 What I teach a lot about is where are the lines between cultural exchange and appropriation, right? Cultural exchange can be great. Obviously, that's how the world works, whether you like it or not. People exchange ideas and within exchange ideas they exchange aesthetics. People like to surround themselves with beautiful things. People like to put beautiful things on their bodies, at least a lot of people do. And so these things are going to be exchanged, but how do you do that in a way that benefits everyone involved and gives the people who are the kind of core of this aesthetic or core of this style the credit that they deserve? And a lot of it does have to do with giving credit where it's due, whether that be monetarily, whether that just be in reference in saying this is where I got this idea or whether that being really letting them take the lead within that kind of design or that aesthetic and you kind of acting more supportively if you really want to work in that same aesthetic, right? But you kind of have to go from a perspective of you're being invited into this. I think the problem is that there is still this mentality and a lot of, again I'm going to say the western world but in a lot of spaces that we can go and take and this is something pretty and I'm going to go buy this and I'm going to use this and I'm going to make it something that's my own and that's fine without having to acknowledge where those ideas, where those aesthetics came from. And so I do think that idea of kind of taking, right, it's like that old like, the British archaeologist goes into Egypt and just takes stuff, brings it back to the British Museum and nobody says anything about it until however many, hundreds of years later. And then all of a sudden people are like, I should probably go back to Egypt. So I think that's the issue too is there is this history of kind of like going into spaces, taking and then leaving which is something that anthropology has been trying to get around for ages. Who are we and what is the nature of this reality? What's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Sokian. We are still on site at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia for our second partnership with them. We are now going to be talking about fashion anthropology and so much more. We have Ana Isparada joining us on the show. Hi Ana Isparada. Hi. Thanks for coming on the program. Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to be here. Likewise, very pumped to be interviewing you. Ana Isparada is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of South Carolina and I'm pumped to dive into the depth. You've been at Ecuador five times. You're now doing a PhD thesis on this topic that we're going to get to but we want to take things from a perspective of we love asking our guests about all this big picture stuff that's happening. Are we really all one? Well, that's a very big question, as you will know. There's lots of ways to look at that. If you're looking at kind of various scales and as anthropologists we kind of like to piece apart. Okay, what context are we talking about? Who and or what are we talking about? But if you want to pull back and go to kind of the biggest scale, say universally, are we all one? I think to some extent the answer would be yes and whether we like it or not. And I say that because I think a lot of people aren't consciously thinking of their connection to whether it be other human beings or even kind of the natural environment or even the built environment or even what I work with is material culture so the objects we use in daily life how those actually mediate relationships that we are all interconnected in particular ways because that means that you have more of a responsibility than you might be willing to take on. We like to think about if we're all interconnected then we have this great possibility to affect change and we always think that is a very positive thing but it also means you have the ability to affect negative change. Even that you're not necessarily conscious of so I do think there is this kind of ebb and flow where things kind of work together and in that sense I think yes we're all kind of part of this information universe feeding back on itself. So no matter what way we really look at the origin of how we're here it all goes back to one whether you call it a source or a God or in all that is or a universe or Big Bang whatever you want to call it the one all of these pluralistic coexisting ideologies philosophies religions point back to a way that we find ourselves here and the reason being what do you think why are we here? I don't think I have an answer for that I don't think many people do that's why there are several answers to that that's why philosophy deals with that that's why the arts deal with that anthropology specifically deals with that through the actions of people so we're looking at why do people behave the way they do in groups with one another why do they react to their environment in particular ways and all of that is going to be very very context specific right so you kind of have to pull back this idea of okay what's our purpose and really look at instead okay what's my purpose in this moment affecting change with these people around me what's my purpose within this society as opposed to what's my purpose outside of the society because for many people there isn't necessarily this purpose outside of the society you know in some communities it very much is what happens to the community happens to you and vice versa so you know I would say broadly yeah I don't have an answer for that I can look at it from different contexts for different individuals I can say broadly speaking my purpose is to create more empathy and I think that for most anthropologists they would say the end goal is to create more empathy so that we can coexist in ways that are beneficial not just to ourselves but to again the natural environment the built environment beyond ourselves so that's kind of maybe at the core of the core of anthropology as a discipline but I'm sure there'll be arguments from other disciplines that there's a different purpose I really like the purpose of bringing more empathy to the world trying to get behind the eyes of all different types of walks of life I really like that a lot trying to design architect a social fabric that enables everyone to flourish and bring their unique gifts forth that treats the biosphere as though it is all interconnected does it feel like the most upstream issue are our feelings of lack of interconnectedness or feelings of separation and that's causing all the downstream symptomatic problems? I mean I think that again you're saying we I think that to a certain extent that feeling of disconnectedness is very much a western feeling and particularly like a western US feeling of and you know they've done studies on how let's say white western men feel very disconnected right they don't have a place and they're losing an idea of like who they are in this world and I would say that a lot of that has to do with capitalism and consumerism and the way that it plays out in the western world because again we don't want to take these overarching ideas like capitalism without situating them in a particular context cultural context a social context so I would say that yes that's a huge problem and I would say that it's an expanding problem as kind of globalization as a process has always existed but globalization as it exists today some of the western ideologies including individuals and consumerism and things like this they might contribute to kind of this feeling of loss of community this feeling of not being able to empathize with other people because you feel isolated yourself is then what we can take from areas of indigeneity again needing to put it into specific context just indigeneity that has deep roots in interconnectedness with all and doing things like being able to marry that with modernity and metropolises respect for the air you breathe the water you drink the food you eat the other humans you would never tell people lies you would never try and self-deal for yourself you share the extra gathering that you get with everyone they do the same thing when they bring it back are these some of the principles that need to be brought into the modernity in order for us to flourish the best we can? yes I would say that certain principles which we associate with indigeneity with particular groups because again we don't want to look at indigeneity as just one kind of monolithic thing but there are certain kind of principles that come up within indigenous groups that should be integrated into modernity but again it's also problematic to kind of put this dichotomy between indigeneity and modernity because that's part of what I look at is how we historicize indigenous populations and how we relegate them to the past to this older way of thought to these older practices when they've been practicing these things alongside us in modern contemporary culture you know to be an indigenous person in the world is to be a contemporary so yes I think it's not just integrating into modern life I think it's integrating it into certain again kind of western particularly US ideologies that are coming from these hegemonic institutions albeit there is a lot of complexity that goes post using the word indigeneity understandably so many different combinatorics of indigenous life in order for one to aim to disseminate awakening messaging to myriad of world views around the planet it is really helpful to try and synthesize try and boil things down and it does seem like if you put a big plus sign in between indigeneity and modernity and put that up as a meme people would at least somewhat understand from just two words and a plus sign kind of what you're getting at in terms of trying to drive society forward in a direction that is more beneficial and Canada is doing it in many ways quite well I really respect their first nations like quite a bit from what I've heard and seen while being here and the US has a history of having like an order of magnitude more people and an economy that's significantly larger and just more complexity with the indigenous that were first here when we came plus the entire southern part of the United States that had a lot of other Central Americans that were there as well as Americans in general that were there the transatlantic slave trade also Japanese internment camps I mean there's just like this never ending list of problematic issues that the US faced and so there's really tough to figure out the traumatic healing that needs to happen but it does start with the actual process of truly aiming to heal said things and it's really it's up to the biggest powers I think the top of the wealthiest people the biggest corporations the biggest governments to truly propagate memes of unconditional love and inclusive stakeholder and the emerging markets all the emerging technologies try and democratize the fruits instead of have the 1% take 50% of the emerging fruits of those markets I mean the principles I think are quite more common sensical than we even we just anthropologists are very good at explaining the sheer complexity of things but if we can boil it down to like a fifth grader in graphs on like what needs to happen I think overall the planets like yeah that's like pretty much the reality of it yeah well and well one of the things I believe is that anthropology should be taught very very early on that people some students do get it in high school now but generally speaking those are going to be from kind of wealthier areas and there's not a lot of widespread anthropology in high school let alone things like middle school and elementary school and it's not that it's such a complex discipline that you can't teach it I mean really what we're talking about is again how humans behave and how humans behave in groups and that's the very core of how we exist in daily life it's very strange to me that we don't start teaching about it and teaching about variations in diversity and empathy and all these things at a very very young age and so first I would say I think that would be hugely beneficial and then just in terms of kind of where does this work need to come from and simplification I think that simplification is useful in terms of if you want to market something right you want the cleanest idea you want something people can have an emotional attachment to and they process it and that's going to stick in their head and it's going to make them buy this thing or go to this place or whatever it might be but I also think that we need to give people a little bit more credit because I think a lot of people do get that first kind of taste of this is what this is about or this is the main idea and when they feel comfortable with that they do start to get interested in okay let's go deeper let's look at the context let's look at the difference because it doesn't take away from the main idea it only adds to it it's just extra data extra support right double clicking in when you do get the initial meme of interest captured then you want to dive deeper I also like how you put that if you get young kids realizing that they themselves are artists and anthropologists at the youngest possible ages and you get them doing things like fun field work and then create like project-based learning around that field work solving the SDGs all this type of stuff you can have a pretty solid foundation in child education I really like the idea