This post builds on the research article “Tracking Properness: Repackaging Culture in a Remote Australian Town,” which was published in the August 2006 issue of the Society’s peer-reviewed journal, Cultural Anthropology.
Editorial Footnotes
Cultural Anthropology has published a number of articles on indigenous practices that negotiate the politics of representation, including Marisol De La Cadena's "Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections Beyond 'Politics'" (2010), Patricia Pierce Erikson's "A-Whaling We Will Go: Ecounters of Knowledge and Memory at the Makah Cultural and Research Center" (1999), and Faye Ginsburg's "Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media" (1994).
Cultural Anthropology has also published many articles on the circulation of cultural products, including David Novak's "Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood" (2010), Martha Kaplan's "Fijian Water in Fiji and New York: Local Politics and a Global Commodity" (2007), and Elizabeth Emma Ferry's "Inalienable Commodities: The Production and Circulation of Silver and Patrimony in a Mexican Mining Cooperative" (2002).
Questions for Classroom Discussion
1. Do you work with a community that has a wealth of materials that could be shared online? What are some benefits and drawbacks of sharing a group's meaningful materials with a wider audience unfamiliar with those meanings?
2. In the article, Christen notes that, "the compact disc is an object that seems to bridge many divides." Have you encountered phenomena that similarly connect different situations?