important to note that in the Philippines, I have never seen an origami paper swan. In Israel, they were introduced by those Filipinas, who worked in Taiwan and Korea before coming to the ‘Holy Land,’ Filipino friends told me. They learned to do origami in these countries and introduced it here in Israel, they said. Initially given away as small gift in appreciation for favours, Israeli residents, citizens and migrants alike, have deeply fallen in love with these paper birds. Accordingly, more and more carers have learnt to craft them, and nowadays, on Sundays, Filipinos’ only day off work, in front of the Tel Aviv central bus station, you can even buy them.

Paper swans and other objects for sale in front of the Tel Aviv central bus station]

Origami paper swan beside the Philippines National flag in a jewellery shop in the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel

Things Israeli in the Philippines
As a country where about ten percent of the population live and work abroad and practically every family is affected by migration, objects that are an outcome of migration are highly visible in the Philippines: houses built from overseas remittances, cars acquired through contract work abroad or motor bikes and buses financed by those, who left. The houses of migrants to Israel may have the star of David on their gates or sport large open kitchens, as they have become fashionable in the new building in Israel, where the Filipina carer worked. Buses financed by these migrants may bear names like ‘The Holy Land’, ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Manila Tel Aviv’ or even, seen once in Baguio, ‘Kibbuts Shiller’, named after a communal settlement in central Israel, which employs several Filipina carers.

A washing machine imported from Israel, used as a commode in the home of a return migrant in the Philippines

Then, there are the many small, less spectacular objects of migration in returnees’ homes. There are home appliances one has become used to working with in the Israeli households one was employed in. There are the many ‘Holy Land’ posters and pictures of celebrations and gatherings with co-Filipina workers in diaspora. There are washing machines imported from Israel, for example, which have not even been unpacked, because the local water and electricity supply turned out to be insufficient for their use. In the house of Romelyn, located in a picturesque valley in the Philippines Mountain Province, I spotted bed sheets from the Israeli Tel HaShomer hospital turned into curtains. While the Hebrew inscription ‘Medical Centre Tel HaShomer’ in between ornamental flowers was unreadable for Romelyn as well as for most of her visitors, the bed sheets were revealed to serve as both souvenir and trophy.

Romelyn in her home in the Philippines Mountain Province two years after her return from Israel]

Curious about their story, I asked Romelyn about it. After almost five years in Israel, she told me, the elderly woman she had been employed to take care of, was referred to the Tel HaShomer hospital near Tel Aviv. Romelyn accompanied her and stayed beside her bed during what turned out to be her employers’ last two weeks. Out of feelings of responsibiliy and compassion, Romelyn continued to be with her, washed her, fed her, sleeping on a chair beside her bed, in spite of the rudeness of the Israeli nurses, who repeatedly told her to leave. After her employer died, and Romelyn was forced to return to the Philippines within days due to the expiration of her work permit and in spite of her own grief, the bed sheets her employer had rested on were the last thing within Romelyn’s reach to remain of her. But, so she tells me with a smirk upon my visit two years after she returned from Israel, she too took them to revenge the nurses’ nastiness.

The objects in returnees’ homes therefore tell stories not only of the success, but of the nostalgia, the happiness and suffering, and very typically the ambivalences and paradoxes of migration.

see the AHRC Footsteps Project, http://www.keele.ac.uk/research/lpj/SOCPOR/AHRC/index.htm

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Notes from the Field

Materialworldblog greatly regrets the passing of Claude Lévi-Strauss. For a series of comments, in French, on his life see Le Figaro, and an obituary here. As well as a note from Le Monde.

For a series of links to media commentary in English see the AAA blog, here.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to From the editors | From the news

Parul Bhandari, PhD student,
Dept. of Sociology, (PPSIS), Univ. of Cambridge

A typical Indian-wedding envelope given to the bride and groom by the
guests, carrying a certain sum of money as a token of their happiness and blessings for the newly weds

Indian society has in the past decade witnessed a proliferation of matrimonial websites each of which have 10 to 12 million users registered with them. These websites seemed to be an interesting topic of research as it could help investigate whether the Internet has led to a transformation of marriage practices and processes in India displaying a move from the traditional patterns to more individualistic ones (or the new and ‘modern’ ones). Keeping in mind its pertinence to the ‘changing’ and ‘transforming’ nature of the Indian society this research topic formed my thesis for the MPhil programme completed in June 2009.

The focus of this study was both on the offline and the online. In the offline context the opinions and practices of the registered users and their family were examined to understand the extent of the traditional hold in their marriage preferences and the consequent impact on the consumption of the matrimonial websites, and in the online context, the ways in which matrimonial websites feed into and become embedded in the cultural practices of Indian society was investigated.

As one enters the home page of these websites, the users are presented with various options that qualify the ‘search’ of their prospective spouses. The primary search option is of religion followed by region (or language). Once a specific religion is chosen then the option of castes and sub-castes within that religion is also provided to the users. Other attributes such as specific physical, educational and professional qualification are also a few criterion in the search however it is the religious, caste and/or region attributes that form the primary requirements in the search of profiles. While ‘searching’ for profiles and making one’s own profile, the websites do provide the options of ‘any religion’ and ‘caste no bar’ however, these are not used very often and this clearly reflects that the registered users are satisfied with the hierarchicisation of the attributes wherein the religious and caste qualifications take the primary spot in search for prospective spouses.

One of the other most important traditional norms associated with Indian marriage is the role of the family in the selection of a spouse. This role, contrary to many assumptions, is very much prevalent even in the internet matrimonial matchmaking and becomes evident as along with the space for display of information on the ‘self’, ample space is provided by the website for information on the family of the user. Thus, the profile carries information not only about the attributes of the registered user’s (religious, physical and others) but also provides an in depth description of his/her family such as number of siblings, their occupation, parents’ occupation and most importantly their ideal choice of a spouse for their son/daughter/brother/sister.

It is assumed that the internet facilitates a tilt towards ‘love’ marriages since more private communication through e-mailing, and chatting can lead to spouse-selection on the grounds of compatibility, the ‘connection’, intimacy and so on. While this assumption holds true it is important to understand that the screening process involved in the short-listing of profiles is governed by the more traditional norms of Indian marriage that give importance to the religious, caste-based and regional backgrounds of the prospective spouses and the opinion, wants and wishes of the family in the entire process of selection and decision-making. The research suggests that the presumption that the Internet can alter the traditional framework of the Indian marriage system is erroneous and in fact the research empirically concludes that many of the traditional aspects are strongly prevalent and even accentuated by the Internet.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Notes from the Field

Hala Kilani (MA student UCL)

"From society to society people know how to use their bodies,"
Marcel Mauss (2006:78)

Hima is a traditional system of management and conservation of natural resources practiced by tribes in the Arabian Peninsula since more than 1400 years.

The term hima literally means in Arabic a protected place or protected area. For rural communities living in the Arab world, the term holds connotations that appeal to their collective memory and hence when evoked, the term is not only readily recognized as familiar but also valued and triggers an air of acceptance and ease among communities living anywhere in the Arabian Peninsula or Arab Middle East.

Drawing on the actor-network theoretical framework, particularly the work of Bruno Latour and Marcel Mauss as well as fieldwork in six hima sites in southern Saudi Arabia, this dissertation demonstrated that the processes involving embodied knowledge resulted in a particularly female gendered anthropomorphosis in line with the nature-woman allegory (MacCormack and Strathern 1980). Himas transformed into a family member, a powerful actor in a kin-dominant society. It played part in social relations, in a network binding people and this landscape tightly by notions of place, identity, emotions, ethnicity and religion.

Their protection is equated to the protection from violation (sexual) reserved to women in these conservative rural Arab societies. This is why their violation is insulting to one's honour.

Ali Duwayli'i from hima Humayd illustrates this passionately: "The value of the hima to me is the same as the value of my sister or my daughter, it is my honour, I won't let anyone violate it, I will protect it like I would protect my daughter or my sister".

Culturally there are parallels to this linguistically in terms referring to conservation institutions and prohibitions rooted in Islamic legislation. The word haram means wife and at the same time a sanctified inviolable zone such as haram Makkah and haram Madina. In the same vein, harām or moharram means prohibited and harim zones are greenbelts and easements - whatever is near developed land and pertains to its well-being, such as its pathways and watercourse, its rubbish dump, its square etc." (Llewellyn 2003:20) considered in Islamic law as other forms of protected public areas - and the word harim is at the same time the plural of horma, which means a woman that is prohibited to anyone else other than her man (husband).

These similarity and double meaning further the unconscious cultural links between himas and women, the gendered anthropomorphosis and the deeply felt insult of the violation of himas, which seems to have been expressed in language and has now become seemingly trivial. The act of entering one's protected own, his hima is almost equivalent to a non-accepted sexual penetration perpetrated on a sister, a daughter or wife.

Beyond mirroring the tribe and its social structure and objectifying identity, honour and pride, himas played an active part in forming social relations through discipline, laws, alliances, religion, punitive sanctions, relations with other tribes and alliances. As the main body of material culture for the tribes of Arabia, in a cycle of reciprocal maintenance, the himas maintained the tribe and the tribe maintained the himas throughout centuries.

Himas are like Latour's Berlin key at the same time strong and fragile (Latour in Graves-Brown 2000). The discovery of oil and the sudden modernization in recent history resulted in their substitution by another material culture. This situation along with cultural colonialism and political forces acted on this social network and disintegrated kin ties, in which himas are an important link.

Disconnectedness between inhabitants of the region and their natural environment ensued and the creation of Latour's much criticized "mind-in-a-vat" (Latour 1999) situation in the praxis of nature conservation followed.

This indigenous knowledge, along with the himas themselves are now reduced to a form of intangible cultural heritage running the serious threat of disappearance, a threat driven by the change in technological practices and political forces.

However, this dissertation questioned the possible disappearance of this system based on observations in the field that support the argument that not only would the anthropomorphosis and the emotional bonds forged between himas and their long term custodians prevent their disappearance but also based on Alfred Gell's theory himas are works of art, the distributed consciousness of the ancestors, the embodied knowledge of which, enchant a wide community of scientists and nature conservation professionals (Gell 1998). To both these groups and even to the anti-tribal structures in Saudi Arabia, himas will remain as they hold value and are powerful actors by being there, if only at the centre of a live debate.

However, threatening or not, himas are part of the chain of associations. Ignoring hem will not change this and neither will destroying them because they can exist as a concept in the immaterial realm. Ignoring them would be as dangerous as ignoring any other part of the chain: the government, religion, conservationists, modernity etc.

