Original scientific paper
BASKET WEAVING IN THE SYSTEM OF CIRCLE FLOW OF CULTURE
Tomislav Pletenac
; Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Univrsity of Zagreb
Abstract
This text is trying to analyze basket weaving inside the circle ßow of
culture, a theoretical notion constructed within the Þeld of cultural studies.
Three levels of the existence of the product are analyzed: production,
consumption and representation. For a number of reasons, Croatian ethnology
has rarely dealt with the formation of products as a form of its semantization,
even though there were a few theoretical articles written in the period between
the two wars that tackled that problem. The main problem in borrowing
theoretical assumptions from cultural studies to ethnology is centered on the idea of the market, which is a dominant notion in the theories of cultural
studies, while ethnology investigated the market as a civilizational obstacle
which we should reject in order to get access to the original historical form,
in which that form (sign) carries in itself an implicit and additional meaning
(like nature, spirit or nation). However, if we include into our analyses
Appadurais concept of exchange, a series of seemingly original products
become historically deÞned forms. Hence, a scientiÞc article on baskets
will thus become a part of the circle ßow of culture, which is a place of the
existence of myths on production, consumption and representation. Here
the merchandise transforms into individual biographies and split identities
of researchers and informants which are switched on and off accordingly,
sometimes in the same moment when the STOP and REC buttons on the
recording device are pressed). This creates types of knowledge which are
sometimes controversial and which create new structures in which both the
informant and the ethnologist have their Other, excluded from the conversation:
cultural legitimization of the informants representation and academic
discourse of the ethnologist. In this case, the academic expectations, after a
period of doubt, proved to be wrong on the assumption of the key concepts
of the myths on the production of baskets. Production of baskets was not
traditional, both the weaving technique and different types of baskets were
the consequence of negotiation between two different economic universums
at the beginning of the 20th century.
Keywords
circle flow of culture; cultural studies; design; woven baskets; position of the researcher
Hrčak ID:
40876
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2004.
Visits: 2.420 *