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article ts
Culture, economy and tourist studies
© 2003
tourism commodities sage publications
London,
Thousand Oaks and
Social relations of production and New Delhi
vol 3(2) 123–141
DOI: 10.1177/
consumption 1468797603041629
www.sagepublications.com

Irena Ateljevic
Auckland University of Technology

Stephen Doorne
University of South Pacific, Fiji

abstract The contemporary global economy has become characterized by an

intensity and sophistication of the processes of commodification of consumption
where production is increasingly aestheticized, attaching meanings and symbolic
associations to material objects. The traditional interpretations of cultural
commodification suggest disempowerment of traditional cultures and cultural
practices through the integration with global tourism. This study goes beyond these
assumptions to explore social relations connecting production and consumption of
tourist commodities. It follows the journey of tourist goods from the cultural context
of their creation, to their consumption and appropriation in new locations where they
become surrogates of human relations and representations of identity.

keywords commodification cultures identity meanings social relations of production

and consumption tourist commodities/goods

Introduction
Tourism is undoubtedly a powerful agent of economic development driven in
part by the search for cultural diversity and the ethnic identity of the ‘Other’
(Van der Berge, 1994; Allcock, Bruner and Lanfant, 1995). In predominantly
‘Western’ cultures, leisure and tourism consumption serves as an arena for social
differentiation and the expression of identity (Featherstone, 1990; Miller,
1995a), in line of Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of ‘cultural capital’.Traffic in touris-
tic goods revolves around largely aestheticized assumptions of authenticity, and
at the same time satisfies the urge to engage in a global cultural connectedness
(Hannerz, 1996). In this context this study builds upon the work of Appadurai 123
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124 tourist studies 3:2

(1986, 1996) and Jackson (1999), focusing on commodities of tourism and the
many ways in which these objects become entangled in the web of wider social
relations and meanings. Our research follows tourism artefacts produced in rural
China downstream to new locations in urban New Zealand. The aim is to
expose the richness of cultural context within which ethnicity and socio-
cultural identities of difference are produced and consumed through tourism.
The study hopes to illustrate the diversity of cultural meanings articulated
through goods traded in tourism in order to reveal the complex web of socio-
cultural relations within the highly distorted power structures of the global
politico-cultural economy. Specifically, we examine the meanings, discourses
and stories dynamics surrounding production and consumption of tie-dyed
material and reveal the contradictions of cultural agency within the broader
structural conditions.
We begin by exposing the theoretical coordinates of this article through a dis-
cussion of the broader context of consumption cultures and the issues sur-
rounding material culture and processes of commoditization. Following this, we
embed this contextual framework within the structural complex of contem-
porary global tourism. Against this conceptual backdrop we provide an
overview of the case study in terms of the focus of cultural tourism in Yunnan
Province and the Dali region. The case study itself is presented as a chain of
stories linked through time, space and materiality.We conclude by exploring the
contradictions that define the lived realities and their theoretical interpretation.

Commodification and culture of consumption

In the contemporary global economy, processes of commodification have
become characterized by the intense and sophisticated symbolic aestheticization
of material objects (Tomlinson, 1990; Rojek, 1995; Jackson and Thrift, 1995; du
Gay, 1996; Lury, 1996).Tomlinson (1990) reveals consumer culture as a complex
and ordered but fluid realm within which individuals construct identities
through strategic relationships with material things. He also exposes the extent
to which perceived values of material culture are conditioned and controlled
within a highly organized structural complex intimately perceptive of the
needs, aspirations and fears of individuals as consumers. Tomlinson’s analysis
describes the ways in which these relationships between people and things are
prescribed and controlled by ‘marketing science’ and the machinery of eco-
nomic rationality yet also asks,‘for how long will such a constructed consumer
choice be acceptable as the major determinant of personal freedom’ (1990: 35).
Lury (1996), however, provides a valuable counterpoint to overtly structural-
ist analyses by focusing more specifically on the dialectics of production and
consumption, which characterize the social dynamics of material culture. Lury
provides four factors informing the shaping and aestheticization of consumer
culture. Firstly, the centrality of the circulation of commodities within exchange
markets based on the capitalist division of labour; secondly, proliferation of
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Ateljevic and Doorne Culture, economy and tourism commodities 125