Latour taught us that none of the parties in the debate are right to negate or destroy the other links of the network. The only way is to accept the new elements, such as modernity that were introduced to the chain and which propelled it to another dimension. The only way is to accept that we live in a hybrid world and to work towards the connections because in the long run, the destruction of one link will lead to the annihilation of the entire network.

Continue reading "Al-Hima, A Way of Being" »

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Notes from the Field

The Green Lines Institute is organizing the 2nd International Conference on Heritage and Sustainable Development' which will be held at the City of Evora, Portugal, from 22 to 26 June 2010.

We would like to inform all authors interested in joining the event that
Submission of Abstracts is now open until 30 November 2009.

Papers addressing the following topics are welcome:

Heritage and Governance for Development /
Heritage and Education Policies / Heritage and Culture /
Heritage and Economics / Heritage and Environment /
and Heritage and Society.

For further detailed information, please visit the conference Website

For further information on the Scientific Committee

Posted by Patrick Laviolette at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Conferences and other events

Peter Oakley, Doctoral Research Student, UCL Material Culture

Whilst assisting at a SWLLN workshop this summer I was intrigued by a problematic feature of the heritage site hosting the event. Tyntesfield House, a National Trust property, is currently undergoing extensive conservation, necessitating the erection of a second roof over the entire structure. Until recently standard Trust policy was to close such a property to the public until conservation had been completed. At Tyntesfield it was decided to not only keep the house open as far as practicable, but also to build a observation tower out of scaffolding up to the top of the Victorian roof, allowing visitors to view the work being undertaken. The observation tower had been completed and opened to the public before the second roof covered adjacent parts of the old building. Therefore whilst visitors in June 2009 could not see any roof-related conservation activities, they could stand on a platform that had never previously existed and look over the Victorian roof to the Tyntesfield estate and the valley beyond.

The staff consistently described the tower as existing primarily in order to view the conservation efforts (a task it was evidently not performing during the summer of 2009). This distinction between the old and new structures was shared by the visitors, who consistently took photographs of the view that included the chimneys and tiles of the Victorian roof but pointedly excluded the scaffolding of the tower. But this supposedly transient, inconsequential and apparently un-photogenic object is anticipated to have a lifespan of at least a year, during which time it will continue to modify both the building’s physical appearance and the visitor experience in a myriad of unacknowledged ways.

Staff and visitor reactions to the tower epitomise the Trust’s perspective regarding the properties in its care. Each site is presented as a physical relic of a point or period in time, which has always occurred prior to the Trust acquiring the property. Some of the Trust’s interventions are presented as conservation or restoration of the material fabric with the aim of ‘returning’ structures or landscapes to this privileged previous period. More prosaic alterations, such as turning fields or gardens into visitor car parks and the interiors of less cherished structures into tearooms, offices and holiday accommodation to provide sufficient funding to maintain the more visually spectacular elements, the Trust prefers to exclude from open recognition or debate.

An alternative conception would be to consider sites such as Tyntesfield House as evolving in direct consequence of their acquisition by organisations such as the National Trust. What the Trust regards as ‘turning back the clock’ is in reality the creation of an entirely new artefact. Though some elements come close to visually resembling the site’s previous appearance, others are entirely new and the site as a whole is fundamentally different both in its social rationale and agency. Such an approach would admit a proposal that during 2009 Tyntesfield House physically grew through the addition of a modernist openwork observation tower. The tower turned Tyntesfield into something other than it had ever been before, was as much a part of the architecture as the earlier elements of the assemblage, and had a specific social function that related directly to the desires of the human actors that visited the site during 2009.

Posted by Graeme Were at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (2) | Posted to Topics for Discussion

Bethany Edmunds, NYU

In 2006 a wave of Polynesian art resurfaced from the storehouses of British Museums. Some three hundred years on from Captain James Cook’s first arrival in New Zealand the sacred objects of a colonial past were revisited, re-interpreted and recreated. Power & Taboo: Sacred Objects from the Pacific was a temporary exhibition of selected pieces at the British Museum, from their unparalleled Pacific collection of art and artifacts, dating between 1760 and 1860.1 Pasifika Styles: A fusion of contemporary style and technological innovation with ancient traditions, [..] unites the new wave of contemporary Pacific art and culture with extraordinary historical collections at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.2 These two case studies will be the focus of this analysis on the perceptions created by the naming of an exhibition. What’s in a name? Who’s telling the story? And, how does this contribute to the museum experience and the generation of knowledge about the Pacific?

Both Power and Taboo and Pasifika Styles presented material culture of the Pacific peoples, and as described by Rosanna Raymond “the Pacific emerge(d) into the public eye in the United Kingdom through a series of exhibitions and associated events that were spread across the southeast, creating a new Polynesian triangle of sorts between Cambridge, Norwich, and London.”3 Polynesia, a collection of cultures whose geographic location is bound by the tides of Tangaroa, the god of the ocean, and the ancestors who traveled aboard waka or canoes to share languages, histories and artistic practices. The role of art and artifacts as taonga or sacred treasures that disseminate cultural knowledge is a concept that is consistent throughout the Pacific and was recurrent within each of these exhibitions. Even though these commonalities were displayed; the juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary, art and artifact, primitive and civilized, presented an interesting basis for the discussion of curatorial choices made within each exhibition.

Advertising images for ‘Power and Taboo’ on the left, and ‘Pasifika Styles’ on the right.

