Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Ethnography and its sister field art history are processes of interpretation, not of explanation. Teaching multiple worldviews to an often mono-world view audience has several concrete challenges. One is that lecture topics are driven by what is available. Then there is the lack of basic geographic and cultural knowledge among the students and the resulting need to simplify and limit the material being presented. An additional concern is how one balances the destructive results of colonialism with an acknowledgement of the ongoing inventiveness of living cultures. However, in general these problems do not call into question the very endeavor of trying to present a culture to which one does not personally belong. In The Predicament of Culture, Clifford identifies three problematic areas in this regard: authority, voice, and authenticity. These three are effectively interrelated within the context of a university undergraduate class in Pacific art and are impacted by the impression in students’ minds that the professor is an omniscient expert. This paper considers the ethical issues that are inherent in teaching about cultures and their art and how one directly addresses these in the classroom.