Exporting culture
Festival of India 1982
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12254052 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Smriti Sawkar (0000-0001-7038-2479, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 407-421 |
| Publication date | 2019-03-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary South Asia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0958-4935 • E-ISSN: 1469-364X |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09584935.2019.1584605 |
| OpenAlex | W2918543990 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 16 |
This article employs the concept of culture as a consumable resource in visually-mediated global markets. The Festival of India, first hosted in 1982 in Britain, was a unique state-sponsored spectacle that packaged Indian culture as a commodity for Western audiences. Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister took keen interest in the ‘visual scheme’ of India that was projected during the Festival, simultaneously conscious of her own image as she returned to power after the contentious rule of the ‘Emergency’. The article suggests that Gandhi sought to divert negative media attention on her regime by putting on display India’s ‘soft power’ in artistic and scientific fields. It further comments upon the diversity in the reception of the event by various audiences thereby challenging the notion of passivity often attributed to consumers of cultural performance. By examining how Gandhi and her advisors used culture as something ‘exportable’ to remake her image, the article seeks to place the Festival alongside similar spectacles staged in the early 1980s when Gandhi’s leadership faced a crisis of legitimacy, both at home and abroad
Business · Commodity · Diversity (politics · Legitimacy · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Prime minister · Sociology · Soft power · Spectacle · State (computer science · Visual culture · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Law · South Asian Cinema and Culture · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts
Monuments, Objects, Histories
Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora
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Handicrafts, Ideology and the Festival of India
Nation's Two Bodies
The festival of India in Britain, 1982
Indira
Hybrid Heritage on Screen
Art As Collective Action
The Case of the Missing Mahatma
Competitive pragmatism
The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |