Zoo veneers: Animals and ethnic crafts at the san Diego zoo |
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| Authors: | Matthew Morbello |
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| Institution: | 1. Dept. of Communication , U.C. , San Diego;2. Boalt Hall School of Law , U.C. , Berkeley |
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| Abstract: | The author critically examines the juxtaposition of ethnic craft souvenirs with animals at the San Diego Zoo. The deployment of symbolic representations of animals and people at zoos are considered in the specific historical context of San Diego. While animals and people were displayed for tourists at expositions and world's fairs staged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, today visitors to the zoo can find representations of exotic cultures and persons in the gift shop. Although ethnic craft souvenirs do not, on first impression, seem out of place to most visitors in the context of the zoo, they present a conceptual problem: What is their relation to either the San Diego Zoo or to the animals displayed there? Both the animals and the ethnic crafts souvenirs, it is argued, contribute to an illusion that there exists a pre‐capitalist sphere untouched by Western colonialism. |
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