Outsourcing otherness: Pursuing modernity in the global handicrafts market

In this dissertation, I investigate how the growing market for "ethnic art" is linked to the pursuit of modern and cosmopolitan identities among producers, distributors and consumers. Based on field research in Bali, Indonesia and in California, Georgia and North Carolina, I examine how handicrafts producers, distributors and consumers use the market to assert a sense of power and agency in the global economy.;Although the growing demand for ethnic art has fostered a greater appreciation for the complexity and diversity of aesthetic traditions, this research examines how the ethnic arts market promotes discourses in which culture is often homogenized and simply differentiated between "moderns" and "Others." While middle and upper class consumers in the United States assert their cultural and class identities by consuming ethnic art that demonstrates their distinctive appreciation for "Other" cultural aesthetics, Indonesian handicrafts producers and distributors use the handicrafts market to pursue middle class and modern identities for themselves. The irony, however, is that producers are often pressured to reproduce and highlight stereotypical "primitive" and "tribal" aesthetics of their own cultural artifacts as well as those of other indigenous groups. The village of Tegallalang in central Bali, for example, produces Native American dreamcatchers, African masks and Australian Aboriginal paintings for commercial export. The crafts producers learn about these various aesthetics not from cultural representatives from these groups, but rather, from corporate representatives, designers and buyers who come to Bali with their own imagined ideas of these "ethnic" objects and artifacts.;The pursuit and assertion of modern identities in the world handicrafts market is characterized by competition among various individuals over who has the right to control the resources and capital in an ever-expanding global economy. This dissertation explores confrontations between Indonesians and foreigners, as culturally-specific interpretations of modernity and globalization compete with one another. In this dissertation, I show that producers, distributors and consumers all pursue their versions of modern and cosmopolitan identities by enforcing distinctions between themselves and "Other" cultures.