regimes of value and their diversity expressed through multiple consumption

sites; thirdly, the growing independence and agency of ‘(at least some) con-
sumers’ (1996: 4); and fourthly, the emerging significance of things in the artic-
ulation of identity by specific social groups or cultural intermediaries. In doing
so Lury’s framework provides useful lens with which to reconcile the dynamics
of structure and agency.
In a similar vein,Appadurai (1996) brings exploration of material culture one
stage closer by focusing on processes of commoditization in terms of cultural
exchange and the expression of political and economic power. In particular, he
emphasizes the social methodology of exchange and argues that ‘we have to fol-
low the things themselves, for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their
uses, their trajectories’ (p. 5). He provides a careful and detailed discussion of the
interpretation of commodities and exchange relationships drawing on a broad
anthropological tradition. For the purpose of our discussion we choose to focus
on the following of Appadurai’s arguments. Firstly, that the role of commodities
in gift giving has strategic, political and economic significance; secondly, that the
commodities circulate within ‘regimes of value’; thirdly, that commodities are
symbolic elements in the creation of identity; and lastly, that these processes are
embedded within a structural context through which power–knowledge is
exercised. Following the work of Jackson (1999) who brings a geographical per-
spective to Appadurai’s work with respect to social relations of production and
consumption, our study is also motivated to ‘trace the social geography of things as
they move in and out of the commodity state, with different forms of com-
modification having variable effects on specific social groups in different places’
(p. 104).
As the ‘culture of consumption’ evolves in terms of Featherstone’s (1987) ‘you
are what you buy’ and ‘where you go away’, an emerging contemporary litera-
ture offers depth and insight to issues surrounding material culture, place, con-
sumption and identity (for example, Glennie and Thrift, 1993; Crewe and Lowe,
1995; Jackson and Holbrook, 1995; Miller, 1995b, 1998; Miller et al., 1998).
Britton (1991), with reference to Bourdieu (1984) and Urry (1990), placed
tourism in this context of the contemporary cultural economy, within which
groups and individuals increasingly engage in attempts to construct their iden-
tities through certain consumption preferences and lifestyle practices which sig-
nal taste and position in society. It is against this backdrop that our study took
place.

Research context and methodology

Our research approach was informed by an emerging literature on tourism and
travel characterized by Geertz’s (1973) ‘thick description’ through which the
context and dynamics of lived ethnicity is learned (see for example, Clifford,
1992; Strasberg, 1994; Abram, Waldren and Macleod, 1997). Following this
tradition, Harrell’s (1995) discussion of China uses ethnography to expose the
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126 tourist studies 3:2

richness of the cultural context within which ethnicity and its representation
(through, for example, clothing) exhibits almost playful dimensions. In doing so
he observes disparities between ‘the discourse about the causes and conse-
quences of ethnic conflict, [and] the apparent innocuousness of all this’ (Harrell,
1995: 750). With reference to the Yunnan province context, Blum (2000: 149)
exposes the extent to which ‘the category of ethnicity . . . has a number of puz-
zling and interesting features’ characterized by ‘high’ theoretical approaches but
questions analyses for their lack of ‘groundedness in experience’.
Following the work of Oakes (1993, 2002) and Blum (2000) this study seeks
to broaden our interpretation of processes of commodification and the com-
munication of cultures through tourism beyond asymmetrical and deperson-
alised analyses. With specific reference to production of Miao embroidery in
China, Oakes (1993: 47) challenges the structuralist tradition and ‘its preoccu-
pation with the economic power of capital, relegating the cultural to a
response’. Oakes’s (1993) concerns with the agency of local actors are similarly
reiterated by other researchers in the developing world context (see for exam-
ple, Mellinger, 1994; Crain, 1996; Selwyn, 1996; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998;
Morgan and Pritchard, 1998; Hitchcock, 1999). Crain’s (1996) ethnographic
study of ‘native’ women’s role in the Ecuadorian tourist industry, for example,
attempts to invert the traditional, structuralist perspective by arguing that the
women were able to reshape exploitative and hierarchical relations to their own
relative economic advantage. Similarly, Morgan and Pritchard (1998) use
Foucault’s (1980) ‘eye of power’ concept to argue that the asymmetrical nature
of tourist encounters is of itself both marginalization and empowerment.Their
perspective challenges the reductionist/structural interpretations in which ‘most
natives are positionally unable to affect how images of authenticity are con-
structed and marketed’ (Silver, 1993: 316).
In the context of China, Oakes’s (2002) work is helpful in informing the ana-
lytical framework specific to issues surrounding material (i.e. embroidery) pro-
duction and its rhetoric as heritage and tradition. He reveals ‘how China’s
market reforms and commercial development are generating new conditions for
the ‘politics of value’ (p. 1) and the extent to which ethnic and identity
economies can inform interpretations of both structure and agency.
In this context, China is currently ranked amongst the top ten international
tourist destinations (World Tourism Organization, 2000).The growth of tourism
consumption and production in China reflects political changes of the ‘open-
door policy’ and subsequent growth rates across the economy (Doorne,
Ateljevic and Bai, 2003). Our project was based in the predominantly rural
southern-west of the country, in one of the least developed regions of China,
the Yunnan Province.This area, populated by 26 ethnic minorities, has recently
experienced dramatic tourism growth based around cultural tourism experi-
ences and products.The administrative structure of tourism in Yunnan is repre-
sented through 16 prefectures of which Dali and Liijang represent the two
major destinations in terms of tourist product and infrastructure.
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Ateljevic and Doorne Culture, economy and tourism commodities 127