Power and Taboo
The name itself insights imagery of awe and the untouchable, forbidden and exotic, especially when coupled with an unwitting mascot, the feathered head of a Hawaiian god sculpture with bulging eyes and a teeth bared grimace. The impression presented through the exhibitions name and marketing is one of an ancient distant world that will transport the viewer from the hustle and bustle of London streets to the antiquated cultures of a time gone by, allowing the visitor to stare at sacred objects of primitive art, from the safety of their confinement behind the shields of glass cabinets. In a London visitors guide review of the exhibition the author comments “So what we have here are apparently terrifying, nightmare gods, high-maintenance gods who demanded a lot of work of their adherents. Why might these societies, living in what we might think of as an idyllic world of swaying palm trees and soft sea breezes, have chosen to create such deities?”4 This outlook is reiterated by the information presented to the wider audience via didactic labels and the supporting website, the text is set in the past tense with constant reference to the Gods, the powerful and the sacred. The intention of the curators to acknowledge the validity of Polynesian values with statements such as “But traditional beliefs still survive: many Polynesian visitors to the museum come to greet the displays not as groups of objects, but as living treasures with immanent power”5, is somehow diminished by the very display of these objects which effectively discredits their mana or power, and tapu or taboo. Western perspectives continue to confirm the savage image of ethnographic objects, which is again reconstructed through this exhibition and its colonial viewpoint.

The concluding works of the exhibition are a waiata or song written by Che Wilson (2006) that describes the loneliness felt by taonga within museums, and a sculpture by renowned contemporary master carver Lionel Grant. The text associated with Grants carving discusses connections to the land and the ancestors, but no reference is made to either the gods or the sacred. Either the curators decided that only the ‘authentic’ artifacts from pre-colonial collections demonstrate the sacred ‘power and taboo’ or; Grant made a conscious choice to create a carving appropriate for a general audience who needs not be exposed to ‘potentially very dangerous’ sacred objects such as the Rarotongan god-stick6.

‘The only surviving wrapped example of a large staff god image from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.’

Pasifika Styles
‘To me this name immediately places us which I feel is really important but is still not too specific i.e. not Aotearoa...not Samoa, not Tonga but alludes to the Pacific and encompasses us all...the ability to immediately take the person whether young, old, naive, or Polynesian specialist to know where they are heading to.”7

Pasifika is the Polynesian word encompassing the Pacific, and Style has elements of method, fashion, and in a contemporary world alludes to new trends and distinction. As quoted above, the name aims to speak to an eclectic audience, to educate and transport them on a journey through the Pacific. The artists’ voice is prevalent in Pasifika Styles from the choice of name for the exhibition, the marketing and logo design and the label text that is presented in the first person from the artists themselves. The context in which the show was created allows for curatorial choices to be made that would not normally be seen within the constraints of an ethnographic museum.

Co-curated by Samoan artist Rosanna Raymond, and Amiria Henare resident curator and lecturer at Cambridge University, the exhibition was the exploration of a conversation between objects, an artist and an anthropologist, all born in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Built on a trajectory of contemporary Polynesian and Maori art that began in New Zealand in the 1970’s, Pasifika Styles is another stepping stone in the renaissance of Polynesian art and culture being expressed with new materials and techniques, and based on the stories and philosophies of the many generations who have gone before.

The museum catalogue Pasifika Styles: Artists inside the museum is a compilation of essays and photographs that takes the audience behind the scenes to discover the processes involved in the creation of this exhibition. In a book review by Henare she discusses a conversation between herself and Raymond and their desire to push “beyond the restraints of the 'ethnic art' box to which it was assigned” and use Pasifika Styles as a platform for artists to present their work and commentate on contemporary issues.8 For such a groundbreaking exhibition critical attention was hard to come by; the UK and NZ fine arts press were virtually silent on the topic and the Museums Journal tried unsuccessfully to get it reviewed.9 The controversial nature of the exhibition presents artists works that challenge the very collection and display methods of the Museum itself, therefore the intention of the museum support was questioned, and Henare says that “for others it was clearly another case of a museum trying to update itself by inviting 'indigenous' artists to add their 'cultural' art to the collections.”10

Artists, Anthropologists and the Audience
The debate about the contextualization of ethnic objects is an ongoing topic of discussion between anthropologists, artists and indigenous communities. In her article What Became of Authentic Primitive Art? Errington dissects the evolution of Primitive Art as a category that was invented at the turn of the century, and through the recognition of avant-garde artists and collectors began to gain market value as it entered the mainstream of established art. The notion that “authentic” primitive people live as they have lived for centuries, untouched by Western civilization, and that “authentic primitive art” is work created by those people for their own uses and not for external sale, has been highly criticized.

Critiques by Fabian (1983), Clifford (1988) and Price (1989), among others, led to “primitivism” being thoroughly discredited as a Western ideological construct.11 In New Zealand, the mid 80’s were also a prominent time in the re-evaluation of these concepts as Maori artifacts gained international stardom when displayed as Art with a capital A, in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. In his paper Postcolonial Pasts and Postindigenous Futures: A Critical Genealogy of Maori Art, McCarthy highlights that at the same time, Pacific material was displayed as ‘art/artifacts’ at the American Museum of Natural History, and downtown at MOMA primitive art was hung alongside new masters like Picasso et al to suggest ‘affinities’ between the tribal and modern.12 He uses three examples of ‘Waharoa’ or Maori carved gateways from a 100 year period to assess how the “culture of display was inflected by the complex and specific relations of power/knowledge, modernity and nationhood, (and shows) how different forms of Maori Art were made visible through the categories of display current in the museum at that time.”13

For the wave of Pacific artists who’s work was presented at Pasifika styles the opportunity to engage with the “authentic primitive art” of their ancestors provided a vehicle for the continuation of cultural art practices, allowing the taonga to breathe a breath of new life. A chapter in the catalogue by doctoral candidate Carine Durand, entitled Fieldwork in a Glass Case, describes the ethnographic research process that she engaged in with the development and installation of Pasifika Styles. “It appeared that the Maori and Pacific Island artists involved in the project were conducting their own ‘fieldwork’ both within and outside the museum and that, through their artistic installations they were offering alternative ways of selecting, arranging, and presenting the ‘data’ they collected.”14

One of these artists was Lisa Reihana, a Multi Media Artist whose installation He Tautoko is featured on the cover of the exhibition catalogue, she created the third Waharoa in McCarthy’s analysis, and was one of Durands case studies. In her written contribution to the catalogue she says, “Pasifika Styles is an exciting model that progressive museums can use to re-invigorate their collections. As an artist it presented the perfect opportunity for me to extend my practice, by directly engaging with Maori customary taonga.”15 Durand continues to explain how her ethnographic research was altered by her interaction with the artists in their installation process, and by submitting herself to Polynesian oral traditions of teaching and learning she became a subject within her own study. The internal dynamic of the exhibition therefore became a research project, a learning environment and a venue for the development of knowledge for both the artists and anthropologists alike. So what then for the audience?

Both exhibitions were complimented by the common network of Polynesian artists who had traveled to the UK to assist in the preparation and installation of Pasifika Styles. A dynamic program of workshops, performances and artists’ demonstrations designed for audience participation, accompanied the exhibitions and highlighted the living nature of Polynesian culture. The openings both honored Polynesian protocols, although each event was distinctly different and further illustrated the role of the living people as objects within the intention of the museums displays. For Power and Taboo Ngati Ranana, the London Based Maori Culture Group, were invited to perform in front of an adulatory audience of museum professionals and media. They then led the crowd through the exhibition reciting karakia or Maori prayers, a practice that confirmed their connection to the taonga, and in turn, reiterated the wider audience’s sense of wonder attached to the power and taboo of the objects.

Contrasted by the artist-driven opening of Pasifika Styles, the Polynesian diaspora of London participated in the process with a complete powhiri or welcome ceremony, which fully engaged the audience and the objects. Protocols based in tradition were led by Che Wilson wielding the taiaha carved spear of his ancestor, reciting and bringing life to the song that was written on the walls of the British Museum. The space resonated with the sounds of an ancient Putatara Maori trumpet, as it echoed through the gallery halls singing for the first time in over a century. Anita Herle, Senior Curator at the CUMAA writes, “The museum agreed to the request that specific items from the collections be used in the opening ceremonies, confident that the cultural descendants of their makers would ensure their well being.”16 The trust displayed in this reciprocal relationship between the museum and the indigenous communities is a dynamic example of the exciting model that Reihana spoke of for museums to re-invigorate their collections.

Knowledge Generation
By considering the content of traditional vs. contemporary, and artifacts vs. art that were displayed in these two exhibitions, certain curatorial choices are reminiscent of Ethnographic and Fine art display methodologies. The myth of authentic primitive art that was apparently dispelled in the 90’s seems to have resurfaced in the form of gods and sacred objects. How authentic are the representations portrayed by the contemporary indigenous practitioners whose work contributes to the continuum of Polynesian culture? If the exhibition names were swapped and the ancient artifacts at the British Museum were entitled Pasifika Styles would this effect the audiences’ interpretation of the objects as living objects with imminent power? What if the contemporary works at the CUMAA were assigned the title Power and Taboo, would the commentary by the artists support or dispel the stereotypes that are evident within these two eminent words? The power, knowledge and nationhood mentioned by McCarthy are no longer a one sided investment, as museum workers are willing to collaborate with source communities and members of those communities, whether artists or cultural ambassadors, are actively engaged in the critique and interpretation of knowledge through objects. Cultural objects of Pacific origin are equally as powerful and sacred as the people with whom they communicate, whether carved in greenstone or Perspex these taonga continue to translate messages of gods, the land, people and their experiences, and the museum creates a sacred space for the exchange of tangible and intangible knowledge to materialize.

About the Author
I, Bethany Matai Edmunds, am a Contemporary Maori Artist who has learnt the skills of traditional Maori cloak weaving from a young age. In 2000 I graduated from Northland Polytechnic with a Bachelor of Applied Arts: Maori Design and Technology, and since then have exhibited throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and in 2002 displayed my work in Maorien Lurra an exhibition of Maori culture hosted by the Basque people of Northern Spain. In 2006 I participated in Pasifika Styles as an exhibiting artist and, although not in attendance for the opening, I travelled to the U.K. alongside Kahutoi Te Kanawa to deliver a series of weaving workshops and demonstrations to museum workers and the public. I was involved in the opening of Power and Taboo and the closing ceremony of Pacific Encounters at the Sainsbury Center in Norwich, England. I am currently completing a Master of Arts: Visual Culture, Costume Studies at New York University. With a specific focus on the storage and display of Maori Korowai (cloaks) within international Museums and, in a broader context the presentation of Maori, Polynesian and Indigenous histories through the exhibition of material culture.

