Today it is not uncommon to find items in department stores that are hand-crafted in countries like Thailand and Costa Rica. These "traditional" crafts now make up an important part of a global market. They support local and sometimes national economies and help create and solidify cultural identity. But these crafts are not necessarily indigenous. Whereas Thailand markets crafts with a long history and cultural legacy, Costa Rica has created a local handicraft tradition where none was known to exist previously. In Global Markets and Local Crafts, Frederick F. Wherry compares the handicraft industries of Thailand and Costa Rica to show how local cultural industries break into global markets and, conversely, how global markets affect the ways in which artisans understand, adapt, and utilize their cultural traditions. Wherry develops a new framework for studying globalization by considering the phenomenon from the perspective of the supplier instead of the market. Drawing from interviews and extensive fieldwork shadowing artisans and exporters in their daily dealings, Wherry offers a rare account of globalization in motion—and what happens when market negotiations do not proceed as planned. Considering economic and political forces, flows of people and materials, and frames that define cultural and market situations as they play out in the artisan communities of these two countries, Wherry uncovers how authentic folk tradition is capitalized or created.

This book brings together from four years of study on Nigerian contemporary art's internationalization. The monograph integrates voices of African (Nigerian) artists and art market players into the growing discourse on the emerging art markets in the global South. It explores the logic of competition and dynamics of power relations in the global markets, focusing on the internationalization of contemporary art forms from peripheral regions. The book confirms that the internationalization of contemporary art form from Nigeria is limited due to systematic marginalization in the artistic field, which in this case based on postcolonialism, and debilitating socio-economic factors such as outmoded art education, unstructured support system and weak mechanism for local validation, and an inefficient political framework for art governance. It will therefore be useful to students and researchers in the sociology of art, art market studies, art history and culture polity.

With new markets opening up for goods produced by artisans from all parts of the world, craft commercialization and craft industries have become key components of local economies. Now with the emergence of the Fair Trade movement and public opposition to sweatshop labor, many people are demanding that artisans in third world countries not be exploited for their labor. Bringing together case studies from the Americas and Asia, this timely collection of articles addresses the interplay among subsistence activities, craft production, and the global market. It contributes to current debates on economic inequality by offering practical examples of the political, economic, and cultural issues surrounding artisan production as an expressive vehicle of ethnic and gender identity. Striking a balance between economic and ethnographic analyses, the contributors observe what has worked and what hasn't in a range of craft cooperatives and show how some artisans have expanded their entrepreneurial role by marketing crafts in addition to producing them. Among the topics discussed are the accommodation of craft traditions in the global market, fair trade issues, and the emerging role of the anthropologist as a proactive agent for artisan groups. As the gap between rich and poor widens, the fate of subsistence economies seems more and more uncertain. The artisans in this book show that people can and do employ innovative opportunities to develop their talents, and in the process strengthen their ethnic identities. Contents Introduction: Facing the Challenges of Artisan Production in the Global Market / Kimberly M. Grimes and B. Lynne Milgram Democratizing International Production and Trade: North American Alternative Trading Organizations / Kimberly M. Grimes Building on Local Strengths: Nepalese Fair Trade Textiles / Rachel MacHenry "That They Be in the Middle, Lord": Women, Weaving, and Cultural Survival in Highland Chiapas, Mexico / Christine E. Eber The International Craft Market: A Double-Edged Sword for Guatemalan Maya Women / Martha Lynd Of Women, Hope, and Angels: Fair Trade and Artisan Production in a Squatter Settlement in Guatemala City / Brenda Rosenbaum Reorganizing Textile Production for the Global Market: Women’s Craft Cooperatives in Ifugao, Upland Philippines / B. Lynne Milgram Textile Production in Rural Oaxaca, Mexico, and the Complexities of the Global Market for Handmade Crafts / Jeffrey H. Cohen "Part-Time for Pin Money": The Legacy of Navajo Women’s Craft Production / Kathy M’Closkey The Hard Sell: Anthropologists as Brokers of Crafts in the Global Marketplace / Andrew Causey Postscript: To Market, To Market / June Nash

Craft Economies provides a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary craft production, situating practices of amateur and professional making within a wider creative economy. Contributors address a diverse range of practices, sites and forms of making in a wide range of regional and national contexts, from floristry to ceramics and from crochet to coding. The volume considers the role of digital practices of making and the impact of the maker's movement as part of larger trends around customisation, on-demand production, and the possibilities of 3D printing and digital manufacturing.

The key to any marketing strategy is finding a way to reach and appeal to the consumer. In the case of a diverse consumer pool, marketers must strive to direct their promotional efforts to appeal to a global customer base. Analyzing the Cultural Diversity of Consumers in the Global Marketplace explores the strategies associated with promoting products and services to a culturally-diverse target market. Providing innovative solutions for global brands, this publication is ideally designed for use by marketing professionals, executives, students, as well as researchers.

This book builds on the work of anthropologists, designers, and ethnographers to develop an original methodology and framework for indigenous engagement and designer/non-designer collaboration in the field of social design. Following a collaborative case study conducted over a five-year period between the author, project team, and indigenous artisans in Mexico, the book outlines the practical challenges of design research, including funding, logistics, relationships between designers and communities, failures, successes, and pivots. Social design literature has often focused on introducing important questions to the design research process, but fails to deeply interrogate and demonstrate how these theories inform research projects in action, which can then be open to misinterpretation, bias, and unintended harmful consequences. Centering the indigenous communities, this book provides a detailed and clear example of not just why, but how design and designers can work authentically and responsibly through different approaches and systems. The book examines the specific cultural, epistemological and socio-political history of Mexico as it relates to colonization and indigenous peoples, exploring the systemic influences of globalization and grounding the research in its unique context. It includes field notes, conversations with the indigenous artisan communities, workshops and prototypes to offer unique insight into a detailed, collaborative social design initiative. This book intersects with the growing awareness of the necessity of decolonial approaches to design across the world and will be an important and useful study for academics, students and researchers in social design, sustainable development, cultural studies and anthropology.

From the editor team of the ground-breaking Consumer-Brand Relationships: Theory and Practice comes this new volume. Strong Brands, Strong Relationships is a collection of innovative research and management insights that build upon the foundations of the first book, but takes the study of brand relationships outside of traditional realms by applying new theoretical frameworks and considering new contexts. The result is an expanded and better-informed account of people’s relationships with brands and a demonstration of the important and timely implications of this evolving sub-discipline. A range of different brand relationship environments are explored in the collection, including: online digital spaces, consumer collectives, global brands, luxury brands, branding in terrorist organizations, and the brand relationships of men and transient consumers. This book attends to relationship endings as well as their beginnings, providing a full life-cycle perspective. While the first volume focused on positive relationship benefits, this collection explores dysfunctional dynamics, adversarial and politically-charged relationships, and those that are harmful to well-being. Evocative constructs are leveraged, including secrets, betrayals, anthropomorphism, lying, infidelity, retaliation, and bereavement. The curated collection provides both a deeper theoretical understanding of brand relationship phenomena and ideas for practical application from experiments and execution in commercial practice. Strong Brands, Strong Relationships will be the perfect read for marketing faculty and graduate students interested in branding dynamics, as well as managers responsible for stewarding brands.