Our research, centred in the Dali prefecture, covered a range of different

touristic artefacts and goods and explored the dynamics of their production and
conditions of their purchase.The project focuses on the traditionally produced
tie-dye fabrics by local Bai people of the Dali region using the methods out-
lined earlier. This took place in two geographic contexts, firstly the villages
around Dali area where the goods are produced and initially consumed, and sec-
ondly, followed the subsequent journey of these goods into the homes and lives
of people who received them as gifts in Wellington, New Zealand. Our focus
on the fabric was chosen primarily because of the opportunity to follow the
downstream consumption processes after the point of purchase. Over the course
of a year the authors were able to form relationships with the eventual con-
sumers and learn about their cultural context from a privileged insider’s per-
spective. This case study follows the downstream journey of tie-dyed
commodities from their origins of initial production in villages in the Dali pre-
fecture through a sequence of reproduction processes to their eventual recon-
stitution as objects of meaning in the contemporary consumer context of urban
New Zealand.
The research was conducted between 2000 and 2001 as a collaborative pro-
ject between Victoria University of Wellington and the Department of
Anthropology at Yunann University. Together we conducted a series of discus-
sions, conversations, focus groups and observations across a broad section of pro-
ducers and consumers in and around the town of Dali. Given the
anthropological involvement in the project, our fieldwork employed an ethno-
graphic approach, based around trust-building in relationships over time, pro-
viding the foundation on which detailed observation and immersion in the
local context could take place. Our discussion relies on simple description of
places, people and contexts with key words, phrases or concepts articulated by
informants inserted where necessary. Names have been changed to respect the
anonymity of the research subjects and respondents.

The journey of ‘tie-dyed’ commodities

Tie-dyeing is a traditional handicraft of the Bai and has a very long history, dat-
ing back over 1000 years.The tie-dyed cloth is both common daily attire of the
Bai people and has aesthetic values for which it is appropriated as part of a
broader ‘Chinese art’. Historically, Bai people have normally carried out tie-
dyeing in their own houses. The material used is pure white cotton cloth; the
dye colour is blue, derived from the indigo plant. The first step involves draw-
ing the colourful and diversified designs on each piece of cloth. Unlike other
tie-dyeing designs of other cultural contexts comprising only dots and scram-
bled graphics, the Bai incorporate familiar features like flowers, animals and
plants, such as bees, butterflies, bamboos and lilies.The second step is to tie the
cloth with thread so that the required shape is achieved in the material.Thirdly,
the cloth is dyed, and finally, the threads are removed and the cloth hung out to
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128 tourist studies 3:2

f i g ure i . The ‘production brigade’ in Jou Chen village

Source: Fieldwork, 2001.

dry. Women are normally involved in the tying process to the extent that has
become a feature of domestic life in the area. Over time, home-based workshops
have appeared as commonplace in villages in the area.The following discussion
illustrates social relations of production around tie-dyeing in Dali region.

Zhouchen village, Dali Prefecture, China

The commodity journey begins with a group of four women we talked to dur-
ing several field trips to the Dali area, who gathered together everyday to sit in
a friend’s shop and tie cloth in the traditional style of the region (see Figure I).
Together they form one of 16 ‘production brigades’ working for the
Zhoucheng village factory cooperative, established in 1986 as part of China’s
open-door policy, specialising in the production of traditionally tied and dyed
fabrics.
The factory’s production, incorporates over 200 households in the village for
the traditional art of tying designs and patterns to cloth in preparation for dye-
ing. Although tie-dyeing in the Dali area is a traditional cultural practice, its
economic significance was constrained prior to the open-door policy in favour
of agricultural and related sectors. During that period one of the group, Lu,
described a typical situation of how she directed her dexterity and skills, shown
her by her mother, towards the production of fishing nets. Since the establish-
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Ateljevic and Doorne Culture, economy and tourism commodities 129

ment of the factory, however, she noted how these traditional skills are reas-
suming both economic and social significance.
Another of the group, Li, described typical current pressures facing families
with respect to the limited availability of land.The process of land allocation to
the individual households creates an increasing demand for productivity and
resources with each additional generation. She noted that ‘it is a common situ-
ation in which several generations live in single households, we are all depen-
dant on the same piece of land [for our economic livelihood]’. The women’s
work for the factory provided then with an opportunity to ‘escape’ from those
immediate domestic pressures and spend time with other women in similar cir-
cumstances.
It takes each individual about four days to complete a complex design for
which they may earn 3–4 Yuan per day, but for smaller more simple work they
can earn 8–10 Yuan per day.The factory pays them every three months during
which time each woman will have completed her share of both simple and
complex designs printed on the fabric in the factory. For them the activity is
valued more for its social significance rather than the immediate economic
reward. Each of the women’s husbands works as a labourer on construction sites,
also taking them away from the household. As Lu commented, the flexibility of
‘piecework’ enables them to balance domestic responsibilities, childcare and
income-generating activities.
Potentially, women can earn more money working at the factory but they
described the factory work and its commitments as too rigid. As one of the
group, Bi Sue, commented: ‘We like what we do and don’t think of it as work.
When we come here we tell jokes, and know we can bring our domestic prob-
lems and talk with each other about our husbands, and children and parents . . .
and know we will get [advice and support]’. The women have been gathering
together in the same place for ‘many years’ and say they will continue to do so
as long as they continue to get along one with another.
Each of the women has her own ‘personal purse’, savings for a new house or
so their children can one day be independent from the extended family. They
talk often about a better future for their children, wanting them to go to school
and wanting them to get better jobs than they have themselves. When talking
about their futures they revealed few personal ambitions. None were attracted
to opening a shop themselves. This, they said, would deprive them of their
opportunity to spend time together as a group.
Practised in this way, the traditional skill of tying cloth has significance
beyond their immediate economic and social needs, but is a way of realizing
their own futures through the opportunities it provides for their children by re-
engaging with a practice which has been part of their cultural heritage for gen-
erations. Although these women and their activities are an integral part of a
broader tourism economy, they exhibited little awareness of the complex web
of relations flowing downstream from them, nor were they particularly interes-
ted in what became of the cloth they tied. For them, their activity means social
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130 tourist studies 3:2

engagement, as well as economic reward, allowing them to participate in
broader and more active interpersonal and community relations, beyond the
extended family household.
Elsewhere in the village other women we talked to found similar ways of bal-
ancing family duties and household activities with income generation. We
visited a number of small household factories, owned and operated by extend-
ed family groups, mostly coordinated by the women of the house.These fami-
lies were normally of a ‘higher social class’ than the group described earlier, and
their household factories accommodated the full spectrum of production
processes including design, tying, dyeing, machining (clothes, bags etc.), as well
as wholesaling and retailing. Some of these larger household businesses used
their own production brigades, village women working on piecework.
The brigades working for the Zhoucheng factory return their work to the
factory when finished where it is dyed in large vats using natural indigo dyes
then untied and hung to dry in the factory compound (see Figure II).The fab-
rics are then either bundled for wholesale distribution or sewn into garments on
site to meet specific orders.These traditional tie-dyed fabrics are supplied to both
local manufacturers and to overseas markets, particularly Japan and North Asia.
The following story follows a bundle of fabric created by the women’s group
described above, which was processed by the factory and subsequently supplied
to a small local clothing factory in Dali, owned and operated by a woman called
Linda.

f i g ure i i . Dyeing of the piecework in the Jou Chen factory

Source: Fieldwork, 2001.
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Ateljevic and Doorne Culture, economy and tourism commodities 131

Dali Town, China

Linda moved from the Sichuan province to Dali in the late 1970s to work for
a government clothing factory. After several years she became manager of the
children’s clothing department, but as the open-door policy came into effect
domestic production declined dramatically. Sensing a business opportunity she
invested some of her own money into the factory to buy machines and even-
tually got the consent to run the factory privately with her own title. In doing
this she shifted the focus of production from children’s clothes to ladies’ fash-
ions using the traditional tie-dyed cloth of the region. Her own problems with
skin sensitivity drew her to make clothes with natural cloth which is also
coloured naturally, as she explained: ‘In the context of the modern world I
wanted to make natural clothes to bring people back to nature’.Together with
her factory operation Linda also opened a small shop in what is now known as
Dali’s Western Lane in 1985, the first in the street to sell clothing principally to
foreign visitors.
Her business activities began in cooperation with the Zhoucheng factory,
where she would buy the cloth on credit and pay later. For this she produced
designs for the factory, exchanging her labour for the credit. Many of her design
ideas she attributes to the local women and their traditional skills. At first she
ran the business alone while her husband worked full time at a nearby power
plant. As the businesses grew they demanded more of her time at the expense
of time spent with her two daughters. Eventually her husband assumed sole
responsibility for the housework, cooking, and caring for the children, doing
what Linda describes as ‘the most important job of all’. Over time he also came
to prepare meals for the workers at the family factory.
Linda expanded the business, bought land in Dali and built a house and new
factory in 1996. Now she has 30 workers, all women, sewing her designs on
piecework. Most of her workers are young with their own families earning 2
Yuan for a simple garment, of which they can complete between 10 and 20 per
day. For more complex items they get 8–10 Yuan. Over time wholesale activi-
ties have overtaken the retail trade of her shop. Currently she has two main cus-
tomers for wholesale production, both from overseas; one from Holland and
another from Japan. Her production to Holland, for example, supplies a retail
outlet run by a woman whom she has never met but communicates her orders
to through a Dutch tour guide to who visits Dali regularly. Although Linda has
never met her she uses a photograph of her in a brochure through which her
brand is promoted.
She has two brands: For overseas consumption and at the shop she uses the
name ‘The Happy Tailor’, but locally the brand name is ‘Nan’ (‘every successful
business should have its own brand’). The Nan brand has multiple meanings –
it is the name of her hometown, it is her daughter’s name, and it features in the
name Yunnan. The leaf of the indigo plant is used to symbolize the brand,
emphasizing the naturalness of the product. Although she began business with
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132 tourist studies 3:2