Continue reading "The ‘Power and Taboo’ of ‘Pasifika Styles’" »

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 6:06 AM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Exhibition reviews

A conference hosted by the Institute of Archaeology, UCL,
31-34 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PY,
20 - 21 May, 2010

This conference will bring together archaeologists and anthropologists to discuss the concept and practice of wrapping and unwrapping the body. Through this we hope to:
• To develop the idea of wrapping materials and wrapping as a process in archaeology.
• To develop a better understanding of cross cultural conceptions of the human body through understanding wrapping in particular time and space settings.
• To allow an exchange of ideas between archaeology and anthropology.

Conference Abstract
Wrapping the body, whether through clothing, in burial or other transforming processes, requires malleable materials that envelope the body. Such materials have properties and efficacy that act on the body or the perception of the body; they may be textiles, fibres, skins, feathers, fur, clay or thin metals. As a cultural and technical act, wrapping is a form of containment that can be used to conceal and reveal, camouflage or highlight, transform and exhibit, conserve and preserve. Wrapping offers the potential to interpret these materials in a cultural context by posing the questions; what is being covered and from who, what is being revealed and why? How does wrapping change the body through the permanent or temporary artificial modification of body shape? How is the dead body displayed and revealed through wrapping? What is the socio-cultural symbolism and meaning of wrapping and how does this change across time and space?

Although common to archaeologists and anthropologists, wrapping the body has different traditions of research. In archaeology, there is a strong tradition of the analysis and identification of the materials used for wrapping such as textiles, skins, clay and fibres, the analysis of clothing, the structure of garments and the use of dress fastenings. Archaeologists also explore the presentation of the dead, both in the past and in museum presentation. In anthropology, the strength of research is in the process and efficacy of wrapping. Anthropologists document wrapping products and the particular cognitive processes of wrapping and knowledge transmission through the daily and ritual uses of wrapping as masquerades and performance, burials, fashion, aesthetics and trading. Relationships between the body, wrapping and mutual transformations can be identified in processes such as wrapping in tattoos, for curing and healing and for shaping the body.

For archaeologists the combined approach with anthropology offers the opportunity to explore the wide variation in the process and interpretation of wrapping. For anthropologists the past perspective provides an understanding of change and innovation in the long term.

We invite researchers to submit papers for one of three sessions:
Session I: Wrapping as transformation process
Session II: Wrapping the living
Session III: Wrapping the dead

Deadline for 200 word abstract: 30th October 2009
Email abstracts and questions to: ioa-wrapping@ucl.ac.uk

Conference organisers: Dr Susanna Harris (Institute of Archaeology, UCL) & Dr Laurence Douny (Department of Anthropology, UCL).

Updates will be posted on:

Note on TAG session: the conference organisers are hosting a related session “Wrapping Objects” at TAG 2009, which will be held at Durham University17th-19th December 2009.

Posted by Graeme Were at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Announcements and Listings

Gabriella Coleman, Department of Media, Culture, & Communication, NYU

Most generally, my work entertains the formation of counter-expertise among technologists (programmers and hackers) and patient advocates largely, but not exclusively, in the context of virtual interactions. Since most of my completed work is on geeks and hackers who write Free and Open Source software, such as the Linux operating system, the rest of the post will focus on completed research, publications, and a manuscript I am writing on the topic: Coding Freedom: Hacker Ethics and Pleasure.

First a word about hacking, which tends to immediately raise eyebrows and stereotypes perpetuated by the media (and at times by hackers themselves):

Generally a hacker is a technologist with a love for computing and a hack is a clever technical solution arrived through a non-obvious means (or alternatively it can mean a downright clunky and ugly solution, one, however, that gets the job at hand done). Hackers tend to uphold a value for freedom, privacy, and access; they tend to adore computers—the cultural glue that binds them together; they are trained in highly specialized and technical esoteric arts, including programing, system administration, and security research; some gain unauthorized access to technologies, though the degree of illegality greatly varies (and most of hacking is completely legal); they tend to value playfulness and cleverness and will take most any opportunity to perform their wit through code or humor or even both: funny code.

Once one confronts the fuller, social dimensions of hacking, this shared plane of material and ideological existence melts into a sea of difference and variations, one variation being Free and Open Source Software. Other variations have focused on cryptography and privacy, for example. Most famously, the “hacker underground” has brought into being a politics of transgression by seeking forbidden fruit—and it is this variant that has received the lion's share of media attention.

Most of my work has concentrated on Free and Open Source software, a techno-social movement centered around making the underlying directions of software, source code, legally accessible via novel licensing schemes, most famously the GNU General Public License. Following an anthropological tradition that examines the linkages between the online and offline world, much of my work has examined how hackers have exposed central contradictions in the liberal tradition, notably between intellectual property and free speech, in large part by remaking liberal values into their own technical vernacular. I have explored this in depth in a number of publications, most recently a piece that examines the coupling between source code and free speech as it occurs in the context of software development and political protest.

