Ai T 2 Igor Kopytoff; The cultural biography of things; commoditization as process PDF

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Lecture, seminar and reading notes for Term 2 Week 2 Artefacts in Theory for module Museums; History, Theory and Practice. Focus on Igor Kopytoff; The cultural biography of things; commoditization as process...

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Igor Kopytoff; The cultural biography of things; commoditization as process

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Kopytoff is discussing the ways in which commodities are produced, as a cultural and cognitive process, how those commodities are develop value in the ‘two systems of value’; the first of personal, singularised things, and the second of commoditized objects up for exchange. Utilising this cultural-biographical framework for looking at commodities and commoditization, we are able to ‘make salient what otherwise remains obscured’. Not only an object’s journey and material history, but what Kopytoff refers to as the ‘tangled mass of aesthetic, historical, and even political judgements, and of convictions and values that shape our attitudes to objects labelled as ‘art’’. He describes the ways in which objects may oscillate between commodity and singularity as a story of the object’s culturally shaped of biography. However I would note here that something becoming a non-commodity (a singularity) does not equate to it being sacred. Singularities may be priceless in terms of them being uniquely valuable or uniquely worthless. Equally there are cases of terminal commoditization, wherein there is no forward exchangeability (for example labour, or personal prescription medicine - as governed by either resale laws or spirituality). ■ When discussing this oscillation in biographies between commodity and singularity, Kopytoff also notes that it is not only objects that cross this boundary, by drawing on the example of the slave trade, wherein an individual person may be stripped of their identity, become a ‘non-person’, bought and sold, and thus inserted into the host group wherein they are ‘resocialised and rehumanized’ with a new social identity - who retains a potential exchange value. ■ He also discusses at the end the ways in which modern technology is enabling the commodification of people in other ways, particularly the blood, organ and ova and surrogacy trades. These, along with the example of slavery, illustrate the ways in which the boundaries between the perceived polarity of the world of things (as commodities) and the world of people (as individualized singularities) are blurred by the economy. Kopytoff suggests that the more advanced the exchange technology, the more things become open to commoditization. By exchange technology, Kopfytoff is referring to an agreed upon currency, that helps to structure value systems in the economic sphere - this is required for the process of commoditization, which is enhanced by the degree of convenience of the exchange technology. For example, our exchange technology, which has now become largely nonphysical, enables hyper-commodification. This also homogenizes value, in a way which contradicts both culture’s drive to classify objects into a shared cognitive order in which some things remain unambiguously singular (or sacred), and also contradicts the individual’s attempts to ‘bring a value order to the universe of things’. ○ Kopytoff notes, exposing his Marxist influences with somewhat evolutionist

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undertones, that in a less complex society such as the Tiv or the Aghem (both of whom are discussed in the piece), culture and economy are in harmony as the social structure does not permit for excessive commercialisation, monetisation or commodification. Whereas in a complex, commercialized, monetized and commodified society ‘the value-homogenizing drive of the exchange system has an enormous momentum that both culture and individual cognition often oppose, but in inconsistent and even contradictory ways’ p.77 Kopytoff discusses further the exchange spheres of ‘complex societies’ which exist within the structure of wider society; smaller groups which share a common cultural code of value which act as ‘networks of mechanical solidarity that tie together the structure of wider society’. For example the trade of art, scientific objects, or museum objects. However he also notes the ‘yearning for singularisation’ of complex societies, which can be satisfied individually through the singularisation of commodity objects; for example in the case of heirlooms. He also notes that ‘much of the collective singularisation is achieved by reference to the passage of time’ p.80. - Duddo Stones quasi objects nature/culture Sometimes such singularisation, when done by groups rather than individuals, can ‘take on the weight of cultural sacredness’, wherein are entangled associations of ‘conflicts of culture, class, and ethnic identity, and the struggle over power of what one might label the ‘public institutions of singularisations’’ p.81 ○ It is precisely this struggle that we can observe in many cases of repatriation claims. Kopytoff closes by saying that in our ‘homogenized world of commodities, an eventful biography of a thing becomes the story of the various singularizations of it, of classifications and reclassifications in an uncertain world of categories whose importance shifts with every minor change in context.’. P.90 So now I turn to an object whose biography is only partial to me, but has still - during the parts of its biography that are known to me - oscillated between commodity and singular.

How work done on biography of object was used and critiqued by later people more focused on ‘agency’ of objects Hoskins is link between seminars 2 and 3 - read Hoskins for next week! Marcel Mauss ‘The Gift’ ● Overall: gifts as embodiment of social relationships ● Ch1: Potlatch, N. American and Maori Traditions Hau (‘ho’) ○ Permanent objects ‘immovable’ - Tonga - refers to ancestral treasures. (mats given during marriage, or all goods of exchange that make one wealthier) ■ Powerful Tonga is ancestral figure (i.e headphone figure in Pacific currents). Not a representation of an ancestor, but a manifestation of that ancestor in the present as well as the past. The ancestral presence and spirit are in those objects ○ Moveable goods - tools or objects without spirit.

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Trace moveable goods in understanding economy without social relations, but movement of tonga tell the human relations ○ Mana as vehicle for prestige. ○ Spirit as universal in gift exchange - part of the giver’s spirit s given with the gift Potlatch in canada banned for 50 years (used excuse of damaging objects in Potlatch, which was actually a historical exception, usually they gave away objects rather than destroying them). Mauss influencers: Malinowski, Durkheim’s nephew (so wanted to develop theories of social cohesion and solidarity) Thinking about the spirit of the gift and ‘Hau’ - how it is used, thinking about agencies and what an object is Idea of reciprocity not universal in gift exchange Appadurai, who sets of Social life of Things (Kopytoff later gives more nuance)

Appadurai Social Life of Things ● Focus on exchange and commodities - how exchange of objects creates value (the moment of exchange itself) ● Recursivity between people and exchange of objects ● People’s identity and value depend on these exchanges - people define value of exchange but exchange also defines people ● Every object has commodity potential, with intended trajectory ○ i.e enclaved commodities, trade objects, use objects - i.t things put into noncommodity category (enclaved), but things leak out ○ Things diverge from pre-destined path - this divergence is important for keeping social ties/dynamic alive ○ Things removed from circulation ■ Does this ever really happen? ○ Costs of loan - usually covered by loaning museum. In case of repat claim to poorer community centers etc, long-term loans on repat claims ■ Maori advisors from Oceania led to MAA agreeing to long-loans of material from cook collections back to indigenous Maori culture collections on Aoteroa. Conditions not as high as accredited museum (aided NZ museum & government) ■ Place of Museum Committee in this ○ Responsibility for custodianship of unique rare objects, but objects are about relationships ○ USE THE TORRESS STRAIT Dari HEADDRESS IN SET ESSAY - modern commissioning of remaking of old headdress ■ Museums take objects out of commodity network, but they are also not terminuses as there is a big commercial market for non-WEstern objects ● Relationship with Sothebys and art dealers ○ MAA tries to distance its objects from having commercial value ● Appadurai interest in commodities and ‘regimes of value’

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How we conceptualise value Appadurai on people changing their opinion on the value of an object - i.e during famine Biographies and persons and things Social life of things make theoretical points but it is also a methodology ○ When talking about value, tracking the things in motion help to illuminate the human social context You can learn context but following objects around Hoskins talks on agency, and distinguishes between two kinds of biographies: ○ Biography in an ethnographic context - Maureen Mackenzie’s article Telethal’s string bags - describing how a woman makes a bag for a particular person, who is woven into the bag (billum) New Guinea. This provides a strong biographical link to a real person in a real place, which is only apparent to very few people. ○ Biography which you try to track from its end point (where you find it) - tracking its movements and the discussions it prompted (GWEAGAL) Anthropologists and Historians over the last 30yrs have developed theoretical models that challenge a straightforward distinction between people and things - object’s social lives was one of the first. Appa: Spirit of the gift as socially created, opposes Mauss on hau Appadurai ‘from a theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a methodical point of view it is the things in motion that illuminate their human and social contexts’ Tracking objects to illuminate human and social context rather than object’s intrinsic agency in itself ○ Next week we look at the intrinsic agency - the Hau - is the agency in the object For Appa and Kopy - it is methodological, objects as traces of human relationships, whereas Mauss views objects as agents. ○ Objects illuminate people, human agency rather than object agency. I.T objects have biographies had never been framed in this way before Appa and Kopy’s book. Think about how important the object is in the frameworks we make The Gift in the decolonisation debate - one of the first things to do when discussing decolonisation in an informed way is to do the biography of that object and the networks and social relationships it was involved with ○ Thinking about object types or singularisations ○ Relationship circulation pre-museum - in indig context and non-indig Including object biographies in exhibitions ○ Pacific Currents use of histories and labelling Outreach in museums don’t want long museum labels BM ethnographic gallery don’t include where they got their objects unless it’s from famous people If you care about cultural property and illicit activities we need to know where things come from Ethnocentrism of labels - lack of makers on labelling. This wouldn't happen in an art museum....