‘The Happy Tailor’ it became necessary to localize the imagery and meanings
of the brand in response to increasing domestic Chinese consumption.
The brand values not only position the product in the market, but they also
reflect the personal and family values bound within the business. Linda’s daugh-
ter is now working to take over the business and her proficiency in English is
hoped to open further business opportunities overseas. Linda hopes her daugh-
ter will not have to work as hard as she has and will manage the retail and
wholesale sides of the business, leaving Linda to concentrate on design work.
The goods produced in the factory take two distinct and separate paths:
Upmarket Western-influenced designer clothing (following Western fashion
magazines) and what is best described as ‘traditional’ backpacker garb.The for-
mer is sold either wholesale from the factory or distributed to an established
network of retailers in Kunming. The latter goods supply her ‘Happy Tailor’
shop. Although the bulk of her business is wholesale activity, she maintains the
shop for its nostalgic value and to deflect the attention of copycat designers
away from her more creative and lucrative designs.
The shop, ‘The Happy Tailor’, is run by a young local woman, Joy, who has
been working there for three years. She says:‘I started here as an apprentice, my
parents sent me here to learn useful skills but I don’t think I want to do this for
the rest of my life’. She lives with her parents but sleeps at the shop because of
the long hours. She opens at 8 o’ clock in the morning and closes around 11 at
night. She is paid around 300 Yuan per month for all the sewing and tailoring
she does in the shop as well as her retail responsibilities. Joy comes from Dali
and is Bai. She went to school until the age of 15 and speaks a little English, just
enough for her to communicate with Western visitors.
Dressed in a t-shirt and jeans she regarded traditional/Eastern clothing in the
shop as ‘uninteresting’ and a style which will likely fade.The designs featured in
the shop are directed towards satisfying the tastes of the backpacker market and
their desire to layer their identities by appropriating styles and garments of other
cultures, in this case the Orient. A further irony can be observed with the
changing clientele visiting the shop. In recent years there have been growing
numbers of urban Chinese visiting Dali seeking to consume goods and cloth-
ing also articulating the traditional, locally made quality. This is in contrast to
our earlier observations (Doorne, Ateljevic and Bai, 2003) in which consumer
goods for the tourist market were produced under a modernist guise to engage
with the emerging urban middle class consumer taste. In Linda’s shop we
observed Chinese nationals from the free economic zones of the South attract-
ed to goods representing traditional qualities and values.
This discussion opens the door to a range of issues related to the consump-
tion of commodities in the tourism system. Naturally, the shop provides the
interface between production and consumption, global and the local, urban
and rural, and in the context of this research, provided the opportunity to
encounter individuals purchasing for specific purposes.This then allowed us to
follow the subsequent journeys of the goods, and explore the meanings they
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Ateljevic and Doorne Culture, economy and tourism commodities 133

