Nelson Graburn, Professor Emeritus

Anthropology, Sociocultural Anthropology

Social structure and kinship, ethnic arts, tourism, museums; Circumpolar peoples, Japan.

Profile

I was educated in Natural Sciences and Anthropology at Cambridge, McGill and University of Chicago. I have carried out ethnographic research with the Inuit (and Naskapi) of Canada (and Alaska and Greenland) since 1959, and in Japan (and East and Southeast Asia) since 1974. I have taught at Berkeley since 1964, with visiting appointments at the National Museum of Civilization, Ottawa, Le Centre des Hautes Etudes Touristiques, Aix-en-Provence, the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka, and the Research Center for Korean Studies, Kyushu National University, Fukuoka. I teach courses on Tourism, Japan, and Tourism, Art and Modernity and I am an active member of the Townsend Center supported Tourism Studies Working Group. My recent research has focused on the study of art, tourism, museums, and the expression and representation of identity. I am now working on Contemporary Tourism in Asia (Japan and China) . I am also working with the Canadian Inuit cultural organization, Avatak, in Nouveau Quebec, and with Inuit institutions in Iqaluit, Nunavut, on aspects of cultural preservation and autonomy, and I am continuing my research on contemporary Inuit arts including "urban Inuit arts."

Representative Publications

2007 (March) Multiculturalism in the New Japan, London, NY: Berghahn (co-edited with John Ertl and Kenji Tierney)

2006 “Culture as Narrative: Who is telling the Inuit Story?” pp. 139-154 in Critical Inuit Studies. Pam Stern and Lisa Stevenson eds. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska Press.

2005   "From Aesthetics to Prosthetics and Back: Materials, Performance and   Consumers in Canadian Inuit Sculptural Arts; or, Alfred Gell in the Canadian Arctic."     Pp. 47-62 in Les cultures à l'oeuvre- Rencontres en art  Michèle Coquet, Brigitte Derlon et Monique Jeudy-Ballini (eds.). Paris: Biro Editeur

2004. "The Invention of Authentic Inuit Art." In Beyond Art/Artifact/Tourist Art: Social Agency and the Cultural Value(s) of the Aestheticized Object. Nelson Graburn and Aaron Glass eds. Special issue of Material Culture, 9(2):141-59.

2002. "The Ethnographic Tourist." Pp. 19-39 in The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World. Graham Dann ed. Wallingford: CAB International.

2000. "Learning to Consume: What is Heritage and When is it Traditional?" Pp. 68-89 in Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage. Nezar AlSayyad (ed). Routledge.

1999. "Saranip and Tenki: The Basketry of the Ainu, in relation to the baskets of Siberia and Alaska." Pp. 301-8 in Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. W. Fitzhugh and C. Dubreuil, eds.  Washington DC: Smithsonian (with Molly Lee).

1998.  "Work and Play in the Japanese Countryside." Pp. 195-212 in The Culture of Japan as Seen Through Its Leisure. S. Linhart and S. Freusteuck, eds. New York: SUNY Press.