The cultural capitalists: Notes on the ongoing reconfiguration of trafficking culture in Asia.

Donna Yates,Simon Mackenzie,Emiline Smith

doi:10.1177/1741659017700947

Abstract

Most analysis of the international flows of the illicit art market has described a global situation in which a postcolonial legacy of acquisition and collection exploits cultural heritage by pulling it westwards towards major international trade nodes in the USA and Europe. As the locus of consumptive global economic power shifts, however, these traditional flows are pulled in other directions: notably for the present commentary, towards and within Asia.

Highlights

Most analyses of the international flows of the illicit art market have described a global situation in which a postcolonial legacy of acquisition and collection exploits cultural heritage by pulling it westwards towards major international trade nodes in the USA and Europe (e.g. Brodie et al 2000; Kersel, 2006; Renfrew, 1999)
The context for these developments is a practice of illicit trafficking of cultural objects that has emerged as a significant global security concern in recent decades, inspiring a body of interdisciplinary academic research that has embedded this topic within the core of discourses in criminology, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and law (Brodie, 2006, 2010; Davis and Mackenzie, 2015; Mackenzie, 2011; Mackenzie and Yates, 2016b; Yates, 2014)
Of particular concern are antiquities, a subset of cultural objects, which in most cases must be destructively looted from heritage sites, moving through various smuggling networks and intermediaries and being sold on the art market (Brodie et al, 2000; Brodie and Tubb, 2002)

Summary

Introduction

Most analyses of the international flows of the illicit art market have described a global situation in which a postcolonial legacy of acquisition and collection exploits cultural heritage by pulling it westwards towards major international trade nodes in the USA and Europe (e.g. Brodie et al 2000; Kersel, 2006; Renfrew, 1999). The modern international art market, as the inheritor of nearly two centuries of this form of acquisition of symbolic culture through the commodification and recontextualization of cultural objects, is socially and economically structured to benefit the global west/north at the expense of the east/ south.

Results

Conclusion