The Messages of Tourist Art

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 1-12

3. Tourist Art as Symbolic and Economic Exchange

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

      PDF

   2. Image Creators and Image Consumers

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 15-29

   3. Art Markets, Images, and Commercialization

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 30-56

   4. Cottage Industries in Tourist Art

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 57-77

4. Creativity and Transformation

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 79-79

      PDF

   2. Working with Clay

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 81-104

   3. Handmade in Kenya

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 105-141

   4. The New Figuratism

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 142-173

5. New Horizons and Symbolic Legacies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 175-175

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   2. Processual Variation in Tourist Art

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 177-193

   3. The Consumer Connection

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 194-216

   4. The Messages of Tourist Art

      • Bennetta Jules-Rosette

      Pages 217-238

6. Back Matter

   Pages 239-266

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Tourist art may be a billion dollar business. Nevertheless, such art is despised. What is worse, the "bad" culture is seen as driving out the "good. " Commer­ cialization is assumed to destroy traditional arts and crafts, replacing them with junk. The process is seen as demeaning to artists in the traditional societies, who are seduced into a type of whoredom: unfeeling production of false beauty for money. The arts remain problematic for the social sciences. Sociology textbooks treat the arts as subordinate reflections of social forces, norms, or groups. An­ thropology textbooks conventionally isolate the arts in a separate chapter, failing to integrate them with analyses of kinship, economics, politics, language, or biology. Textbooks reflect the guiding theories, which emphasize such factors as modes of production, patterns of thought, or biological and normative con­ straints, but their authors have not adequately formulated the aesthetic dimen­ sion. One may compare the theoretical status of the arts to that of religion. After the contributions by Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the sociology of religion is well established, but where is a Durkheim or Weber for the sociology of art? What is true of the social sciences in general holds for understanding of modernization in the Third World. These processes and those places are analyzed economically, politically, and socially, but the aesthetic dimension is treated in isolation, if at all, and is poorly grasped in relation to the other forces.

• Max Weber
• Third World
• art
• culture
• language
• politics
• sociology
• sociology of religion
• tradition

• University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, USA

  Bennetta Jules-Rosette

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