Objectives

This project brings an anthropological perspective to clarifying the changing position of the performing arts in South Asia, in the context of globalization and changes in the region’s politics, economics, and societies. As the region entered the 21^st century, social change initiated by India’s economic liberalization in 1990 was well-advanced. The appearance of South Asian ritual, theater, dance, music and other performing arts in a growing variety of media, combined with the effects of migration, led to wider acceptance and increasing consumption. While the performances themselves and the economic position of the performers underwent major changes, these arts spread outside the region and examples of reverse importation occurred. This research shows how performers come to participate in networks that transcend their traditional relationships and begin to rethink and expand the boundaries of South Asian performing arts. It reveals how contemporary performers develop new aesthetic sensibilities and modes of performance in response to audience and consumer tastes and find themselves under pressure by management and marketing adapted to free-market principles. It illustrates the process by which, while responding to new demands, they continue to reproduce traditional forms of performance and social relations.

Research Results

We held 11 study meetings in total with our joint researchers. Our studies of individual cases allowed us to identify the following four types of changes in South Asian performing arts: (1) the changes by which arts were consumed as things that reminded us of exotic others, which were seen in the U.S.A, Europe and Japan in the 1980s and later as a result of the formation of “world music” (an example of (1): Indian classical music, etc.), (2) the changes in arts at a local place that were moving in various directions including nationalization while negotiating with globalization (Nepali folk songs), (3) the changes in arts that were performed toward a “closed audience” as the media of regionalism, while it appeared to be moving around the globe (dramas performed by Goan Christians), and (4) the development of arts to the areas beyond South Asia (such as Singapore and Malaysia) along with the move of South Asian immigrants (particularly Indian immigrants) in the English colonial period and the changes of arts by adjusting to the situation in the host country (the classical dance of Bharata Natyam).

Commonly in the above four types, there were flows called cultural gyre in which arts came back to South Asia or went further to other areas after having accomplished changes (here, we also took into consideration the flows occurring within South Asia). We were able to clarify the process in which artists redefined and expanded South Asian arts including protocol, dramas, dances and music by utilizing media, such as satellite broadcasting, mobile phones and the Internet, the popularity of which grew explosively in the 1990s and later, and also by making use of subsidy programs in a destination country in which immigrants settled in addition to the conventional network based on social relations, such as castes. In the course of that, we found new issues to be clarified including the changes in the form of arts and their religious characteristics as well as the issues of disparity in the utilization of media.

Some of the results of this joint research were presented at subcommittee meetings organized in the following conferences: ICAS 8 (The Eighth International Convention of Asia Scholars) in Macao on June 2013, IUAES 2014 with JASCA in Chiba City on May 2014, and the domestic convention for “Religion and Society” in Tenri City on June 2014.