Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, And The Commodification Of Difference

By Deborah Root

Book Overview

The book examines the ways Western art and Western commerce co-opt, pigeonhole, and commodify so-called "native experiences." It raises important and uncomfortable questions about how we travel, what we buy, and how we determine cultural merit.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813320895
• ISBN13: 9780813320892
• Release Date: February 1996
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

helped shape my thinking

This important book helped shape my own thinking and writing. She describes clearly and compellingly how the dominant culture destroys the hearts of other cultures while cannibalizing them aesthetically. Thus we kill indigenous cultures and hang dream catchers from our rear view mirrors. Thus we consider ourselves sophisticated because we eat at ethnic restaurants and at the same time we do not seem to mind that the real cultures of Ethiopia, India, Mexico, are destroyed, turned into cheap imitations of mainstream capitalism. She details this process. It is an extraordinary book.

A powerful, stop and make every American think "Book"

Cannibal Culture: by Deborah Root focuses on the study of Appropriation of culture and social norms. This book makes everyone hopefully stop to think about their part in contributing to the foundations of the social culture that we live in today. It is not a downer on Americans it is the facts of how cultural history was formed in many instances, not all. The focus on Art is related to the appropriation of functional art in different cultures & how their ideas and traditions have lost much of the significance once held.This is an amazingly well written book as well as very informative, if you like to "Think" you will love this read...