Incorporating Culture

Download or read book Incorporating Culture written by Solen Roth and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fragments of culture often become commodities when the tourism and heritage business showcases local artistic and cultural practice. And frequently, this industry develops without the consent of those whose culture is commercialized. What does this say about appropriation, social responsibility, and intercultural relationships? And what happens when communities become more involved in this cultural marketplace? Incorporating Culture examines how Indigenous artists and entrepreneurs are cultivating more equitable relationships with the companies that reproduce their designs on everyday objects, slowly modifying a capitalist market to make room for Indigenous values and principles. Moving beyond an interpretation of cultural commodification as necessarily exploitative, Solen Roth discusses how communities can treat culture as a resource in a way that nurtures rather than depletes it. She deftly illustrates the processes by which Indigenous people have been asserting control over the Northwest Coast art industry by reshaping it to reflect local models of property, relationships, and economics.