Julie Botticello, PhD candidate, University College London

Photo 1: Herbal tonics and supplements sold on the street market stall of a Yoruba vendor in London come from the Caribbean, Hawaii, Tahiti, the UK and Canada.

According to the Oxford dictionary (1), a body can be ‘the physical structure of a person, including the bones, flesh and organs’ or ‘a group of people with a common purpose or function acting as an organized unit’, among other things. It is in both of these senses that this thesis addresses the notion of a ‘Yoruba body’—on the one hand the concrete physical being of one’s person (together with the spiritual aspiration of the person who is that body) and on the other, the social body, the group in which some sort of shared or collective identification takes place.

Photo 2: Bottles of oils are prepared by having the Bible spoken over them. These confer spiritual blessing, inherent in the now translocated word of God, onto the wearer.

The idea to undertake research among the Yoruba people living in London arose organically in response to demographic changes taking place in my local area of residence, where a steadily increasing number of Yoruba people from Nigeria have been resettling. With that resettlement process, a number of material goods and services providers, including food stuffs, restaurants, textiles, dressmaking studios, street market stalls, and Pentecostal churches, to name a few, have been set up to respond to the needs of this burgeoning population. With such a plethora of material goods geared specifically for that user group, initially I hypothesized that self- and group- identification while living in a diaspora would be found in objectified forms and that these would be particular objects coming out of Nigeria and west Africa. Yet, as my research developed and my understanding deepened, I came to realize that the identification markers I sought for understanding oneself on a daily basis, were to be found more in notions surrounding the body, its physical health, its spiritual well-being, and its need to remain socially relevant, than in any one static form or concept.

Photo 3: ‘Spraying’, the showering single (US dollar) bills onto the celebrant at her birthday party, serves to legitimize not only the host, but also those who take part in this exchange practice of mutual social validation.

These three aspects to body—the physical, the spiritual and the social—and how they relate to self- and group- identification roughly correspond to the places in which the research was undertaken: the street market stall for herbal medicines and advice for improved physical health, including procreation; the Pentecostal church for spiritual revival and promised manifest success in the world through embodied action and belief in the word of God; and rite-of-passage celebrations for expression of social bonds through the manifestation and perpetuation of material and symbolic debts and exchanges.

Guyer (2) postulates that over the past 500 years of African history, it is people who are the most important good, but that relationships between people and things should not be overlooked, for these remain vital for the expression and objectification of this wealth in people notion. In my own research findings, material objects have primary roles to play in the making of these Yoruba bodies, as material objects embody both material and immaterial qualities and enable these to be conveyed in direct relation to those bodies. In the physical realm, it is the actual material constitution and potency of the herbal medicines which work in the body, actively effecting visible healing changes. Material objects also function in the spiritual domain, where the word of God is offset into commutable forms, such as oil and water, which can then be doused or drunk, enabling Bible passages to come into direct contact with the bodies of the church members and work, as agents bearing God’s word, for them. Objects also function to objectify the social wealth and status of persons. This is not something acquired in isolation, but as part of a system of material (and social) exchange, enabling a selection of people to be part of the link. This conspicuous expression of social ties through objects also clearly demarcates who is not included in the mutual validation network.

Reconsidering the list of local goods and services post-fieldwork, there is more than a glimmer of global diffusion present in it. In that regard, the objects and practices utilized to make the Yoruba body do not necessarily come from Nigeria, or Africa for that matter, but are drawn from a wider global pool. Given that Yoruba people are themselves a social construct comprised of smaller ethnic or allegiance groups who, in the (global) diaspora become a collective ‘nation’ which spans the boundaries of any one nation state, it should not be surprising that it is global objects which are recast by the Yoruba people into nourishment for a threefold ‘Yoruba’ body.

I am interested to hear of others’ work in this or similar areas and in comments about my research findings.

(1) New Oxford American Dictionary, Second edition
(2) ‘Wealth in people, wealth in things—an introduction’, Journal of African History, 36 (1995) pp. 83-90

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Design Studies Forum-Sponsored Special Session College Art Association Los Angeles, February 25-28, 2009

The objects found in Walter Benjamin’s writing constitute a significant part of his material and intellectual world. Benjamin's careful textual descriptions of objects gird his broader critical insight into the status of objects and their significance. In reflecting upon his childhood, objects became a means through which to access a bygone era; taking possession of things was posited as a way to divest them of their commodity character. Activities such as collecting, assembling the archive, or unpacking the library were necessarily material-filled. In a seemingly straightforward manner, Benjamin celebrates the material qualities of objects such as letters, books, or old toys, but he also less directly employs objects to address subjects such as kitsch, modern life, and capitalism. In Benjamin's formulation, antimacassars, cases and containers, in their use, allowed the dweller to leave traces; it is notably through objects that the dweller imprints himself upon the interior.

This session proposes a reappraisal of Benjamin's objects, with considerations of what objecthood meant to Benjamin and how the particular set of objects highlighted in his writing can be understood both within his body of work and the broader period in which he wrote.
Benjamin's theory can also be used to inform the examination of objects in other areas of design history.

This panel invites investigations of objects as a means of soliciting critical insight into Benjamin's larger questions, such as those surrounding the aura, habits, taste, the bourgeoisie, or authenticity. Seeking not just to excavate and explicate previously underexamined Benjaminian objects, this session asks how we might interrogate them as discursive entities or agents.

Papers might address the myriad relationships between art and objects, object-laden activities (collecting, for example), or between subjects and objects.

How might objects mediate between the concrete realm of the commodity and the dream world, both equally populated with things in Benjamin’s work?

How might objects give insight, according to Benjamin, into broader categories of knowledge?

How do the perceptions or representations of things relate to their general existence or to a specific time and place?

How might objects be seen in relation to the work of art or the production of images?

And finally, how might the material culture of Benjamin give insight into the material of culture?

Please submit an abstract not to exceed 500 words with a CV via email to Robin Schuldenfrei (schul@uic.edu) by Friday, May 23, 2008.

Robin Schuldenfrei
Assistant Professor
Department of Art History
University of Illinois at Chicago
935 W. Harrison St., MC 201
Chicago, IL 60607-7039

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Ceres Karam Brum, Professor of the Education Fundamentals, Department of the Federal University of Santa Maria, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. cereskb@terra.com.br

In this research I wish to propose a reflection about the Gaucho clothing and especially about the prenda dress in Rio Grande do Sul. I intend to show a little of its history, relating it to the other Traditionalist outfits, presented by some historians of clothing and folklorists. I want to situate the creation of the prenda dress in the context of elaboration of the Gaucho Traditionalist Movement (MTG), in the 1950's.

The creation of the pilchas is inside of this process. Pilcha is a valuable object such as an adornment, jewel, money. In the language of the Gaucho Traditionalist Movement this means is the typical gaucho clothing. The prenda dress is called pilcha.

The research is inserted in the reflections of the project The Gaucho Traditionalist Movement and the School. Educational and Pedagogical Perspectives. An Anthropological Analysis on the (Re)configurations of the Plural Identities, that I have been developing in the Education Center of the Federal University of Santa Maria since 2006.

Besides the issue of the relation school/Traditionalist, in general lines, the project aims at characterizing the Gaucho Traditionalist Movement or the Traditionalism as a cultural movement that worships the historical and mythical figure of the gaucho in the present. For such endeavor the Traditionalists represent it in various ways, producing a complex cultural universe that includes, among other elements: clothing, language, dance, food, animals, songs, work. These representations are characterized as gaucho traditions and related to the typical gaucho, diacritics that potentialize collective and individual identifications related to the affirmation of the “regional” in the Rio Grande do Sul.

Left, Gaucho clothing, right, prenda dress
Pictures taken from the book Typical Gaucho Clothing from Vera Zattera.

My objective is, on one side, to perform a reflection about the set of circumstances that led the Traditionalists to produce the prenda dress as a typical feminine outfit, to be used by women (called prendas) in the Gaucho Tradition Centers (CTGs).

The Center of Gaucho Traditions (or just CTG) is a space where the gaucho is venerated, a kind of social club where fandangos (balls) and other Traditionalist activities are organized. The CTG, in its structure, appropriates and re-signifies the names of ancient farms. Its president is designated as “patrão", the comptroller is the “agregado das patacas”, etc. The man that frequents the place receives the designation of peão, and the woman, of prenda.

On the other side, I want to show in this research that the prenda dress and the other pieces of the Traditionalist clothing can be understood as artifacts that possess multiple meanings and agency. They constitute elements responsible by the production of the gaucho region and traditions, becoming a passport to penetrate the past and live it in the present.

This way, reflecting about the gaucho clothing, its uses and multiple significations implies revisiting a series of questions that refer to individual and collective identities, the living of the typical and its consumption in current days. Questions intersected by the ideas of nation and region, folklore and history, education, pedagogy, imaginary and representation, closely related to the outfits and their history.

The Tradicionalist Prendas

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Curtis's Landmark 1914 Silent Film of Pacific Northwest First Nations Culture-Restored, Re-evaluated, and Framed with a Live Orchestral Arrangement of the Original Score and a Performance by the Gwa'wina Dancers, Descendants of the Indigenous Cast.

This collaborative project approaches the film from two distinct but overlapping perspectives: As a scholarly recovery and restoration of the original melodramatic contexts and content of the film and musical score; and as an indigenous re-framing of this material given unique Kwakwaka'wakw perspectives on the original film, its specific cultural content, and its historical context of production.

Please visit: http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu

The website functions as the gateway to partner institutions that are hosting public screening/performance events and related programming in June 2008 (in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver) and in November 2008 (in Chicago, Washington DC, and New York City). In addition, the site provides a thorough scholarly introduction to Curtis's film, to the central role of the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) in its production, and to the new archival discoveries that have led to its current restoration. It also includes extensive media relating to the film's production as well as contemporary Kwakwaka'wakw culture.

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Serban Vaetisi, PhD Cultural Anthropology, University of Cluj

Photo 1. National Museum of the American Indian (Washington DC)

The Museum store sells not only postcards and slides but reproductions of pottery, fabrics, statuary, and jewelry. It handles books, uses greetings cards to popularize knowledge of the museum’s holdings, and generally functions as a commercial publicist. (Quimby, 1978, pp. 171-172)

Through its material constitution and the reiterative effects of its culturally produced durability, it [material culture] becomes constitutive of desired and imagined subjectivities either nostalgic, futuristic or transformative […] (Buchli, 2002, p. 9)

Photo 2. Traditional architecture of the Pueblo American Indian (Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado) source: visitusa.com

Introduction
This is a research sketch on “Constructing and understanding Tourism through Material Culture”, based on some ethnographic experiences on the Eastern United States coast.

Overview
This is a project on how material culture creates tourism and how we can understand structures and processes implied in tourism industry and practices through the study of its materiality.

The research draws on ethnographic fieldworks as participant observant and tourist in such different places as: Washington DC, New York City, St. Augustine (Florida), Hilton Head Island (South Carolina), Bluffton (South Carolina), Orlando (Florida) and Miami (Florida). We refer in this draft to the first three sites.

This multi-sited ethnography is justified by tracing observation on different types of tourism: museum tourism, urban tourism, historical tourism, ecological tourism, heritage tourism, entertainment tourism, and ‘sun, sea and sand’ tourism.

Photo 3. Indian traditional dwellings around the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington DC)

Nevertheless, this research is not organized in the idea of studying diverse forms of tourism and does not aim to differentiate among types of tourism, but it is mainly interested in how material culture shapes and is shaped within the tourism, as a whole. The different touristic sites provided us just distinct ethnographic material and different cultural perspectives.

This study relies on previous interests on alternative tourism (Vaetisi, 2006) and issues related to community, identity and tourism development in Southeastern United States (Vaetisi, 2008, ms.). If within these two cited works we were mainly interested in aspects such as the local-global relations, ideological constructions of nature and culture as well as processes and challenges of urban development in association with tourism, in this study we are mainly focused on the material culture of tourism.

Photo 4. Statue of Liberty visited by tourists (New York)

We approach tourism largely from an anthropological perspective (Nash, 1996), considering its last decades alternative forms (Stronza, 2001) in search of recapturing values as history, nature and education (Eadington&Smith, 1992). We approach material culture considering the processes of economic/social/cultural/political/psychological/expressive needs through consumption (Miller, 1987; 1998) and the symbolic construction of identities and social lives that material objects provide (Dant, 1999; Berger, 1992) from a broad theoretical perspective (Buchli, 2004; Tilley, 2006).

Photo 5. “Statue of Liberty” in a live statue street performance (New York)

A specific theoretical approach of material culture is based on using the concepts of transformation and translation, seen as both ‘processes of materialization’ and ‘artefact effects’ (Buchli 2002): objects and objectives of tourist immediate use and industry seen not only in theoretical processual perspective but in their material transformation/translation as precise, contextual objects. This being in fact one of the first-hand ethnographic attitudes of the researcher: observing how objects appear and are represented as different material things, and subject of variation and change within the cultural contexts they refer to.

Our research is aiming to address the following aspects of material culture: architecture, urban landscape and monuments; homes, furniture, landscape and backyard objects; cloth; gadgets, souvenirs, iconic objects and art objects; ethnic, domestic and industrial objects; technology and design; food. For this discussion on transformation - architecture, monuments, gadgets, iconic objects and clothes were especially taken into consideration.

Motivation, working hypotheses and methodology
After some ethnographic experience on studying tourism and the human subjects who interrelate in tourism, we asked ourselves which are the objects that create tourism. We adopted the material culture approach, considering that it can provide us further understanding on the way tourism is constructed.

Previous to this study we were aware but not very informed of the structural, semiological, ideological and habitual practices within tourism that ‘tourism materials’ provide. Although tourism-like subject-object interactions were theorized by such authors as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, William Raymonds or Pierre Bourdieu, they were usually neglected by tourism studies, which mainly considered tourism as forms of consumption of nature, history, folklore or slogans, in other words as forms of consumptions ‘without materiality’.

Our hypotheses addressed some material objects of tourism in order to see how they are not only consumed but also created, displayed, ritualized or avoided. We asked about:
- how tourism is constructed through architecture, cultural artifacts and reproductions (Washington DC)
- how tourism is constructed through iconic monuments, urban landscape and gadgets (New York City)
- how tourism is constructed through clothes (St. Augustine, Florida)
- how those ideas, significances and values related to the constructions above experience transformations and translations in their material appearance.

We tried to understand these objects from the tourists’ point of view and their immediate experience as tourists and their privileged questions in the situation of tourist. We mainly addressed these interrogations in first person, i.e. what/how to consume, to look at, to worship, to photograph etc. such objects and what/how ‘to fit’ in order to look like or to be treated as a tourist, etc. in relation to the objects among we were moving.

A critical methodology thus emerged, which tried to encompass not just prior and reflexive reactions but also structures, meanings, ideologies and habituses of behaviors, practices, and values of the tourism-material culture relation.

Methodologically, we relied on the ethnographic theory of observing and understanding objects in their milieu, doubled by the critical anthropological theory of comparing and contextualizing data in socio-historical perspective in order to confer theoretical relevance. Opinions, intentions, events, practices and things of participant observation were, generally, the basic data of our interpretation. We also considered the relevance of visual description.

Photo 6. Tourists in casual clothes on the historical streets of St. Augustine

On the field we addressed a range of objects that each touristic site announced. We did not prescribe the existence of certain objects, nor of certain values or practices associated with certain place. Nevertheless we considered previous contexts in which, significantly, a range of objects and subject-object interactions were expected to emerge (as for instance an anticipated relation between objects illustrating an historic event and its use as physical object or iconic image of historical type of tourism). Technically we tried to describe the presence, to understand the role, as well as to implicate about the objects of tourism in their materiality. An anthropological approach of respecting people activity and perspective was considered as well.

The followings touristic sites with their objects were scrutinized:

place, main touristic objective, materiality
Washington DC museums, cultural & political symbols architecture, ethnic objects
New York City the city, urban and identity symbols urban monuments/ landscape
St. Augustine old city, open-air museum, fortress contemporary/historical clothes

Describing objects, interpreting data and some theoretical conclusions
We tried mainly to compose an ethnographic report on how material objects of culture exist, appear, are utilized, and create tourism. Describing materiality provided us useful examples, understandings and interpretive material on how tourism, its related activities and interactions as well as the broader social-economic-cultural-political context do function, act and signify for further activities and interpretations.

Photo 7. Historical reenactments inside the fortress Castillo de San Marcos, in St. Augustine

One of the salient ideas when describing tourist material culture is that of transforming and translating materiality or observing the processes of material culture (Wissler, 1914; Merriam, 1969; Fischer, 1986; Rosaldo, 1989; Clifford, 1997; Salazar, 2005).

This draft focuses on this aspect, taking into approach the very transformative dimension of materiality. It is important to notice that some ethnographic descriptions relying on this idea are offering data for relevant socio-political interpretations considering the broader economic and cultural context, beyond tourism:

Examples:
(1) Washington DC: the ‘National Museum of American Indian’ architecture and collection – actual Indian architecture – Indian dwellings and objects around museum – Indian gadgets, reproductions, replicas and souvenirs (pottery, fabrics, statuary, jewelry, postcards, books) at the Museum shop.

(2) New York: the little green plastic statues of Liberty on the tables of street vendors and gift shops – the street artists in ‘stone’ clothes mimicking its immobility and majesty – the real pilmigrated Statue of Liberty – the advertised one (in humanitarian campaigns etc.) on street posters – the cartooned one (in political protests etc.) in magazines

(3) St.Augustine, Florida : tourist fashion and ‘tropical clothes’ – homemade old-fashion clothes in chic stores and art studios - ethnic (Spanish) clothes at the Spanish Quarter open-air museum - casual clothes of people walking on the streets of the old town – historical costumes of tourist entertainers and actors enacting battles on the castillo walls.

