Chaim Noy, Independent Scholar, Jerusalem, Israel

In this project, in which I am concerned with discursive mobilities and materialities in tourism, I intend to investigate visitor books as a unique medium of communication in a number of different sites. In this opportunity I wish to present and discuss one case study, which includes a visitor book that is located in a military memorial museum in Jerusalem, Israel. The project reflects some of my standing interests in everyday communication processes, which are sometimes titled in sub-disciplinary terms as, “culture and/as communication.” In earlier works I was occupied with travel and communication in the sphere of tourism, and specifically with tourists’ storytelling performances (Noy, 2005, 2007). Yet I realized that these performances, although making primary use of the oral mode of communication, were in effect anchored in material, embodied, and aesthetic realms. This realization led me to search for other types of performances in tourism, where the salient mode is that of inscription (writing), rather than oral; that is to investigate the inscriptional—rather than oral—economy of tourism (as de Certeau would have put it).

Visitors’ books are commonly acknowledged as interesting cultural artifacts. Yet they are also fascinating surfaces of and for communication, and, due to their position within various institutions, they also supply an interesting instance of a public communicative medium.

Instead of directly approaching the discourse embodied in the book, in the form of visitors’ entries, and perform various discourse/content analyses on it, I wish to view this institutional medium primarily from material, spatial and technological perspectives. I choose this approach because the western logocentric bias, as Derrida has taught us, has limited our understanding of semiotics to the sphere of representation. Hence, in attending to non-representational aspects, or at least contextualizing representation in other modalities, what is meaning, and how it is accomplished situatedly can become clearer. Here’s what I mean.

From a spatial perspective, there are two interlinked aspects I will take up here: the space for the medium and the space of the medium. The former space concerns the institutional (museological) space allocated for the visitor book, or the space in which the medium is actually located and operating. This is true for various objects, communicative devices included: where the device is located has much to do with how it is consumed and with the meaning it assumes (cf. domestic, public, ceremonial and other spheres). (See Silverstone and Hirsch 1992).

There is something interesting in this regard to tell of the visitor book I studied. While visitor books are usually located by the exit of the institutional premises, thus enabling to capture visitors’ overall impressions of the sites, attractions and exhibits they have seen, the visitor book at the Military Commemoration Site illustrates an exception. Interestingly, it is not located by the exit, but to the contrary, it is strategically positioned in one of the museum’s innermost halls (see Figure 1). It is thus located in the area of the museum which is variously marked as the space of the “holy of holinesses” of commemoration. This is where the Golden Wall of Commemoration and the Eternal Flame are located, and where an audiovisual installation fills the inner halls with the fallen soldiers’ names and ranks voiced through in a severe tone.

Figure 1: The visitor book’s impressive installation in the “holy of holiness” of commemoration

In this ideologically suffused location, a subtle yet dramatic manipulation of the function of the visitor book is accomplished. Writing entries therein does not reflect so much hindsight impressions or comments concerning the museum, its exhibits, artifacts, etc. Rather, inscribing in the “holy of holinesses” now assumes a ritualistic dimension, that of participating (rather than reflecting) in nationalist ideology and militaristic commemoration. Indeed, the fact is that most of the entries cite national(ist) discursive idioms (“May They Rest in Peace,” “Next Year in Jerusalem,” “In Their Death They Commanded Us to Live”), present nationalist aesthetics (in the form of logos, such as the Star of David, the Menorah, the Israeli flag, and more), and address the dead soldiers directly in words of deep indebtedness and gratitude (“Thank you for dying for our country”) (see Figure 2 below).

Figure 2: A visitor book opening: Spaces for performances

Now we can proceed to examine the space of the book. Figure 2 (above) shows the space the medium holds and affords, as well as how this space is consumed by tourists and museum visitors.

Concretely speaking, each opening (spread) is 26 cm by 34 cm. When multiplied by 100 (pages), the book affords 9 square meters: the size of a small room. This space is consumed used through a number of embodied practices: leafing, reading, gazing, and inscribing (signing, writing, drawing, etc), which allow visitors to look through and mark their visit in this small room. These practices join and compliment other practices that concern access: walking, traveling, approaching, etc., by which tourists and various other visitors arrive at: the Military Commemoration Site / Jerusalem / Israel.

Since the book is located inside a museum, it is consumed the other museum exhibits are. Yet it is interactive, and it registers and keeps (at least for a year, which is the book’s “pedestal life”) visitors’ entries. Thus the space it affords is transformative: Upon inscribing visitors’ entries instantaneously become exhibits, and their inscriptions cross the phenomenological abyss between that which is fleeting and that which is permanent. This transformation is of particular significance because it echoes and is a part of commemorative semiotics: the living and the dead, the present (tangible) and the past (intangible). Those who are commemorated are not only the fallen soldiers, but also the visitors.

Approaching the visitor book’s technological dimensions, might initially not seem suitable, for after all, there is no digitality or electricity involved. Yet what the medium of the visitor book accomplishes at the Military Commemoration Site, it achieves precisely due to its technological features. There are several important dimensions here, one of which I can discuss in the present scope, involving the additive (incremental) feature of the medium. The additive or incremental quality of the book suggests that it can be viewed as an earlier version of internet talkbacks. Previous comments are left on the screen, to be read by and commented on by later contributions. Yet what seems to me to be intriguing about this visitor book is that the visual language used therein is far richer than average talkbacks. The medium’s additive capacity allows two notable processes to take place: First, as mentioned, it allows inter-discursivity and a correspondence in the visual language of the entries different neighboring entries “talk with each other,” in various ways. Sometimes these are subtle ways and sometime bold, such as cases where inscribers (valdalistically) erase firmer entries.

Second, it allows the creation of a collective document (see Figure 2, above). Viewing Figure 2 leaves no doubt that the opening is a collective achievement. Unlike personal letters or journals, the openings of this visitor book illustrate a crowd. The illustration is synchronic, although the process of accumulation is diachronic. This collectivized feature too touches on and accomplishes something important in terms of the institution’s ideological agenda. It suggests a sharedness, an open and accessible space where individual presentations all share the same space democratically. (Like in the socialist Kibbutzes of the past, no private spaces exist here). A sense of being together emerges from these openings, where visitors from near and from afar jointly share a space.

There are of course many problems with this notion of shared inclusive space. I will conclude this discussion by indicating two of them. Problem one, which concerns inclusivity, touches on a paradox that is visible on the pages of the visitor book (see Figure 2, above), between the inscriber’s individual identity, and the highly collectivized demand, embodied in national ideologies (Zionism, in this case). This is apparent in the many cases where inscribers delineate their entries (circling them, underling them, etc.), in order to distinguish them from others’ entries (and perhaps to make them more attractive as well). So the “open space” of the visitor book elicits, somewhat paradoxically, rather creative techniques of preserving individual identity in the midst of nationalist collectivism.

Problem two concerns exclusivity and not inclusively. It’s true that the visitor book is openly available to anyone who decides to visit the commemoration site. No apparent restrictions are being exercised. Yet during the month I observed visitors there, there were only Jewish visitors. No members of other religions, and surely no Palestinians, who live in near by neighborhoods, and who enjoy the park at the very vicinity of the site, came to visit the museum. (The only Palestinians I met during my field research there were convicted delinquents, serving their “community service” sentences in no less than an Israeli National Commemoration Site). So the spaces and stages offered by the book are actually not as “open” and “democratic” as they might initially appear. When it comes to fostering a sense of national identity and shared fate, the book operates through both inclusivity and exclusivity: the visitors (Jewish) have to cope with the collectivizing feature of the commemorative media (inclusivity), while the stags are completely homogeneous by keeping the “other” away (exclusivity). (Nonetheless, the “other,” the Palestinian/the Arab, of course reenters and reappears on the pages of the book, via racist hate entries).

References
Noy, Chaim. 2005. “Israeli backpackers: Narrative, interpersonal communication, and social construction.” In Chaim Noy and Erik Cohen, (eds.) Israeli Backpackers: From Tourism to a Rite of Passage. N.Y.: State University of New York Press. Pp. 111-158.

Noy, Chaim. 2007. Narrative Community: Voices of Israeli Backpackers. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Silverstone, Roger, and Eric Hirsch, (eds.) 1992. Consuming technologies: Media and Information in domestic spaces. London: Routledge.

Posted by at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Posted to Good Links | Notes from the Field | Objects and visual analyses

Daniel Miller, Anthropology, UCL

In teaching courses about consumption, the nearest thing I have employed to textbooks are materials that were written over a decade ago. I used Acknowledging Consumption, my own edited survey of disciplinary perspectives and Don Slater's Consumer Culture and Modernity a summary of more sociological debates. None of the many books that have emerged since then seemed to me very satisfactory as replacement textbook materials. Indeed I think many of these give the very term textbook a bad name. You feel they are written under pressure from publishers, an excuse for a relatively superficial and simplifying encounter with the material. Something done on the side in between the authors real research. Or alternatively they are used to make some particular point, promoting the authors own research under the guise of a textbook. A thesis with a general chapter stuck at the beginning and the end.

This I think has been radically changed by the publication in 2007 of Roberta Sassatelli’s Consumer Culture with Sage. This is a model of what a textbook ought to be. Over the past decade the original debates about consumption have been overlaid by a vast amount of detailed research, and it seems unimaginable that a single text could do justice to all of these. To do so would involve as much a commitment to depth as to breadth. I was quite astonished at how well Sassatelli succeeds in balancing the two. It covers a huge amount of ground in its three main sections which are roughly historical, theories of consumer agency and finally the politics of consumption. Each chapter is divided into various themes and in each of these themes she manages to be fair to several different perspectives in turn. Furthermore the bibliography is astonishingly up to date, making full use of studies that were carried out in the last couple of years as well as all the classic works. So the bibliography is excellent. There are at least some references for a vast array of different consumption issues. How we came to be thought of as consumers, each genre of consumption from shopping to gyms, all the various institutional forms that bear on the consumer society. Yet for all this breadth, this sense of something truly comprehensive, there is far more depth than one could possibly expect given the brief compass in which each approach is considered. Instead of simplifying she manages to bring out the key theoretical and often key problematic elements of each approach and author and some of the debates particularly on classic sociological figures would be entirely suited to original research papers in journals.

Furthermore it is a modest book that does not try and privilege the author’s own perspective and work, but strives to be generally fair, though clearly with a cultural bias overall, such that the theme tends to be a highlighting of the diversity of causes and factors that create the consumer society and equally the diversity of its consequences and forms. She has a soft spot for Simmel, but I share that so fully myself, that again I can’t see anything negative in that. The density of the engagement works as a textbook thanks to a concern with being gentle to students. There are summaries of each chapter, further readings and some useful diagrams and classifications doted around each chapter. There is an overall theme. Basically she eschews the simplification of consumption around dichotomies. The study of consumption should not be reduced to either the domination of the masses nor the freedom of the self. Instead each and every topic lends itself to diverse strategies and moralities, which are much better understood as a form of value production.

A single book can’t do everything, There is certainly room for a more anthropological account that acknowledges the centrality of consumption to regions from Africa through to the Caribbean or East Asia and their consequences for the wider study of consumption. The kind of book Rick Wilk would ideally author. Also it is ultimately impossible to divide discussion of consumption into simple discrete areas, and debates about, for example, the relationship between persons and things come up in many different guises, so that one has the sense the consumption cake could be cut many ways. But I cant see how it would be otherwise.

In the end one feels almost exhausted by the sheer amount of work that has been addressed to consumption especially in the last twenty years, a huge contrast to the periods before. I confess this is one of the reasons why personally I tend to disassociate myself from consumption study per. se. today and try to work with alternative areas of material culture studies that I feel have been relatively neglected as the study of consumption grew apace. But consumption is hugely significant whatever one’s relationship to material culture studies as a whole. It is the best place from which to consider the consequences of the modern world for the people of the modern world. Where once we tried to put consumption into context, nowadays consumption is the context for pretty much anything we might wish to study. There has been a real need for some high level guide to this now bulky literature that one could really trust and recommend to students. Sassatelli now provides that and has done us all a considerable service thereby. It is a truly impressive example of how a textbook can be a serious work of scholarship and a valuable contribution in its own right. Its not just that I am amazed at how much it covers and at what depth. Ultimately it the book that I would trust to help people digest what we now have discovered about consumption and start from a much more mature and reflective foundation to consider what more we might yet do.

Posted by William Brian Thomson at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Book Reviews

Iside Carbone, PhD Student, Anthropology, University College London

As a result of the intimate connection of space, perception and cognition, the location of objects in a specific environment expresses the dynamics of reception of cultural images and representation of cultural identities. The placement of Chinese artefacts in the context of ancient Italian palaces well exemplifies the cultural implications in the physical interaction between objects and people. The observation of these artefacts within the whole picture of the surrounding settings is led bearing in mind that space is not just emptiness or void area, but it acquires a material dimension when considered in its function of connecting things (Merleau-Ponty 1996 [1962]: 243).

Figure 1 Galleria Nazionale Palazzo Spinola, Genoa. Photo by the author.

A particularly clear case study is provided by Spinola Palace (Fig. 1), an ancient Genoese aristocratic residence donated to the Italian State by the Spinola family in 1958 and become a public museum shortly afterwards. While considering this example, two main characteristics have to be taken into account. Firstly, it is important to point out the very strong link between Italian museums in general and the local history, culture and tradition of the territory in which they are located. In the specific instance of Spinola Palace, the integration in the urban network, the interaction with the local community, as well as the sense of belonging to the city and the immediate regional surroundings are essential factors in the museum’s situation and identity. Secondly, it has to be noticed that, as established in the conditions for the donation, the museum’s displays include exclusively the palace’s own furniture and fittings; in particular, the design of the second floor reproduces as faithfully as possible the original 18th- and early-19th-century settings and features. Thus, the analysis of the arrangement of the displayed Chinese objects allows to reconstruct and to understand the mechanisms of Italian representations of China from two points of view: that of the house’s private space and that of the museum’s public space. At the same time, through this example it is possible to highlight the role played by the perception of images of China in Italian cultural self-expressions.

In the rich rooms on the second floor of Spinola Palace, the big, monumental Chinese vases appear distinctively among the precious furniture, ornaments and paintings, mostly of Genoese manufacture. The position chosen for the vases in connection with the floor plan and the other objects reveals the relationship between these exotic commodities and their 18th-, 19th-century Italian users. In this regard, as Marilyn Strathern (1990:29) emphasises, space emerges in its function of enabling the acknowledgement of oneself and the Other through the observation of images, while the display of artefacts allows the observer to perceive the Other’s image, grasp the difference and make it reflect on oneself.

Figure 2 Dining room of Palazzo Spinola, Genoa. Photo by the author.

The design of the dining room at Spinola Palace (Fig. 2) vividly expresses the essential influence not only of visual perception but of a multisensorial exercise on this cognitive and identifying process. This room is located after lavishly embellished drawing-rooms and the sumptuous mirrors’ gallery. Its more sober decoration epitomises a more intimate and retired atmosphere and allows the people sitting around the table to fully take in the harmonious effect of the ornamentation without being overwhelmed by it while enjoying their meal. Furthermore, in this context the observer has the opportunity to notice and experience in different ways the various elements and the compositional intentionality of the whole decorative settings. Looking at the room itself, the Chinese porcelain vases have been placed on two console tables against the wall in order to discreetly complement the interior decoration. From an aesthetic point of view, their shiny white balances the bright gilding of stuccos, frames and furniture, while the delicate colours and birds-and-flowers motifs well match the tones and natural elements of the walls and the console tables. From a thematic point of view, although the vases are clearly recognisable by the people of the time as ‘different’ for their Chinese manufacture and provenance, they do not upset the much more familiar settings: the furniture is all locally produced, the wall decorations are by local artists, and the biggest framed pictures portray three Doges of Genoa. In the dining room, the perception of this sort of artistic and cultural syncretism is not limited to the visual level. As the focus is the table, the participants can experience even more closely the intricate combination of exotic and familiar: Chinese features at times prevail manifesting their own distinctive essence, and at times appear more faintly, just hinted, used as a means to expose characteristics from a different – Genoese/Italian/European – cultural heritage. Typically, the 18th-, early 19th-century table is laid with porcelain plates and cups of Chinese or Italian manufacture, the surfaces of which are covered in Chinese designs, western motifs, or the coats of arms of Genoese aristocratic families. Small porcelain figurines of Meissen manufacture, reminiscent of chinoiserie-style objects – namely Chinese-inspired artefacts produced in Europe – are orderly added in the middle, along the length of the table, as ornaments.

This description aims at emphasising the composite nature of the Chinese artefacts as emerges from their placement in relation to the spatial and socio-cultural context as well as in relation to their consumers’ perceptions. If it is true that these objects – as mostly presented – are symbols of prestige for their owners, fashion items for the wealthy, source of inspiration for artists, and useful accessories for the interior design of rich palaces, it is also undeniable that they convey cultural images and messages. In the specific 18th-century settings, even if their arrangement and contextualisation usually serve the endeavour to prompt strong overall visual impacts and decisive sensorial effects, it is not entirely correct to state that the formal and decorative details of each object - in the way this represents images of China – are completely neglected. The long-nurtured European curiosity for non-western artefacts and the cultures that produced them is widely recognised, as it is also the 18th-century desire of deeper knowledge of the different and unfamiliar by means of both phenomenal experience and scientific approach (Thomas 1991:127; Stafford 1994:1). Thus, this cognitive purpose is achieved only partially through the inclusion of Chinese artefacts in private, mundane circumstances, and the interaction with them on different levels. The direct intervention on them through the determination of shapes, decorations and uses, as well as through the production of chinoiserie, is also essential to bridge a cultural distance and to fill the gaps in the awareness and understanding of the Other.

Figure 3 Ceramics collection on the fourth floor of Palazzo Spinola, Genoa: room for Chinese porcelain. Photo by the author.

The same needs and tensions still appear unresolved and are reflected in nowadays display at Spinola Palace. Visiting the museum, one easily realises that the curators’ main intention is to present the typical residence of an ancient Genoese aristocratic family. Yet, at a closer look, it seems that the effort to keep unaltered the physical and symbolical position of the Chinese objects is pursued with a purpose that goes beyond a historical and contextual faithfulness. While the monumental vases are placed in the rooms according to the information drawn from original records and inventories, a whole room on the fourth floor is allocated to the Chinese porcelain sets for convivial occasions (Fig. 3). The latter retain their representative, metonymic role. Located within the section of the Spinola family’s ceramics collection, their place in a separate space stresses on the one hand the preciousness and exclusiveness of these exotic objects, and on the other hand the ambivalent status of integration and difference in regard to the rest of the display. The overall arrangement of Chinese porcelain in the museum context of Spinola Palace strongly suggests two tendencies. The careful placement of these pieces in both temporal and spatial dimensions aims at reconstructing a historical situation of a certain balance among the Chinese artefacts, the people and the environment of these interiors. At the same time, it is instrumental to establish a cultural connection and to redefine the relationship between cultural identities.

References

• Impey, Oliver, 1977. Chinoiserie. The Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration. London, Melbourne, Toronto: Oxford University Press.
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1996 [1962]. Phenomenology of Perception. London and New York: Routledge.
• Miller, Daniel (ed.), 2001. Home Possessions. Oxford: Berg Publishers Limited.
• Simonetti, Farida (ed.), 1999. Ceramiche. Genova: Sagep.
• Simonetti, Farida, 2001. Palazzo Spinola di Pellicceria: da dimora a museo. Genova: Log Srl.
• Stafford, Barbara Maria, 1994. Body Criticism. Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge (Massachusetts), London: The MIT Press.
• Strathern, Marilyn, 1990. ‘Artefacts of History. Events and the Interpretation of Images’, in Jukka Siikala (ed.), Culture and History in the Pacific, pp. 24-44. Helsinki: The Finnish Anthropological Society.
• Thomas, Nicholas, 1991. Entangled Objects. Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge (Massachusetts), London: Harvard University Press.

Posted by at 4:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Posted to Objects and visual analyses

This slideshow in the The Guardian newspaper is a rather humorous look at contemporary collecting practices.

http://travel.guardian.co.uk/slideshow/0,,2172503,00.html

Also, at a recent meeting at the British Museum, I noticed that a colleague there had a copy of 'Offbeat Museums: A Guided Tour of America's Weirdest and Wackiest Museums' by Saul Rubin. The book highlights bizarre collections such as Mr Ed's Elephant Museum and The Museum of Bathroom Tissue. Is this an example of extreme collecting?

Posted by at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Good Links

Sainsbury Reseach Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Friday 9 November to Saturday 10 November 2007

Statue of Kamehameha, at Kapaʻau, North Kohala. His flesh like paint, originally put on by the local community, transforms the original bronze into an embodiment of the Hawai'ian King.

Conceiving images in their widest sense, this symposium asks how and what do different material forms embody in the world? While diverse types of images (‘artworks’, devotional objects, photographs, monuments, etc.) possess different ontological statuses, they are united by the fact that
they are each embodiments of various sets of social relations, practices, desires and ideologies. We invite scholars working within anthropology, archaeology and art history to explore issues implicated in the notion of images as embodiments. Whether dealing with the miniature or the monumental, the symposium seeks to consider embodiment as a process (cyclical or terminal) situated in time and space. Given the socially and culturally infused nature of our material world, the strategies of
embodiment are significant. They are affective decisions that impact the way images are engaged with, and how images themselves act upon us, channelling behaviour in both the short and long-term. It is anticipated that the following questions and issues, amongst others, will be
considered at this symposium:

* Examining embodiment as process we are interested in considering what intangible qualities are substantiated and transformed when images are wrapped, carved, bound, modified and or collected?

* Once made what is it that images do?

* What is released and made possible through the destruction, dissolution and decay of an image?

* What are the culturally specific aspects of these intentions and qualities of embodiment?

* What is the significance of different materials and forms in the composition of images?

* What are the social effects of the different qualities of surfaces (e.g., burnishing versus incision in pottery)?

* What perspectives on the relationship between persons and things emerge when taking these aspects of images as processes of embodiment?

* How do different disciplines help in our understanding of embodiment?

Confirmed speakers for the symposium include:

Suzanne Preston Blier (Harvard University, Cambridge, USA)
Stephen Hugh-Jones (University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK)
Christian Kaufmann (Basel, Switzerland)
Pierre Lemonnier (CNRS, Marseille, France)
Howard Morphy (Australia National University, Canberra, Australia)
Ruth Phillips (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada)
Allen F. Roberts (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
Mike Rowlands (University College, London, UK)
Ann-Christine Taylor (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France)

The aim of this symposium is to develop a series of ongoing topical workshops between academic disciplines and regional specialisations that focus on the sensual matter of our material world. It will be an excellent opportunity for researchers, students, and professionals from all disciplines to network and to identify opportunities for new research projects, and collaborations. This symposium is a part of a new initiative by the Sainsbury Research Unit and is part of the new Groupement De
Recherche International (GDRI) entitled ‘Anthropology and History of the Arts’ hosted at the Musée du Quai Branly. The symposium will take place adjacent to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, which displays the renowned Sainsbury Collection of art from many different regions of the world.

Registration is now under way and further details about the symposium's costs, and accommodation can be found on our website.

Conference website: http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/embodiment-workshop-nov07.php

Conference email: joshua.bell@uea.ac.uk or L.Humphreys@uea.ac.uk

Deadline for registration: 15 October 2007

The symposium is being organised by a committee consisting of the following staff of the SRU: Dr Joshua A. Bell (Convener), Dr Steven Hooper, Professor John Mack, Dr George Lau, Mrs Lynne Humphreys (Administrator).

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Conferences and other events

This three-day conference is the third in a series of six international workshops bringing together current and recent PhD students and senior scholars. Application for participation is open for all disciplines doing research on the historical and contemporary dynamics surrounding National Museums. The program and series is presented on www.namu.se.

The conference European national museums in a global world is part of the programme Making National Museums: Comparing institutional arrangements, narrative scope and cultural integration(NaMu), funded by Marie Curie Conferences & Training Courses – one of the four so-called Host-driven actions aimed at supporting research networks, research organisations and enterprises. The specific objective is to bring together researchers with different levels of experience.

The NaMu programme will form a new departure for understanding and working with the diversity of museum institutions in Europe by bringing the multidisciplinary field of museum and heritage studies together with a sharp and comparative focus on national museums. The purpose of the programme is to develop the tools, concepts and organisational resources necessary for training researchers, investigating and comparing the major public structures of national museums, responding to challenges of globalisation, European integration, and new media. This will be achieved by a series of conferences providing a venue for newer scholars and eminent researchers from Europe and elsewhere to gather and develop the multidisciplinary competence necessary for understanding and comparing the dynamics of national museums in a framework of broader studies of historical culture and identity politics. The full programme of six consecutive workshops is presented on the website
www.namu.se.

You can download information in pdf form about NaMu III here:
Download file

And there is also a first call for NaMu IV : Comparing - national museums, territories, nation-building and change End of call date: 21 September 2007
Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden, 18-20 February 2008

The fourth conference in the series will take an explicit historical and comparative outlook dealing with any of the main questions of the program:
1) Comparing relationships between different forms of national museums and their related academic disciplines. To what extent were and are they part of institutions of knowledge? Do they present a coherent approach to memory politics? To what extent are there autonomous logics operating in the evolution of cultural, historical, technical, natural and art national museums?
2) Comparing the narratives told in and by museums: how do they evolve over time? What “us” and what “others” were constructed with what means? Do they differ between countries structurally?
3) Comparing the role of national museums in the overall history of their setting (relating to disciplinary, esthetical, political and economical developments. Are they forming nations, creating
hegemony, arguing for change, disrupting order or integrate?

Again further details about submissions and so on can be found here:

Download file

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Announcements and Listings | Conferences and other events

Kingsley Baird, School of Visual & Material Culture, Massey University

The Cloak of Peace, Te Korowai Rangimarie Heiwa No Manto, Nagasaki Peace Park, Japan

From May to July this year I made an artwork at In Flanders Fields Museum as artist in residence. The work - on exhibition until October 2007 - principally explores memory and memorial forms and relationships between New Zealand soldiers in the First World War and their loved ones at home. En route to Belgium I visited Nagasaki, the site of his 2006 Peace Park sculpture commission. My recent research practice contextualises such artwork in both Nagasaki and Flanders in relation to the two sites and the belief that memorials are necessarily expressions of ambivalence as well as memory.

My work represents a longstanding and continuous engagement with memory and remembrance, and loss and reconciliation, through making artefacts and writing. A significant focus of this work is the expression of a cross-cultural language of remembrance, particularly explored through the unique relationship between - and the shared and distinct nature of – Pakeha and Māori cultures. Examples of my work in this field are the New Zealand Memorial in Canberra (2001, with Studio of Pacific Architecture), the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Wellington (2004) and the international Nagasaki Peace Park sculpture Te Korowai Rangimarie The Cloak of Peace (2006).

www.kingsleybaird.com

Posted by at 4:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Objects and visual analyses

As well as the research fellowship in Museum Anthropology at Bard in NYC and the jobs at UCL recently advertised and linked to on this site there are a number of positions currently being advertised which require specialisation in the domain of material/visual culture and media. It is obvious that this is a growing sub-discipline within anthropology, with a broad appeal at both undergraduate and graduate levels, although it is still only a small fraction of the academic job market. Material world blog would be interested to know how important the study of the visual and material is within the academic departments of readers, or the thoughts of any of our student readers on the kinds of courses they are offered...

Check out some of the academic job listings culled from aaa.net amongst other websites after the jump...

Readers with other job opportunities feel free to post links in the comments section.

Assistant Professor, Culture & Media,
The Department of Anthropology at New York University invites applications from outstanding scholars for an Assistant Professor, tenure-track position in our Program in Culture and Media, to start September 1, 2008, pending administrative and budgetary approval. We seek a scholar with training in sociocultural and visual anthropology; anthropological research on some dimension of visual media compatible with our focus on the visual mediation of cultural difference; knowledge of the history and theory of ethnographic film; a track record in ethnographic documentary production sufficient to teach and supervise students in using nonlinear facilities; and an ability to develop and fund public events and new initiatives.
Please send application, including letter, vita and names of three referees, by November 15, 2007, to Chair, Department of Anthropology, New York University, 25 Waverly Place, New York, NY, 10003. NYU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

Curator, Asian Ethnography
With concentrated attention and highest priority focused on the collections from SE Asia, which in the British Museum originate from most parts of the region and date mainly from the last 150 years, you will curate and develop the collections of Asian ethnographic material at the Museum.
Your role will involve ensuring that collections are appropriately stored, displayed, researched and made accessible both directly and via publication, including the Merlin database or its successor. You will actively seek ways of relating the collections to others, in line with departmental and museum objectives, as well as helping to engage the broadest audience through an appreciation of these materials and of the cultural and historical understandings which their interpretation supports. This position will require you to undertake original research work on the collections, including field research programmes and working alongside colleagues, the wider Museum and with relevant others in the UK and overseas.
A degree in anthropology, art history or relevant field of Asian studies or with equivalent experience is essential, as is having knowledge of an Asian language. Experience in object handling is desirable. You will have the ability to work as part of a team and prioritise your workload in order to meet tight deadlines whether in a museum, academic or publishing context.
For further information or a full application pack, please visit www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/jobs email bm@peoplemedia.co.uk or telephone +44 (0) 845 601 0885, quoting reference 73237.

Closing date: 20 September 2007.

Assistant Professor
Ithaca College seeks a cultural anthropologist for a tenure eligible position. PhD in hand at the time of application required; full-time teaching experience beyond the TA level preferred. The successful candidate must be able to teach Introduction to Cultural Anthropology and various middle and upper level courses at the undergraduate level. Topical interests include visual anthropology, gender, psychological anthropology, and gerontology. Excluded are medical anthropology and ethnomusicology. Geographic focus excludes North America, southern Africa, and South Asia. Interested individuals should apply online at www.icjobs.org . Review of materials will begin November 1, 2007 and continue until position is filled. Ithaca College is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Members of underrepresented groups (including people of color, persons with disabilities, military veterans and women) are encouraged to apply.

[Source: www.aaanet.org]

Shelby Cullom Davis Center
for Historical Studies

http://dav.princeton.edu/
Cultures and Institutions in Motion

During the academic years 2008/09 and 2009/10 the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies will focus on the problem of cultures and institutions in motion. How have ideas, institutions, structures, and artifacts moved across social and geographical space? How have they intersected with their new environments? How have they been adapted, resituated, hybridized, and transformed in processes of motion? The field of inquiry includes transnational history but is not limited to it. Problems could include the diffusion of religious and cultural practices, the migration of technologies and objects, the circulation of ideas, traditions, and aesthetic forms, the transfer of policies and legal practices, the dynamics of traveling social movements, histories of reception, appropriation, and encounter, and the creation of translocal networks and intermediaries. As in the past, we hope to address this problem from a wide variety of periods and places, from prehistory to the present and from all parts of the world. Scholars from all disciplines with an interest in the topic as an historical phenomenon are invited to apply.

The Center will offer a limited number of research fellowships for one or two semesters, running from September to January and from February to June, designed both for senior scholars and for highly recommended younger scholars who have finished their dissertations by the application deadlines. Fellows are expected to live in Princeton in order to take an active part in the intellectual interchange with other members of the Seminar. Funds are limited, and candidates are, therefore, strongly urged to apply to other grant-giving institutions as well as the Center, if they wish to come for a full year.

Written inquiries should be addressed to the Manager, Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Department of History, 136 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1017, U.S.A. The deadline for applications and letters of recommendation for fellowships for 2008/2009 is December 1, 2007. Scholars who would like to offer a paper to one of the weekly Seminars are asked to send a brief description of their proposal and current curriculum vitae to the Director.

Applications can be made online at http://dav.princeton.edu/program/e14/fellowship_informati.html. Princeton University is an equal opportunity employer and complies with applicable EEO and affirmative action regulations. For general information about applying to Princeton and how to self-identify, see http://web.princeton.edu/sites/dof/ApplicantsInfo.htm. Please note that we will not accept faxed applications.

[Source: http://www.therai.org.uk/vacancylink/vacancylink.html]

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Announcements and Listings

Centre for Anthropology Seminar, Thursday 6th September 2007, 10.30 a.m.

Simon Martin (University of Pennsylvania Museum)

"Deciphering the Maya Past: Hieroglyphs and History in the Twenty-First Century"

Tea and Coffee from 10.20

The British Museum Centre for Anthropology is located inside the north entrance to the museum on Montague Place.

For more information please contact: anthropology@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

Posted by at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Announcements and Listings

Philomena Keet, PhD candidate, School of Oriental and African Studies

FRUiTS magazine

What makes a piece of clothing ‘fashion’? What’s the difference between following fashions and being fashionable? Fashion as always been noted for it’s paradoxical elements, simultaneously anchoring the wearer into a group whilst representing the desire to be individual. This dynamic was amongst the phenomena that I researched whilst doing the fieldwork in Harajuku, Tokyo for my anthropology PhD which, appropriately for this blog, is entitled ‘Living in a Material World: Spectacular Street Fashion and the Changing Fabric of Japanese Society.’ Japan, whilst often imagined to be a very conformist society, is a world leader in innovative fashion and the Harajuku fashionistas whom I studied provided yet another instance of individuality to counter this image.

Some people may be familiar with the photo books full of colourful and crazy outfits being worn by youngsters in Tokyo called FRUiTS (Phaidon, 2001). The magazine from which the images came is still published monthly in Japan and is now complemented by a magazine devoted to equivalent men’s street fashion, Tune. Of course, fashions change, and the styles involving bright colours, childish prints and a plethora of plastic which once featured in FRUiTS as as the newest trend are now passé and relegated to the subcultural realm of ‘visual’ rock music.

On every page of current FRUiTS and Tune is a full-length snap of an oshare (stylish) person, usually aged between 18 and 25 and dressed in a mixture of avant-garde designer clothes, ‘remakes’ (customized clothes) and second-hand garments. I spent the majority of my fieldwork working together with the main photographer for the magazines, much of which involved sitting on the railings of a busy corner in Harajuku, a trendy area of Tokyo, watching passers by until one deemed suitably oshare walked past. They were then stalked and pounced upon for photos and a simple questionnaire. Over time I learnt how to distinguish someone who they considered to be oshare, but this was not as a result of learning hard and fast rules, but rather was a process of embodying knowledge over time

One of my outfits at work: Skirt made out of a parachute, militaristic old leather leg gear attached by wires to a belt and shoes from an avant-garde Russian designer.

I also had the opportunity to work in a boutique central to the scene. The staff, many having been to fashion school, were often in FRUiTS and Tune themselves, and the clothes sold there featured heavily in the magazines too. The stock reflected the overall FRUiTS/Tune aesthetic: there were new avant-garde designer clothes sourced from Paris showrooms, their famous ‘remakes’ (customized items such as skirts made from parachutes and Swarovski stone-covered trainers) and peculiar and unusual second-hand clothes carefully chosen from flea markets. Every morning I would be dressed and styled by one of the staff, often to quite strange effect! But this process was invaluable for experiencing oshare first-hand and for experiencing the reactions of others to my daily transformation.

A 're-made' lab coat that I did. It sold quite quickly!

In this project I am interested in exactly what makes someone in this scene oshare. Of course their clothes, but this is not enough. They need to achieve a completely balanced and coordinated aesthetic that includes hairstyle, looks and posture. The outfit must look like it has been assembled naturally, almost like an extension of the wearer – it must ‘fit’ not just your body but your character. That is that an oshare identity is not entirely constructed by a fashionable outfit, but something perceived to be more intrinsic to the wearer, often referred to as ‘aura’, must authenticate it if it is to be successfully carried off. I am also interested in the flow of trends and trendsetting within the scene and the implications this fashion scene has for wider Japanese society and hitherto studies of creativity there.

I have also recently published a book about Tokyo fashion in general, including not just the fashions that my fieldwork dealt with but the entire spectrum of Tokyo youth fashion, ranging from businessmen to Gothic Lolita. Called the Tokyo Look Book it is out in Japan in July and elsewhere in November.

Links:

• www.tokyolookbook.com
  
• www.fruits-mg.co.jp

Posted by at 3:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Posted to Notes from the Field