Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld

Introduction Matter Unbound

Orchestrated moments of destruction, cycles of appearance and vanishing, and other material losses recur across time and societies and scales of human action in ways that are pervasive, deeply soci...Orchestrated moments of destruction, cycles of appearance and vanishing, and other material losses recur across time and societies and scales of human action in ways that are pervasive, deeply social, and not anti-materialistic. Our goal with this special issue is to draw attention to the tools, narratives, and settings that people need to exploit ephemerality not just as a social practice but as a material one. We argue that rather than always seeking to objectify things, people undo form to achieve their social effect through working amid an unbounded flow of materiality. Consuming, vanishing, sacrificing, and fashioning all work as techniques of interacting, processes that enhance communities not by committing them to fixed cultural property but by linking people as agents or channels of shared substances. Ephemeral practice, however, is not the negative of objectification, but rather a related set of actions that have special significance for intersubjective experience, negotiating relationships, and the pacing of human interaction.

An ethnography of neoliberalism: Understanding competition in artisan economies. Commentaries. Author's reply

Both a method and a goal of neoliberal policy, competitiveness structures ever more economic practices while consolidating cultural and community commitments. Current anthropological models treat competition narrowly as a reflection of economic inputscapital, innovation, and talent. In contrast, I show that, first, competing successfully is predicated less and less on economic factors and increasingly on expressiveness and communication. Second, competition entails not so much individualism as positioning and thus is best understood as a structural relationship among competitors. Third, the essential cultural work of competition is not to sweep away inefficient conventions but rather to reconcile the painful inequalities emergent within a community with its professed shared values. To support these claims, I analyze artisan economies, a sector of the global economy that has been surprisingly, if not always happily, revitalized by neoliberal policies. Concentrating on indigenous artisans in Ecuador, I examine how people use words, art, crafted objects, and consumer goods to construct competition as an economic and moral field and place themselves within it.Both a method and a goal of neoliberal policy, competitiveness structures ever more economic practices while consolidating cultural and community commitments. Current anthropological models treat competition narrowly as a reflection of economic inputscapital, innovation, and talent. In contrast, I show that, first, competing successfully is predicated less and less on economic factors and increasingly on expressiveness and communication. Second, competition entails not so much individualism as positioning and thus is best understood as a structural relationship among competitors. Third, the essential cultural work of competition is not to sweep away inefficient conventions but rather to reconcile the painful inequalities emergent within a community with its professed shared values. To support these claims, I analyze artisan economies, a sector of the global economy that has been surprisingly, if not always happily, revitalized by neoliberal policies. Concentrating on indigenous artisans in Ecuador, I exam...

Economic Clusters or Cultural Commons?: The Limits of Competition-Driven Development in the Ecuadorian Andes

We examine here two Ecuadorian towns and the states efforts to support their development through competitiveness initiatives. Neoliberal, economic globalization is often equated with the insecurities of market competition. However, economic policy makers do not foment competition as much as competitive advantage. Whereas competition requires individual know-how, competitive advantage often involves cooperating to improve the underlying factors that help whole groups of firms. In Ecuador, policies have sought to engineer competitive advantage by creating industrial clusters. In our study, the town of Atuntaqui embraced the idea of clusters, uniting firms to work with international consultants and the Ministry of Industry. The economy has improved, but wealth shows signs of consolidation. The comparative case is a mechanized indigenous craft economy in Otavalo. Exploring how Otavalos development has generated a set of shared resources anchored in a market plaza, we argue that its economy is best understood as a cultural commons. The experiences of both places have shown that economic development must take explicit measures to defend such commons if the gains of strategic cooperation are to be sustained in the long run.

Space, line and story in the invention of an Andean aesthetic

This article examines Tiguan painting and the conventions of this new native Andean visual art, its representation of space, and the way it portrays traditional and contemporary material culture. Engaging the problem of alternative modes of spatial perception, the author describes how the act of drawing can become a tool of ethnographic exploration. With insights gained through sketching-mediated encounters with artists, the article shows the relevance to Tiguan art of Ingold’s recent arguments about lines as an organic device of narrative and visual ordering. Where formal spatial perspective offers a vocabulary of hierarchical order — foreground, background, vantage point — lines invoke movement, duration and interchange, which become recurrent issues for Tiguan artists.

