OUTSOURCING OTHERNESS: CRAFTING AND MARKETING CULTURE IN THE GLOBAL HANDICRAFTS MARKET.

This chapter examines the commercial handicrafts market from Bali, Indonesia to the United States. Using ethnographic examples gathered from research among handicrafts producers, fair trade activists and handicrafts distributors I explore the influence of intermediaries (buyers, distributors, designers) in determining the cultural and economic value of ethnic handicrafts sold in the international marketplace. Over the past two decades, the village of Tegallalang has diversified its crafts industry to specialize in the mass-production of non-Balinese "ethnic art" (e.g., Native American dreamcatchers, Moroccan furniture, and African masks). While Balinese view the global handicrafts market as an opportunity to pursue cosmopolitan, modern, and middle-class identities, this chapter discusses how non-Balinese intermediaries regularly engage in forms of cultural capital that assert their dominance over handicrafts producers in the global South. The work of a Balinese fair trade organization is also examined in this chapter, and their efforts to redirect Since the earliest times, voyagers have returned from distant lands inspired by all they have seen and experienced on their travels, bringing with them the exotic and unusual to display in their homes. Colours, textures, surfaces and textiles have always proved a particularly rich source of inspiration, for they are at the very heart of a country's character, inextricably linked to its customs and history... Techniques and designs are still handed down from parent to child, often in the face of great hardship or the increasingly pervasive lure of MTV culture. (Dilcock, 2000, p. 8) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]