acquire, and the relationships surrounding them, downstream to some sort of

conclusion.
Our research on consumers included numerous encounters with interna-
tional visitors in Western Lane who were mostly European and Australasian. For
the purposes of implementing the second part of this project we screened visi-
tors according to their home country, focusing primarily on New Zealanders
returning home. This would enable us to build relationships with them over
time and explore the ways in which they form part of other people’s lives.The
distribution of goods in the tourism system is characterized by diverse cultural
geographies. For the purposes of deepening our understanding of the dynamics
of the process, and because of the usual financial constraints on research, we
concentrated on tracing objects through narrower rather than more dispersed
geographical trajectories. Our discussion at this point focuses on one customer
at ‘The Happy Tailor’, Nicki, who purchased a number of goods for herself, her
family and friends. As such she became a conduit for the distribution of the
goods and our subsequent pursuit of the ethnographies surrounding them.
Nicki was in her mid-thirties, a university educated public sector ‘profession-
al’ (policy analyst) and had travelled periodically since her ‘backpacking days’ in
her early twenties. At the time we met her she was ‘between relationships’ and
seeking some time out from the winter and the ‘rat race’ of city life in
Wellington. She was passing through Dali as part of an extended East Asian
experience taking in Vietnam,Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, for a total of five
weeks. She spent a week in and around Dali, attracted primarily by numerous
ethnic groups and cultural vibrancy in the region. Her time in Dali was at the
end of her trip and she saw it as an opportunity to buy some mementos and
gifts for friends and relatives back home. She had bought a few ‘trinkets’ at some
of the stalls, some pirated CDs and had spent a ‘large amount of money’ (400
Yuan) on a piece of finely crafted Miao embroidery at a shop in Western Lane
located directly opposite Linda’s shop. She regarded the embroidery as highly
authentic and treasured it as symbolic of her travel consistent with prevailing
hierarchies of authenticity in Asian cultural objects (Oakes, 2002; Doorne,
Ateljevic and Bai, 2003).
She visited ‘The Happy Tailor’ several times over a period of two days where
she purchased two sheet sized tie-dyed pieces of cloth with small flower designs
and patterns, and one off-the-rack summer dress made from the same material.
At the time we met her she was also negotiating the design of a tailor-made
dress to add to her ‘professional wardrobe’.At this point she was directed by Joy
to Linda’s factory to discuss design details and fitting. One item of cloth was to
be given as a gift to a friend and the summer dress and remaining cloth were
for her sister. Buying multiple items enabled her to negotiate cheaper prices and
the cloth could be easily stuffed inside a backpack.
Over the next few days we built a relationship with her discussing a range of
issues related to consumption and perception of ethnic cultures and objects in
the region. She noted she had heard about tie-dyeing in the Dali area and
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134 tourist studies 3:2

described how the items she purchased satisfied her desire to reflect something
of the region she visited. Although the items were cheap, they were sufficiently
authentic and representative of the region, as distinct from the ‘tacky, mass-
produced, fake’ bric-a-brac sold on the street stalls. She thought the people who
were to receive them would appreciate them for the same reasons as herself.

The Terrace, Wellington

Our discussion of the consumption and re-consumption of these goods follows
Nicki’s ‘corporate wardrobe’ dress, the dress and cloth she gave to her sister Katy,
and one piece of cloth she gave to her friend Alexandra.
On Nicki’s first day back at work she wore the tie-dyed dress tailored by
Linda with Chinese collar and covered buttons. Having being away for five
weeks, she was eager to share her travel experiences with her colleagues and
anticipated that the dress, as tangible evidence of her travels, would be a good
trigger for conversation (‘I really wanted to show it off and I had so much to
talk about’).With her closest colleagues she recounted in detail the street scenes,
the dress of Bai and other nationalities in Yunnan, and the environment of
Linda’s factory and the Western Lane. With colleagues less close to her, she
referred to the dress in passing, and in jest, as simply ‘something she picked in
China’. On another level she recounted how the context she gave to the dress
enhanced the way she wanted people to see her and contributed to the con-
struction of her preferred identity as a sophisticated, independent and adven-
turous international traveller.
The process of strategically creating an outward identity through travel and
consumption reflects the significance of objects and the role they can assume in
personal ‘development and growth’. Nicki described how when she had been
back at work for a week, her travel experience had already started to seem like
‘a long time ago’.Wearing the dress gave her the opportunity to reconnect with
her travel experiences. During our conversations over the following year she
described how the dress became more than just an item of clothing, but a way
of rejuvenating her confidence and self-esteem among what she perceived as a
‘dehumanizing’ professional work culture. By wearing the dress she would re-
assimilate the experiences with her own identity and image to assert a statement
about her individuality and her personal values.
The other gifts she brought back she gave to her sister and to her friend, each
act of exchange accompanied by photos, stories and further layering of context
about where they were produced and the culture of the region they came from.

Brooklyn, Wellington
Nicki’s sister, a lawyer also based in Wellington, received the summer dress and
the tie-dyed cloth as a gift. For a period of a year after Nicki’s travels we met Katy
several times principally to find out about the use and the significance of the
dress and the fabric. For Katy,‘tie-dyed fabric’ held strong associations with the
hippie era, something she noted was a barrier to her wearing the dress in public
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Ateljevic and Doorne Culture, economy and tourism commodities 135

(‘I really wouldn’t want to be seen in a tie-dyed dress’).This association also sti-
fled the process of finding an appropriate role for the cloth in her home – even
though she identified that the two styles were different in many ways. Initially
she thought the cloth might be useful for cushion covers, but having recently
bought a ‘stylish and funky’ lounge suite, the clash of symbolic images seemed
incongruous.After some experimentation in various places around the house the
cloth simply became a dust cover for stored items in hall cupboard. She did not
find the cloth especially attractive or aesthetically appealing and kept it only
because it was a present from her sister. Indeed, she indicated that this sentimen-
tal attachment was the only thing preventing it from being thrown away.
We told Nicki about what became of the cloth she had given her sister and
she said that on reflection she wasn’t surprised, but was little disappointed she
didn’t value it in the same way and that it wasn’t accorded a level of prominence
among her sister’s things.

Paekakariki, Kapiti Coast, Wellington

The remaining piece of cloth was given to her friend Alexandra whom Nicki
described as a ‘new age woman’ who ‘would be into this sort of stuff ’. In our
most recent visit to Alexandra’s home the fabric occupied a highly visible place
in the hall juxtaposed with tapa cloth wall hangings from Fiji, carved wooden
trunk from South-East Asia, Zimbabwean drum (see Figure III).At the time we
took the photograph her new shoes were casually positioned in a way that sug-
gested a natural relationship between ethnic materiality and urban chic. She
described how the cloth was clearly not machine produced despite the regular-
ity of its design, because she could ‘feel its energy’. She also talked of how every-
thing in her home needed ‘some sort of meaning to it’ beyond the functional.
In this context the cloth, although she had not purchased it herself, fitted neat-
ly into her material and ‘spiritual’ life.
Alexandra, a postgraduate art student and a new mother, described herself as
an experienced traveller in developing countries. She talked about her value of
things ‘hand-made’, their qualities and their traditional origins. These associa-
tions extended beyond the traditional craft and aesthetics but were enmeshed in
a broader social perspective critical of global culture and mass consumption
practices. Nearly two years after receiving the cloth from Nicki, Alexandra was
able to describe the process of its production as Nicki had recounted to her –
although even Nicki had not experienced the tying process first hand. In doing
so she was conscious of reproducing the values she gave to it through the
enhancement of her own identity and through the re-consumption of tourist
artefacts in everyday use.

Discussion and conclusion

The journey of tie-dyed fabric goods from China to New Zealand reveals a
sequence of social relations connecting production and consumption and
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136 tourist studies 3:2

f i g ure i ii. The tablecloth in Alexandra’s house (New Zealand)

Source: Fieldwork, 2001.

emphasizes ways in which individuals linked often only by a coincidental chain

of distribution creatively engage with the tourism dynamic to empower or
enrich their lives.The case studies also illustrate the extent to which these rela-
tionships, however remote, are fundamentally embedded within the global
structures of power and knowledge. On this point, we return to the theoretical
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Ateljevic and Doorne Culture, economy and tourism commodities 137

context established earlier in which we engage with Appadurai’s observations

regarding commoditization, regimes of value and identity. In this section, we
revisit each sequence of the process in turn and integrate the descriptive case
study material with more critical theoretical perspectives.
Every sequence of the production and consumption processes described
earlier was, perhaps coincidentally, initiated, implemented and controlled by
women and as such the commodities under discussion are in some way inher-
ently gendered. Far from being disempowered by integration within an over-
arching capitalist system, each of the women in the China case study embraced
opportunities to influence their future and that of their families. In the tradi-
tional context, their skill in producing finely crafted fabric was regarded as a
reflection of their domestic status and a way of enhancing their prospects for
marriage. In the contemporary context, the application of their skills has
assumed a different role, facilitating a measure of control of their lives. Today,
their skills are ultimately focused on improving education and employment
prospects for their children.
As distinct from the women’s tying brigade in Zhoucheng, Linda’s upward
mobility through her factory experience endowed her with an awareness of the
broader industry dynamics, economies and markets, to the extent that they
informed her entrepreneurial aspirations. Her success, like many other ‘cultural
entrepreneurs’, comes from the ability to marry traditional crafts and produc-
tion processes with the contemporary demands of global markets and create
new trajectory for her products. Her activity illustrates the extent to which
knowledge of value in both the global and the local context translates into eco-
nomic power and socio-cultural differentiation in specific social situations. On
another level, the motivations guiding her business activity are not so dissimilar
to those of women in Zhoucheng. Her business activities are not seen as an end
in themselves, but are simply a vehicle for delivering improved education and
employment opportunities for her children, the very values bound within the
‘Nan’ brand. In Linda’s shop, Joy can be seen as representative of that next gen-
eration, living her parents’ desires through her education, her apprenticeship, and
the opportunity to work in town.Yet for herself, her own aspirations shape a
different sort of future to that of her parents, beyond the hardship of manual
production towards a middle-class lifestyle ideal.
Throughout production phases the women shared similar aspirations for self-
development and that of their families articulated in terms of materially based
middle-class lifestyles. Key in the realization of these goals is education, freedom
from work on the land, and flexibility with the domestic obligations of extend-
ed family households. Each individual’s level of awareness of their role within
the global economy is reflected in their upward mobility, in turn influencing the
extent of their ability to change their futures in an entrepreneurial manner.
With respect to consumption processes, the level of intercultural awareness
and sense of connectedness in these instances has more to do with the way in
which these meanings inform the creation of personal identities as further
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138 tourist studies 3:2