Consuming Andean Televisions

This article follows consumers from Otavalo, Ecuador through narratives of devilish eating, jokes, and family gatherings in order to focus on a general problem: how a dispersed Andean indigenous people produce themselves as families, neighbors and community. In the episodes of consumption described here, consuming cultivates responsive relationships and using up and ingesting can act as generative moments for communities. However, the folktales and preoccupations of the transnational migrants reveal the risks that consuming entails. Human soulfulness – creativity, feeling, and morality – does not sit neatly within human agents, but rather can be augmented, diminished, or entirely dislodged in the consumption acts that join human and non-human; cultural and material. Even when consumption does augment a generative social agency, it also limits it. To consume is to stop one’s movement through the world, converting the potential to matter to the reality of mattering in one place among a certain set of people.This article follows consumers from Otavalo, Ecuador through narratives of devilish eating, jokes, and family gatherings in order to focus on a general problem: how a dispersed Andean indigenous people produce themselves as families, neighbors and community. In the episodes of consumption described here, consuming cultivates responsive relationships and using up and ingesting can act as generative moments for communities. However, the folktales and preoccupations of the transnational migrants reveal the risks that consuming entails. Human soulfulness – creativity, feeling, and morality – does not sit neatly within human agents, but rather can be augmented, diminished, or entirely dislodged in the consumption acts that join human and non-human; cultural and material. Even when consumption does augment a generative social agency, it also limits it. To consume is to stop one’s movement through the world, converting the potential to matter to the reality of mattering in one place among a certain set of people.

Rafael Correa's Multicolored Dream Shirt: Commerce, Creativity, and National Identity in Post-Neoliberal Ecuador

During the transmission ceremonies in 2007, Ecuadors President Rafael Correa wore a specially tailored, elaborately embroidered shirt. Since then he has used such shirts on official state visits, given them to heads of state, and worn them during national events – elevating them as a symbol of his presidency. In this paper, we report on the apparel producer, fashion designer, and embroiderer who created the shirt, showing how their creativity, understandings of intellectual property, and economic plans for the shirt illustrate important currents of Ecuadors post-neoliberal economy. Drawing on interviews with the three protagonists as well as a multi-year study of apparel production in Ecuadors northern Andes, we trace the connections among the womens views and the legacy of neoliberal development for small producers. Our analysis uses the idea of a cultural commons to show how small-scale clothing manufacture relies on shared design and marketing resources and, consequently, how producers develop practices of stewardship as part of their working lives. Concerns for the longevity of a trade foster a political consciousness that in turn shapes citizen evaluations of the economic sovereignty that Correas presidency has promised.

An Ethnography of Neoliberalism

Both a method and a goal of neoliberal policy, competitiveness structures ever more economic practices while consolidating cultural and community commitments. Current anthropological models treat competition narrowly as a reflection of economic inputscapital, innovation, and talent. In contrast, I show that, first, competing successfully is predicated less and less on economic factors and increasingly on expressiveness and communication. Second, competition entails not so much individualism as positioning and thus is best understood as a structural relationship among competitors. Third, the essential cultural work of competition is not to sweep away inefficient conventions but rather to reconcile the painful inequalities emergent within a community with its professed shared values. To support these claims, I analyze artisan economies, a sector of the global economy that has been surprisingly, if not always happily, revitalized by neoliberal policies. Concentrating on indigenous artisans in Ecuador, I examine how people use words, art, crafted objects, and consumer goods to construct competition as an economic and moral field and place themselves within it.Both a method and a goal of neoliberal policy, competitiveness structures ever more economic practices while consolidating cultural and community commitments. Current anthropological models treat competition narrowly as a reflection of economic inputscapital, innovation, and talent. In contrast, I show that, first, competing successfully is predicated less and less on economic factors and increasingly on expressiveness and communication. Second, competition entails not so much individualism as positioning and thus is best understood as a structural relationship among competitors. Third, the essential cultural work of competition is not to sweep away inefficient conventions but rather to reconcile the painful inequalities emergent within a community with its professed shared values. To support these claims, I analyze artisan economies, a sector of the global economy that has been surprisingly, if not always happily, revitalized by neoliberal policies. Concentrating on indigenous artisans in Ecuador, I exam...