The Native Leisure Class: Consumption and Cultural Creativity in the Andes

Colloredo-Mansfeld, Rudi

ISBN 10: 0226113949 / ISBN 13: 9780226113944

Published by University of Chicago Press, 1999

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Native Leisure Class: Consumption and Cultural Creativity in the Andes
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226113949
• ISBN 13: 9780226113944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Acceptable

About this title

Synopsis

In the Andean city of Otavalo, Ecuador, a cultural renaissance is now taking place against a backdrop of fading farming traditions, transnational migration, and an influx of new consumer goods. Recently, Otavalenos have transformed their textile trade into a prosperous tourist industry, exporting colorful weavings around the world.

Tracing the connections among newly invented craft traditions, social networks, and consumption patterns, Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld highlights the way ethnic identities and class cultures materialize in a sensual world that includes luxurious woven belts, powerful stereos, and garlic roasted cuyes (guinea pigs). Yet this case reaches beyond the Andes. He shows how local and global interactions intensify the cultural expression of the world's emerging "native middle classes," at times leaving behind those unable to afford the new trappings of indigenous identity.

Colloredo-Mansfeld also comments on his experiences working as an artist in Otavalo. His drawings, along with numerous photographs, animate this engaging study in economic anthropology.

About the Author

Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld is professor and chair of anthropology at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of The Native Leisure Class: Consumption and Cultural Creativity in the Andes.