There exist a tourist ideology to a great extent constructed through material objects and discourses&practices surrounding these objects. Tourism relies much on these material objects and uses materiality to construct further symbols which to sustain the tourist ideology. Ethnographic descriptions are able to portray the organization of such ideologies – ethnic cultures such as of Native Americans or Spanish conquistadors; political values and traditional icons such as ‘freedom’ or ‘historical clothes’ – as well as to compare between types and resources of tourist discourses&practices and therefore to deconstruct them. We thus aimed to provide critical interpretations on how tourism is constructed and consequently to confer greater relevance to understanding tourism and its materiality.

We can understand both these ideologies and tourism materiality precisely through transformations in material culture of tourism. These ‘transformations’ occur, as we can see, at a conceptual (and even ideological) level, but they appear in a very striking way for those who consume tourism and pay attention to its materiality. There are continuities (such as between the gadgets of the Statue of Liberty) and contrasts (such as between ‘gunmen’ costumes and tourists’ clothes); there are ‘re-materializations’ (such as the construction of a little-scale canoe in educational purpose) and ‘de-materializations’ (such as the use of the image of the Statue of Liberty in posters and cartoons); and there are plenty of elements and references that interfere and invite us to ask about them while revealing deeper understandings.

Conclusions
Describing transformations of material objects and material representations of political/cultural values involved in tourism is a way of understanding culture of both ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ (and its global implications), and of both its materiality and its immateriality.

This ethnography also provide us information on how these transformations take place, various elements, aspects and dimensions of understanding transformation, and who operate these transformations and in what purpose. Historical, cultural and political imaginary; design, conservation and technological solutions; display, show and marketing techniques are all involved in a tourist industry where marketers, administrators, engineers, artists, educators, and tourists meet together. This web of activities, facts and relations is also a web of significance (Geertz, 1973) which indicates on a specific culture and its influences further than classical analyses on ‘American material culture’ (Quimby, 1979; Bronner, 1986; Schlereth, 1999) do.

Bibliography
Berger, Arthur Asa, 1992, Reading Matter. Multidisciplinary perspectives on Material Culture, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick&London
Bronner, Simon J., 1986, Grasping Things. Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in America, The University Press of Kentucky
Buchli, Victor, 2004, ed., Material Culture. Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, Routledge
Buchli, Victor, 2002, “Introduction”, in V.. Buchli, ed., Material Culture Reader, Berg Publishers, pp. 1-22.
Clifford, James, 1997, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Harvard University Press
Dant, Tim, 1999, Material Culture in the Social World: Values, Activities, Lifestyles, Buckingham, Open University PRess
Eadington, William R., Valene L. Smith, eds., 1992, Tourism Alternatives: Potentials and Problems in the Development of Tourism, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press
Fischer, Michael M.J., 1986, “Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory”, in James Cliffotd, George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, University of California Press, pp. 194-233
Geertz, Clifford, 1973, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”, in The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books, New York, pp.3-32
Merriam, Alan P., 1969, “The Ethnographic Experience: Drum-Making among the Bala (Basongye)”, in Ethnomusicology, Vol. 13, No. 1, , pp. 74-100
Miller, Daniel, 1987, Material Culture and Mass Consumption, Blackwell, Oxford.
Miller, Daniel, ed., 1998, Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter, University of Chicago Press
Nash, Dennison, 1996, Anthropology of Tourism, Pergamon, New York
Quimby, Ian M., ed., 1979, Material Culture and the Study of American Life, Norton&Company, New York
Rosaldo, 1989, “Putting Culture in Motion”, in Culture and Truth. The Remaking of Social Analysis, Beacon Press, Boston, pp. 91-108
Salazar, Noel B., 2005, “Tourism and Glocalization ‘Local’ Tour Guiding”, in Annals of Tourism
Research, Volume 32, Issue 3, pp. 628-646
Schlereth, Thomas J., 1999, Material Culture Studies in America, Altamira Press
Stronza, Amanda, 2001, “Anthropology of Tourism: Forging new grounds for ecotourism and other alternatives”, Annual Review of Anthroplogy, pp. 261-283.
Tilley, Christopher, ed., 2006
Vaetisi, Serban, 2006, “Rural Tourism in the Apuseni Mountains, Romania. An anthropological research on developing tourism in a poor region”, in Devesh Nigam, babu P. george, eds., Tourists and Tourism, Abhijeet Publications, New Delhi, pp. 40-52.
Vaetisi, Serban, 2008, “From Planters to Planners. Development, community, and cultural change in a southern American town”, Ms.
Wissler, Clark, 1914, “Material Cultures of the North American Indians”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 447-505

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