Whose Mission Accomplished? Alberta at the 2006 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
22 Dec 2008-American Review of Canadian Studies (Taylor & Francis Group)-Vol. 38, Iss: 4, pp 451-472
TL;DR: In 2006, Alberta became the first Canadian province to be featured at the Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. as mentioned in this paper examined the tensions at play in the representation of Alberta at the 2006 Folklife festival by analyzing the central preoccupations of the two main institutions involved.
Abstract: In the summer of 2006, Alberta became the first ever Canadian province to be featured at the Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The Festival seeks to celebrate cultural diversity and promote awareness of cultural traditions, but in this case, these goals were overshadowed by the province's commercial goals. With rising gas prices and concerns about reliance on foreign oil, the timing was just right to introduce Alberta and its rich energy supply to Americans. As a Canada-phile who has spent the better part of her academic career studying Canada, I was eager to examine the Alberta program more closely to see how an American institution conceives of a Canadian province. This article seeks to uncover the tensions at play in the representation of Alberta at the 2006 Folklife Festival by analyzing the central preoccupations of the two main institutions involved--the Smithsonian and the government of Alberta. A close analysis of the discourse surrounding this event--specifically, the collection of utterances made by these two institutions and their representatives--reveals that the central discursive preoccupation of the Alberta program was the promotion of the province's oil industry. Moreover, this goal appears to conflict with the anthropological goals of the Folklife Festival. My primary sources, in addition to the Alberta program itself, include the Smithsonian Institution's Festival website and its 2006 program book, as well as the government of Alberta's press releases before, during, and after the Festival, and its Final Mission Report, published at the conclusion of the Festival. Before examining the discourse, I provide some background on the Festival to establish a prediscursive frame for the 2006 Alberta program. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival The Festival began as the Festival of American Folklife in 1967. Thirty-one years later, the name was changed to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to reflect its scope as "an annual exhibition of living cultural heritage from across the United States and around the world." (1) Although its organization has changed over the years, its underlying philosophy has not. Richard Kurin, director of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, which puts on the Festival, states, "The most distinctive feature of the Festival is the attempt to foreground the voices of tradition bearers as they demonstrate, discuss, and present their cultures. At the Festival, tradition bearers, scholars, and Smithsonian curators speak for themselves, with each other, and to the public." (2) The Festival is based on a "living history" model, with each featured nation, region, or program having its own outdoor museum space on the mall. Booths staffed by people from the participating regions are supplemented with stages for musical performances, a food tent, museum-quality signs and text panels, and a glossy program book. According to folklorist Laurie Kay Summers, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is informed by a philosophy that grew out of the New Deal's conceptions of folklife as a grassroots, bottom-up form of culture. (3) As conceived by founder Ralph Rinzler and folklorist Alan Lomax, the Festival is an attempt to support this form of culture in the face of "growing commercialism and cultural elitism." (4) The two immediate goals of the Festival are: [t]o honor the participants and the cultural groups they represent through display of their traditional arts, skills, and knowledge-- and thereby encourage their efforts, and to make a broader public aware of the rich variety of cultural traditions, the value of cultural diversity and its continuity, and the obstacles impinging on traditional cultural practice. (5) At its birth in 1967, the festival focused on Texas; three years later it added a Native American program. Every state in the United States has been featured, including the District of Columbia. …
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: The authors analyzed curricular documents and secondary-level school textbooks to learn more about how social studies education contributes to constructing a sense of "being a Canadian" versus "being an American" north and south of the 49th parallel.
Abstract: A missing link in the voluminous chain of prior studies on Canadian versus American identity is a comparative analysis of the impact of social studies – especially civics – education on the construction of national identity in these two North American nation-states. This article analyzes curricular documents and secondary-level school textbooks to learn more about how social studies education contributes to constructing a sense of ‘being a Canadian’ versus ‘being an American’ north and south of the 49th parallel.