reflection of the Bourdieu (1984) notion of ‘cultural capital’ (see also
Featherstone, 1990; Jackson, 1999). The women involved in production had
often little or no conception of the downstream appropriation of their cultural
context, nor did they care what became of the goods. Their focus was more
immediate and directed to their personal and collective needs. By contrast the
consumers of the products used the cultural context of goods and what they
understood of their production to enhance their social status based on often
limited or superficial understanding.
Through the act of gifting the commodities were assimilated into the life
worlds of consumers – or not – depending on their contribution to the
enhancement of the individual identities they wished to project.The act of giv-
ing is in itself more than a simple expression of material generosity. It is, as
Appadurai (1986) argues, a strategic process with distinct parallels with more
orthodox ‘economic practices’. In essence, the gift creates value in one regime
based on the inherent disparities of the global context. Gifts are both a way of
expressing identities of self and making a statement of social positioning of oth-
ers, which is also a strategic embrace of these inequalities (i.e. relative cost of
labour) with no ‘footing of formal equality’ (Baudrillard, 1998). In situations
described earlier this relationship is fundamental to identity-formation and to
the creation of self images, yet it was also a contradictory expression of con-
sumer values and life philosophies. Instances where the commodities were
actively embraced were largely due to assumptions about the constitution of the
‘traditional Other’ and where production processes were embraced as a sym-
bolic antitheses of the more immediate pressures they themselves faced in the
globalized homogenized economy (Sharpley, 1994). This interplay between
‘world view’, goods, identity and symbolism demonstrates a dynamic but some-
times random connectedness on a number of levels between cultures, places and
people. In this sense, however, we are conscious of Appadurai’s (1986) acknowl-
edgment of dangers in correlating ‘zones of intimacy’ with broader theoretical
generalizations.
The purchase transaction is in this context founded on the moral framework
where inequality is an ‘acceptable’ by-product of the global-local relations. Self
justification for the perpetuation and entrenchment of such disparities remains
a core feature of consumption practice, as Appadurai (1986: 22) argues: ‘The
actors manipulate the cultural definitions of path and the strategic potential of
diversion, so that the movement of things enhances their own standing’. On a
personal level the gross inequities of power and knowledge can be always
rationalized as sanctioned by discourses of globalization which give economic
and cultural legitimacy to the relationship.
The symbolic significance these commodities play in the identity-formation
of the consumer, is often based on assumptions about production processes
behind the ‘traditional hand-made craft’ (Miller, 1997, 1998). In this sense the
values are attributed not to the objects in particular, but to their symbolic role
within an identifiable genre of ethnic/touristic. Our study reveals the extent to
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Ateljevic and Doorne Culture, economy and tourism commodities 139

which the value-coherence can be created through the act of juxtaposition and
display of an otherwise random collection of objects.
Similarly, the authors throughout numerous presentations and seminars asso-
ciated with this project, also used the tie-dyed cloth as a ‘prop’ for the commu-
nication and construction of multilayered contexts for education and academic
discourse, also fundamentally built upon power, knowledge and an introspective
hyper-awareness of social contexts. Depending on the audience, these props
have been used to construct the arguments around marketing, human geo-
graphy, consumer psychology and socio-economic development. To some
extent the items are used to authenticate the integrity of the argument, to pro-
vide evidence of a ‘worldliness’, which in turn enhances the personal and pro-
fessional identity of the presenter. Clearly, as Jackson (1999) argues, the same
item can be re-produced and re-consumed across multiple contexts and be
assimilated among a diversity of use and symbolic values.
Clearly, development and opportunity at the personal level have much to do
with power-knowledge and the breadth of an individual’s ‘world view’, and the
role of tourism engagement in facilitating and informing that view. In this way,
this article demonstrates a clear relationship between identity formation in con-
sumption cultures and the dynamics of development and change in the places
of production. Tourism commodities in this context reflect not only the social
relations of production and consumption but their particular role in cultural
communication however distorted, reconstituted, and reinterpreted they
become through time and space.

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i re na ate ljevic is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management at Auckland University

of Technology, New Zealand. She received her PhD in Geography at the University of
Auckland. Her research interests include issues of backpacker travel; tourism entrepre-
neurship; discourse analysis of tourist experiences and tourism representations as con-
structed and interpreted in the context of various social conditions (gender, class,
ethnicity, etc.). [email:irena.ateljevic@aut.ac.nz]

ste ph e n doorne is a Lecturer in the School of Social and Economic Development

at the University of South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. He received his PhD in Geography at
the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research interests include cul-
tural and ethnic tourism, tourism and development, tourism imagery and tourism entre-
preneurship. [email: doorne_s@usp.ac.fj]