Another thread in my work entertains the pleasures of hacking and thus pays close attention to the material and affective stances of hacking/programming. Since I have published less on this material, I will spend a little more time on this theme here. In its more commonplace form, hacker pleasure approximates the Aristotelian theory of eudaimonia described by philosopher Martha Nussbaum “the unimpeded performance of the activities that constitute happiness.” In pushing their personal capacities and technologies to new horizons, hackers experience the joy of that follows from the self-directed realization of skills, goals, and talents—more often than not achieved through computing technologies—and is a form of happiness that is evident in other forms of crafting.

Hacker pleasure, however, is not always so staid; it far exceeds the eudamonic pride of crafting. Less occasionally, hackers experience a more obsessive and blissful state. In native hack-jargon, the state of bliss is “Deep-Hack Mode.” Matt Welsh, a well-known hacker and computer scientist, humorously describes the utter magnetism of this mode, “...very few phenomena can pull someone out of Deep Hack Mode, with two noted exceptions: being struck by lightning, or worse, your *computer* being struck by lightning.”

One cultural vessel by which I analyze the pleasures of hacking is humor, which was quite pervasive during the course of my fieldwork. I encountered it over dinner with geeks in San Francisco, all the time online during Internet Relay Chats (IRC), and during the festive conferences—the hacker cons—that hackers organize and attend (and sometimes hack until they drop):

To put it simply, humor is pleasure and play made socially material/tangible and also reveals and attenuates all sorts of contradictions in the world of hacking, especially between individualism and collectivism. Humor—a punctuated, performative, and self-grounding expression of wit—is also a distilled instantiation of the hacker cultural adoration for cleverness. It is a particularly effective way of enacting their commitment to cleverness precisely because, unlike the objects of hacker technical production, joking has no strict functional utility and speaks of the inherent appeal of creativity and cleverness for their very own sake. Joking is a self-referential exercise that designates the joker as an intelligent person and cleverness as autonomously valuable.

To wrap up, discussing hacking in terms of liberalism and pleasure might seem implausible or even a contrived imposition. Presenting them together gets us much closer to what makes this site of ethics and technological production so intriguing in the first place. For it is the extreme pleasure of hacking that motivates hackers to simultaneously turn to and yet also turn away from liberal engagements. The unruly, deeply-felt pleasures of hacking, which at times stray away from liberal visions, and usually enters into a more romantic territory, nonetheless hold a substantive link with them. Because the joy of hacking intimately shapes the hacker desire for productive freedom, hacker pleasure forms part of the ground for adopting and extending liberal commitments, especially those of freedom and free speech. At least part of the reason hacker ethics takes the liberal form it does is connected to the particular pleasurable experiences of hacking, which nonetheless, often part company with liberal logics.

Links:

1. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
2. http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Ethnographic-Approach-Daniel-Miller/dp/1859733891
3. http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/238
4. http://www.utilitarian.net/jsmill/about/20040322.htm
5. http://mbrix.dk/files/quotes.txt

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Notes from the Field

Daniel Miller, UCL

I wonder if this can be considered a coming of age year for Digital Anthropology. Of course there is a blowing of our own trumpet here with the launch of our new MA degree programme in the topic at the Dept. of Anthropology UCL, but the current publications coming out certainly seem to justify the initiative. There is the radical energy of Two Bits by Chris Kelty, with a very engaging narrative and clear agenda for the wider importance of open source thinking and practice, as a vanguard with potential for much wider application. There is Tom Boellstorf’s Coming of Age in Second Life which convincingly demonstrates that it is possible to undertake a classic ethnography within a virtual world. Then there was also a wonderful conveying of participant observation in Julian Dibbell’s highly readable Play Money from 2006. The trends are also seen in postings here, such as the recent one by Barbara Kirschenblatt Gimblett showing the degree to which digital practices are becoming central to Museum practice.

One book that perhaps may not garner as much attention as these but is perhaps particularly important in thinking about the issues involved for material culture studies is Thomas Malaby’s book Making Virtual Worlds: Linen Lab and Second Life, published in 2009 by Cornell University Press. Although the topic clearly overlaps with Boellstorff in that both are about second life, the strength of Malaby’s book is less from its ethnography, which in any case is more about the production than the usage of second life. Rather the book is much more an important complement to Kelty, because it is concerned not just with the libertarian ideals of technology and material, or if you prefer immaterial, culture more generally. As Dibbell had noticed in his earlier work there was something special about the way in which Linden Labs took on the ideological mantle of virtual worlds and tried to put their ideology into practice.

The starting point for the argument, from an anthropological perspective, comes from Malaby’s last page and its discussion of the work of Sahlins on the relationship between history/structure and event/contingency. This takes on a more specifically material culture direction with the trajectory from Mauss to Bourdieu on habitus, which increasingly also focused upon structure, this time in the order or things or the order of practice, and disposition in its own tension with contingency. Malaby is fascinated by this tension, but his perspective, which in this case he shares more with Dibbell, rather than either Kelty or Boellstorff is coming from a very particular perspective, which is the theory of gaming. He sees gaming as the kind of antithesis of bureaucracy and modernist attempts at rational control. Since while they create structure in order to eliminate contingency, gaming creates structure in order to proliferate contingency. Which is why earlier theorists of gaming saw this as a kind of alternative history of modern life based on play as an imperative in its own right.

Material culture theorists will find in Boellstorff and Dibbell a continuation of important debates about the nature of the material/immaterial and online/offline worlds. But what Malaby beings to the table is his specific study of Linden Labs and the way they conceptualized and realized the relationship between production and consumption in gaming. Linden Labs sought to cede more of the construction of the virtual world to users. Following from the ideals of liberation through technology they envisaged a kind of co-construction between the game and the gamer. Respecting contingency as central to gaming they tried to eschew hierarchy or control by constantly learning from the unexpected appropriations of consumers. At least that was the theory. How it works out in practice is excellently analyzed in the course of this book.

