The Value of Aesthetics

Oaxacan Woodcarvers in Global Economies of Culture

Alanna Cant (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

204 Seiten

2019
University of Texas Press (Verlag)
9781477318805 (ISBN)

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Unlike many other handicrafts in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, which have long cultural and historical trajectories, Oaxacan woodcarving began in the second half of the twentieth century and has always been done for the commercial market. In The Value of Aesthetics, Alanna Cant explores how one family’s workshop in the village of San MartÍn Tilcajete has become the most critically and economically successful, surpassing those of neighbors who use similar materials and techniques. The dominance of this family is tied to their ability to produce a new aesthetic that appeals to three key “economies of culture”: the tourist market for souvenirs, the national market for traditional Mexican artesanÍas, and the international market for indigenous art.

Offering a new analytical model by which anthropologists can approach visual aesthetics and conceptualize the power of artworks as socially active objects, The Value of Aesthetics shows how aesthetic practices produce and redefine social and political relationships. By investigating the links between aesthetics and issues of production, authorship, ownership, and identity, Cant shows aesthetic change to be a process that ultimately repackages everyday life into commodified objects in Oaxaca.

A social anthropologist, Alanna Cant is a research associate at the University of Kent and holds a doctorate from the London School of Economics. In addition to her work with artisans, she has conducted research on contemporary Catholicism and the restoration of a sixteenth-century Dominican monastery in rural Oaxaca. She has studied and worked in anthropology in Canada, Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom, and her findings have appeared in the volume Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization, and Capitalism as well as Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, and The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Alluring Thing Itself
Chapter 2. Aesthetics of Work in Woodcarving
Chapter 3. Authorship and Its Consequences
Chapter 4. ArtesanÍas into Ethnic Art
Chapter 5. The Art of Indigeneity
Chapter 6. The Allure of Art and Intellectual Property
Conclusion: At the End of the Aura
Appendix: A Note on Names
References
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	20.08.2019
Zusatzinfo	11 color photos, 1 b&w map
Verlagsort	Austin, TX
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	426 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-13	9781477318805 / 9781477318805
Zustand	Neuware