12 citations
Cites background from "Whose Mission Accomplished? Alberta..."
...…how meaning is constructed through language (see, e.g., Sleeter & Grant, 1991).4 Understanding this discursive construction of meaning depends upon what is said, how it is said and who says it, as well as on what is not said and who is left out of the discussion (Gauthier, 2008, p. 455)....
[...]
25 Sep 2013
3 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: Reaching this goal would require a more self-con- scious determination by communication scholars to plumb other fields and feed back their studies to outside researchers, and enhance the theoretical rigor of communication scholarship proper.
Abstract: deficient core knowledge, I propose that we turn an osten- sible weakness into a strength. We should identify our mission as bring- ing together insights and theories that would otherwise remain scattered in other disciplines. Because of the lack of interchange among the disci- plines, hypotheses thoroughly discredited in one field may receive wide acceptance in another. Potential research paradigms remain fractured, with pieces here and there but no comprehensive statement to guide re- search. By bringing ideas together in one location, communication can aspire to become a master discipline that synthesizes related theories and concepts and exposes them to the most rigorous, comprehensive state- ment and exploration. Reaching this goal would require a more self-con- scious determination by communication scholars to plumb other fields and feed back their studies to outside researchers. At the same time, such an enterprise would enhance the theoretical rigor of communication scholarship proper. The idea
11,643 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1974
TL;DR: In Frame Analysis, the brilliant theorist wrote about the ways in which people determine their answers to the questions What is going on here? and Under what circumstances do we think things are real?.
Abstract: Erving Goffman will influence the thinking and perceptions of generations to come In Frame Analysis, the brilliant theorist writes about the ways in which people determine their answers to the questions What is going on here? and Under what circumstances do we think things are real? "
11,533 citations
Journal Article•
1,396 citations
01 Sep 1992
TL;DR: Exhibiting cultures as mentioned in this paper explores the often politically charged relationships among aesthetics, contexts, and implicit assumptions that govern how cultural differences and art objects are displayed in museums, and examines how diverse settings have appealed to audiences and represented the intentions and cultures of the makers of objects.
Abstract: "Throwing open to debate the practices of museums, galleries, and festivals, Exhibiting Cultures probes the often politically charged relationships among aesthetics, contexts, and implicit assumptions that govern how cultural differences and art objects are displayed. This innovative volume brings together museum directors and curators, art historians, anthropologists, folklorists, and historians to examine how diverse settings have appealed to audiences and represented the intentions and cultures of the makers of objects. The essays address such major issues in the politics of culture as how the learned experience of everyday life is used to make exhibitions comprehensible, what happens to minority and exotic arts when they are assimilated into the hegemonic context of the "great" museums, and why ethnographic museums have been neglected in an age of museum expansions" -- p.[4] of cover.
932 citations
TL;DR: Clifford as mentioned in this paper argues that ethnography has been dominated by a "pastoral" allegorical register which allowed an ethnographer to occupy a privileged position to interpret other, non-writing cultures.
Abstract: In now classic article, James Clifford offers a novel perspective on ethnographic texts. Inspired by literary studies (e.g. Jacques Derrida’s grammatology) he uses contemporary ethnographic works to question ethnography’s claims of scientific objectivity and a clear distinction between allegorical and factual. If ethnography aims to keep its contemporary relevance, it should specifically focus on allegory as an intrinsic quality of ethnographic texts This kind of analysis may assume that any ethnographic text accounts for facts and events but at the same time it tackles the moral, ideological or even cosmological issues. According to Clifford, ethnography has been dominated by a “pastoral” allegorical register which allowed an ethnographer to occupy a privileged position to interpret other, non-writing cultures. Clifford notices that this register is loosing support in the modern world since the difference between illiterate and literate cultures is not relevant anymore. Ethnographic pastoral is now replaced with self-reflexive and dialogical forms of ethnographic writing, analyzed by Clifford by the example of Marjorie Shostak’s book Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman.
427 citations