This volume was written during the period when Second Life went from being relatively small to relatively large, but ended with expectations that were becoming huge. Second Life has certainly stimulated some incredibly useful anthropology. Yet it looks like it may have stalled with regard to public usage more generally. I admit to some curiosity as to what Boellstorff and Malaby would say about what didn’t happen and why. But the larger point is how the combination of these new books and writings make this digital world of increasing interest to material culture studies, which ought to in turn provide precedents and ideas that can contribute to this field.

References
Boellstorff, T. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life. Princeton: Univ. Press.

Dibbel, J. 2006. Play Money. NY: Basic Books.

Kelty, C. 2008. Two Bits. Chapel Hill: Duke Univ. Press.

Malaby, T. 2009. Making Virtual Worlds. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 3:04 AM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (5) | Posted to From the editors | Topics for Discussion

In the Virtual Shtetl, there is no Tevye the Milkman. Gimpel the Fool doesn’t live there, either. And you won’t find Marc Chagall’s floating goats and violins.

There is no nostalgia to speak of — just facts. Google maps, detailed photos of dilapidated tombstones poking through the earth of forgotten cemeteries, scanned birth certificates, sepia-toned family photos of long ago weddings and sports matches.

An online project of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews — whose physical site will open in Warsaw in 2012 on ground where the ghetto once stood — Virtual Shtetl is an effort to collect this documentation and contribute to what the $150 million Polish initiative calls a “museum without barriers.” Using the participatory power of Web 2.0 technology, the descendants of Polish Jews, together with today’s Poles, will work together on excavating the past of hundreds of communities where a rich Jewish life once existed.

http://www.forward.com/articles/115592/

http://www.sztetl.org.pl/?cid=15&lang=en_GB

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to From the news

Haidy Geismar, NYU

Exquisite Bodies focuses on the popular anatomical models used to educate both medics and everyday people about the most familiar workings of the human body - childbirth and so on - and also about the physical effects of smallpox, syphilis and other venereal diseases. This "popular history of the anatomical model" ranges from the award winning models of Joseph Towne, the official model maker at Guy's hospital to the extremely popular museum of Roca in Barcelona.

It is noteworthy that many of these objects circulated in widely diverse contexts: as well as being used for teaching in medical schools, and for the popular dissemination of knowledge about the human bodies, they were prominently displayed at World's fairs and formed part of many fairground attractions. Like the Hunterian Museum, and other medical museums, in the 19th century, the acquisition of knowledge about the human body was fraught with concern for exceptions, strange cases, and the moral underpinnings of infectious disease. no wonder that models of syphilitic genetalia are here presented with lifelike busts of bearded ladies.

Objects such as the "anatomical virgins" married technical skill with an insight into cultural values and questions about the human body. Modelists such as Towne were concerned to maintain the veracity of the corpses they used as their models and unlike those artists representing the human body in its more idealised form, were unflinching in their portrayal of the stubbled chins, and anguished expressions of the people that ended up as cadavars (unclaimed corpses drawn from the lowest echelons of society).

Behind a red velvet curtain the most shocking models of disease stricken genitalia speak to the every day concerns of the 18th and 19th centurys. The exhibition is provocative, insightful, oddly moving, and at times disturbing. It makes an excellent compliment to the Assembling Bodies exhibition in Cambridge (reviewed earlier on this site here). Exquisite Bodies runs until October 18th, 2009.

See also this BBC site about the Cambridge exhibition Assembling Bodies: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8224706.stm previously discussed on the blog here

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Exhibition reviews

Via Aaron Glass:

Please visit the new Bard Graduate Center website for more information on the lecture series as well as the current exhibit "Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick", which reconstructs the inventory of a New York woman's collection in the 17th Century in order to examine the city's role in the emergent global trade network.
http://www.bgc.bard.edu/

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (0) | Posted to Good Links

See the link below for a review of:
On Roads: A Hidden History. By Joe Moran. Profile Books; 288 pages; £14.99

Motor ways and wherefores
From The Economist print edition Jun 18th 2009

In February 1995 I participated in a motorway development protest on the outskirts of Glasgow at the site of the so-called Pollok Free State. One of the collaborative community art events that took place was the erection of a large circular henge of cars. In addition to raising protester morale, this creative feat was organised predominantly as a ploy to generate media attention. The structure, a series of upright automobiles dug into the gravel of the new road’s preliminary layout, was made with the assistance of a convoy of activists from England and Wales who drove up to Scotland with several old bangers which were sacrificed to the cause.

And sacrificed they were, since in keeping with the ethos of boycotting the construction of the M77, this metalhenge of chrome, glass and plastic upholstery was ritualistically destroyed at dawn by dowsing the vehicles in petrol and setting them alight. In this guise, Pollok’s carhendge was indeed part of a significant moment in Britain's history of roads which Joe Moran chronicles in this book and which The Economist's review cited above nicely summarises.

CarHenge, Pollok Free State, Scotland
copyright 1995 the Citizens of the Pollok Free State

Posted by Patrick Laviolette at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Read and Post Comments (2) | Posted to Good Links