The Stranger

The Stranger use this research question as it's based on the main article by James Walsh. "How does an understanding of Georg Simmel’s concept of the Stranger address intercultural issues such as immigration and exclusion?". Corresponding author: Adrian Franklin, School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, GPO Box 252-17, Hobart, TAS 7001, Australia. Email: [email protected] Article Tourist Studies 10(3) 195–208 © The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468797611407751 tou.sagepub.com Aboriginalia: Souvenir Wares and the ‘Aboriginalization’ of Australian Identity Adrian Franklin School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia Abstract In recent years Aboriginalia, defined here as souvenir objects depicting Aboriginal peoples, symbolism and motifs from the 1940s–1970s and sold largely to tourists in the first instance, has become highly sought after by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal collectors and has captured the imagination of Aboriginal artists and cultural commentators. The paper seeks to understand how and why Aboriginality came to brand Australia and almost every tourist place and centre at a time when Aboriginal people and culture were subject to policies (particularly the White Australia Polic(ies)) that effectively removed them from their homelands and sought in various ways to assimilate them (physiologically and culturally) into mainstream white Australian culture. In addition the paper suggests that this Aboriginalia had an unintended social life as an object of tourism and nation. It is argued that the mass-produced presence of many reminders of Aboriginal culture came to be ‘repositories of recognition’ not only of the presence of Aborigines but also of their dispossession and repression. As such they emerge today recoded as politically and culturally charged objects with (potentially) an even more radical role to play in the unfolding of race relations in Australia. Keywords Aboriginal Australia; Aboriginalia; reconciliation; social identity; souvenirs; tourism objects Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. (Twain, 1993 [1987]: 650) 196 Tourist Studies 10(3) At almost all available contemporary tourist sites and places around Australia the travelling visitor (whether domestic or overseas) wishing to sample what is properly Australian will be confronted by two dominant representational forms: Australian nature and Australian Aboriginal culture, art and/or motifs. The online tourist will find the same semiotic message everywhere: of the 12 representative objects on the front page of Australiasouvenir.com , for example, five are either Aboriginal objects, for example, boo - merangs, or non-Aboriginal objects emblazoned with Aboriginal design (wooden wine holder, travel bags). Visitors to the popular Queen Victoria Market area of central Melbourne will find it hard not to see Something Aussie, a shop specializing in souvenirs of Australia. The shop’s logo is an Aboriginal-inspired ochre-coloured setting sun encap - sulating a white boomerang. Inside the shop the unmistakable ‘look’ of the merchandise is based on Aboriginal design. It has a section of objects that are made by Aboriginal art and crafts makers, some of which are based on traditional objects and some of which are European objects mantled with Aboriginal artworks (for example, bandanas, scarves, pottery vases and bowls). Then there are modern objects such as umbrellas, candlehold - ers, tablecloths and pen sets that are saturated with stylized Aboriginal designs. At other locations around Australia such objects come complete with the name of the town or state and in this sense co-opt Aboriginality into their place image. The wholesaler W.W. Souvenirs (sourced at www.wwsouvenirs.com.au/cart/index.php?c=20&s=1), for exam - ple, provides a range of boomerang-shaped key rings with the names of most major towns and cities printed on them. Actually having encountered Aboriginal people is, ironically, not important to those who happily souvenir objects as if they had: ‘Boomerangs line souvenir shops in their thousands, inviting visitors to Australia to take this quirky piece of the nation home with them as a symbol of both the country they visited and its original inhabitants – whom they may or may not have met’ (Effington, 2010: 75). At almost all the major city souvenir sites the connections between the Aboriginal representation and the people they represent (and their geography) is rarely made explicit (except where Aboriginal arts and craft makers have taken control, and they have in many places today). Despite this confused geography, history and anthropology, a gener - alized sense (and presence) of Aboriginal culture is rendered palpable to tourists across Australia through a very large range of objects. The combined effect of this Aboriginal semiotic drenching, or perhaps it can be called the Aboriginalization of tourist sites and places, gives the impression that Aboriginal cul - ture is a quintessential representation or icon of local and national life with the corollary, given its suggested primordiality, that it has always been thus. After all, the elements of Aboriginal culture emphasized on these objects do not represent how most contemporary Aboriginal people live today (very few adhere to traditional hunting and gathering modes of production) but reference a pre-white colonial period and the primordiality of the ‘Dreaming’ past. The cultural icons of white settler society, by contrast, feature present-day culture such as sporting teams, architecture, commercial brands and national achieve - ments. It is at best an extremely confused iconography of nation. Nonetheless, the infer - ence might be made that Aboriginal people, symbols and motifs have always represented Australia. Muecke’s 1990 essay ‘No Road’ is one of the few serious attempts to understand travellers in Australia and their engagement with contemporary Aboriginal cultures. This paper seeks to extend that understanding though it takes a very different road. &DQDGLDQ*HRJUDSKDV1DWLRQDO,GHQWLW+XGVRQ?V %D&RPSDQ3ODFH1DPHVDQGWKHLU$ERULJLQDO&RXQWHUSDUWV &KULVWLQH6FKUHHU International Journal of Canadian Studies, Volume 49, 2014, pp. 315-333 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE8QLYHUVLWRI7RURQWR3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/ijc.2014.0032 For additional information about this article Access provided by Brock University (5 Jan 2015 12:08 GMT) http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ijc/summary/v049/49.schreyer.html Christine Schreyer Canadian Geography as National Identity: Hudson ’ s Bay Company Place Names and their Aboriginal Counterparts Abstract The fur trade has a distinctive place in the collective memory of Canadian society, in fl uencing national identity in many ways. Speci fi cally, the fur trade has helped to shape the geography of Canada, which is fi lled with locales that retain the labels “ fort, ”“ post, ”“ house, ” and “ factory. ” This paper will discuss the Hudson ’ s Bay Company ’ s 1928 call for the collection of Aborigi- nal place names for “ all the posts of the country ” and will examine the resilience of these places names and their role in creating a Canadian national identity based on the idea of three founding nations — Aboriginal, French, and English. Résumé La traite de la fourrure occupe une place distincte dans la mémoire collective canadienne, ce qui in fl uence l ’ identité nationale de nombreuses manières. Plus spéci fi quement, la traite de la fourrure a aidé à façonner la géographie du Canada qui abonde de lieux portant le nom de « fort », « post », « house » et « factory ». Cet article discutera de la demande faite en 1928 par la Compagnie de la Baie d ’ Hudson qui voulait rassembler les noms de lieux autochtones pour « tous les postes du pays » et examinera la résilience de ces noms de lieux et leur rôle dans la création d ’ une identité nationale cana- dienne basée sur l ’ idée de trois nations fondatrices : autochtone, française et anglaise. The history of Canada as a nation is inextricably linked to the fur trade. It is through the expansion of the fur trade that traders, explorers, merchants, missionaries, and many more European people entered into the New World and began to forge relationships, whether good or bad, with the indigenous 1 people whom they met along the way. It was in search of economic wealth that traders pushed farther north and farther west until they ran out of land. This expansion of the fur trade has helped to shape the geography of Canada, which is fi lled with locales that retain the labels “ fort, ”“ post, ”“ house, ” and “ factory. ” In April 1928, Nathaniel McKenzie, a retired district manager and historian for the Hudson ’ s Bay Company (HBC), sent a letter to C.H. French, fur trade commissioner. He wrote: IJCS/RIE ´ C 49, 2014 PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT :)