Trade and culture: the ongoing debate

ABSTRACT

The debate over how to reconcile trade liberalization with cultural policy is a long-standing one. There is great variation in how countries have navigated this debate. Furthermore, evolving individual policy approaches show noteworthy dynamism, largely in response to domestic politics, shifts in the international trading system and technological developments. This special issue explores different approaches to the trade and culture debate across geographic space, as well as the evolution across time through analysis of six cases – Canada, the European Union, South Africa, Latin America, the United States and China.     

Canada’s cultural exemption

ABSTRACT

Certain countries stand out as having distinctive approaches to trade and culture. Canada occupies a key position in this pantheon of distinctive approaches. Since the 1980s, Canada has pursued a 'cultural exemption’ in its various trade agreements. The perception is that it has largely maintained this exemption, however I will show in this article that each iteration of the exemption differs from the others in subtle but noteworthy ways. These differences stem in large part from the nature of the particular trade agreement negotiations and the identity of the specific trading partner(s). Ultimately, the aim of this contribution is to show that Canada’s cultural exemption strategy has had to evolve alongside key trends in trade, notably the proliferation of free trade agreements.     

Latinos in the USA: Changing socio-economic patterns

This paper aims to provide an overview of socio-economic inequality experienced by Latinas and Latinos, suggesting that the increase in numbers and their dispersal throughout the country disrupts the traditional black–white paradigm used in race relations theory. Instead, I argue that the particular historical and geographical experiences of Latinas/os portend complex changes within labour markets and neighbourhoods and across families, ultimately challenging how we think about race relations in the USA.     

Mimi Pinson Goes to War: Taste,Class and Gender in France, 1900–18

In the years leading up to the First World War, the Frenchwomen of a free performing‐arts programme for female workers, known as the Mimi Pinsons, began to appear frequently in popular stories, articles, poems and songs as cultural shorthand for a renovated social vision of France. Founded by composer and philanthropist Gustave Charpentier in 1900, the Oeuvre de Mimi Pinson taught its worker–students elementary music, song and dance, and gradually expanded to include a charitable organisation and social network. A closer examination of the OMP reveals that its members were also used to reconcile early twentieth‐century French anxieties about working‐class militancy and even war by way of a potent cultural association of female sexuality, aesthetic refinement and labour. In the years before the First World War, the Mimi Pinsons were defined by journalists, government officials and the OMP's own organisers according to a formulaic type which at once modernised and constrained the role of the female Parisian worker. Associated almost exclusively with the luxury‐garment trades – seamstresses, flowermakers, milliners and department‐store clerks – the new Mimi Pinsons were embraced by the public as naturally chic yet diligent guardians of French art and craft. These female worker–students allowed an easy merging of the body of the female worker with particularly French notions of the patriotic responsibility of feminine taste. When the First World War came, many of the Mimi Pinsons joined the war effort as workers and nurses, yet they were embraced by the public primarily for their service as tasteful creators of patriotic decorative objects, and as an ideal symbolic figure for managing anxieties about the social dissolution that came with the war.     

Obsidian source characterization in the Cordillera Real and eastern piedmont of the north Ecuadorian Andes

Recent research in the Quijos and Cosanga valleys of the eastern piedmont of Ecuador’s Cordillera Real has revealed and substantiated previous knowledge of obsidian sources that are unrelated to obsidian flow systems in the Sierra de Guamaní, Ecuador. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) and X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) were carried out on 47 obsidian source samples collected from several contexts in and adjacent to the study area. From samples within the study area three distinct obsidians were characterized: Cosanga A, Cosanga B, and Bermejo. These obsidians originate from a number of obsidian-bearing rhyolitic domes recently identified in the hills west of the Río Cosanga. Extensive survey of these dome localities has identified obsidian cobbles large enough for formal and informal tool manufacture. Beyond the study area, samples were collected and analyzed from the El Tablón source in the Sierra de Guamaní, providing much needed data on this poorly understood source. In addition, a sample from the newly identified Conda Dome source, near the Cotopaxi volcano, was characterized with XRF. All samples were then compared to 57 pre-existing samples from the Mullumica–Callejones, Yanaurco–Quiscatola and Carboncillo sources in the Ecuadoran Cordillera Real, as well as to artifacts from the Sumaco area in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Results of the elemental characterization indicate that the Cosanga Valley, El Tablón and Conda Dome obsidians are chemically distinct. Further, visual characteristics of Cosanga Valley obsidian types are useful in source attribution for the large artifact samples from the region. Finally, obsidian collected from the El Tablón flow suggests that this source may have produced obsidian suitable for tool manufacture.