Keywords

indigenous/minority, arts & crafts,neo-liberalism

Objectives

The focus of this research is on a variety of settings that symbolize the position of indigenous and minority peoples in the mainstream societies in which they are subsumed. Such minorities/indigenous produce art, crafts, textiles and clothing, bring them to market, and sometimes attract international attention. We find that while treating these products as symbols provides economic benefits to minorities/indigenous and elevates their status, it also increases the pressure on them for authenticity, and commercialization may weaken their products as symbols. The politics of representation surrounding material symbols involves not only the response of minorities/indigenous to mainstream societies and the global community; it is also closely linked to multilayered social circumstances, including globalization and neoliberalism. This joint research project explores political trends from a local perspective, examining how they affect for the lived reality of indigenous and minority lives and clarifying concretely how they influence relationships between mainstream society and minority/indigenous communities.

Research Results

Under this joint research project, we made a series of comparative review of a scene where indigenous people or a minority group that each co-researcher studied was represented in the mainstream society while paying attention to material things. An extensive range of reports were made on changes and influences of paintings, crafts, cloths, and costumes, which were made in a group where each co-researcher conducted research, in the context of distribution, exhibition or tourism. These studies were classified into several clusters through joint research.
The first cluster is a theme on costumes. Dynamics were seen in various places, in which costumes that are visible externally and represent themselves directly were made and transformed, which in turn became a new label. The relations between what is represented and the object were diverse and there were some costumes that did not aim for representation to others, from which multi layers of their presence was identified. In addition, arts and crafts were another noteworthy theme. If things dealt with by others outside as pieces of art are made by a minority, there were multiple cases in which changes in their evaluation ended up changing the minority’s representation per se on the one hand. On the other hand, it also became clear that discussions on fluctuations in the boundary between arts and crafts in themselves were important. Furthermore, another important point is what identity a thing made by a minority leads to and what impact it has on minorities themselves. It has also become clearer that even in the case where distribution is scarce, there are changes. How to represent them at museums or other facilities, or representations at exhibitions, even if intending to represent national unity, were understood in a context that differed from individual costumes, crafts or arts. Another axis that links these is the distinction between handiwork and industrial products. Things made by a large number of minorities were handiwork using natural materials. It was revealed that industrial products or ready-made goods made inroads into it, which has resulted in the changes of their representations.