of anthropology coming in at really young ages I want to pass time getting into like who you were growing up that got you to become interested in Quito and Ecuador and indigeneity and fashion anthropology how did you even get interested in all this? so it's been a long journey I was born in Bolivia to a Bolivian father an American mother when they met they traveled quite a bit they lived in South America for a while my two oldest brothers were raised there my sister and I were born there but we weren't raised there we were raised in the US so I always kind of had this strange identity because where I was growing up was a very Latinx kind of neighborhood but it was predominantly Mexican American some Puerto Rican American you know there were no Bolivian Americans and pretty much my entire youth I never saw anyone who was like me in the sense of a Bolivian American woman now I've kind of with social media actually with Instagram I found you know some Bolivian American activists artists actually a fashion designer in California so these people are coming up but I didn't have social media like I do now so I struggled a lot with my identity because I was Latina in a community with lots of Latinx but they weren't the same Latina and so the ways that I would dress for instance I was very aware to not dress in ways that were specifically let's say Mexican American which is also your child, your naive you know whatever else it wouldn't have mattered but you know in my head I was looking for kind of my own identity both within and outside of that at the same time which is very difficult so my mother was always interested in anthropology she's not an anthropologist it's just something she loved I got that love from her but you know again being a teenager when I decided to go to college I was like no I'm going to be an English major that lasted not that long and I got there's great work that you can do in English but I wanted something that was more practical I don't want to say practical but it just more deeply embedded in lived experience I guess I really I don't know a great way to say that but I kind of gave into anthropology because it's something I had always loved but I was just trying to stay away from it into it ended up studying abroad in Ecuador made friends there and then I actually worked as a legal advocate for domestic violence victims for a few years and then applied to graduate school and went back to anthropology and so as soon as I went back I knew Ecuador was the region I wanted to be in it was an Indian nation so it shares a lot of similarities with Bolivia and I wanted to explore a place that would be both kind of personally mattering to me because of that context because it was Andean because I could get a little bit of an understanding of what my parents were dealing with raising us or what my dad's background was and I do feel like I've gotten insight into for instance my father's personality much more by doing this work so in that sense that's kind of why I wanted to work in the Andes why I wanted to work with processes of like and as far as the fashion stuff that's just something I've always been interested in in terms of how fashion makes meaning and I actually didn't realize initially that anthropology of fashion could be a thing I didn't realize it existed and so it wasn't until after I got my masters that I started kind of naturally finding other people who had talked about the same things often times not calling them fashion anthropologists but calling themselves material culture people calling themselves cultural anthropologists with a focus on regional dress styles things like that and so I realized I could do it and I just went all in When was the first trip this was studying abroad for undergrad What year was that? I don't know Yeah I am No but I honestly don't remember that would have been over 10 years ago So it was a while ago Okay so 10 years ago on the first trip you did you say you were starting to do work with domestic violence? So that was after I graduated After you graduated doing work with domestic violence from So actually I did have Ecuadorian clients but it was here it was in the Chicago area and I worked primarily with immigrant women Spanish speaking Interesting Okay and were they they were having domestic issues but in the Chicago area Yes exactly Okay because we did another episode on the show here at AAA where it was like forced migration or asylum seeking or refugees from domestic violence in those areas Yeah and it is still a huge issue within Ecuador Yeah and with especially female seeking refuge from domestic violence issues Alright and then you went back again in masters Okay then this was when I read this I thought we got to talk about social media and smartphone tech in Quito Ecuador And I see how you are trying to understand Bolivia through Ecuador Yeah Area and then also through also understanding your father as well like you were describing to us earlier So what are the discoveries that you made in that master's thesis? Just in general Yeah because I mean you also gave us we talk a lot on the show about the nuance of social media and yeah there's some stuff with the attention economy business plan models and mental health issues and all this different type of stuff but there's also incredible things like you being able to find other Bolivians that are working in the United States on different projects in Bolivia as well and it's just a good way to network based on that as well so I just wanted to say that So how were they using social media and smartphone tech? So the most interesting thing kind of the crux of what I found out is there I will say the time I was there was probably several years ago now but at the time I was there there were a lot of programs coming up to make Ecuador kind of more of a tech-savvy media heavy environment they had a program called Yachaya I believe it was I think that's the name of it oh no Yasuni sorry I'm Yasuni and it was supposed to be an Amazonian region and it was supposed to be essentially their answer to Silicon Valley and part of what was interesting about it and so promising and why everybody in Ecuador was excited about it was that by doing this by putting essentially this university that was also kind of like a tech hub where people could work, could study they were protecting the natural resources underneath it because by putting that there the president basically said this is how we're going to kind of make money in this region, this is how we're going to advance this region instead of drilling right instead of using these natural resources so those natural resources were protected and it was theoretically going to benefit the community now that since has gone nowhere it's gone but it was at this time when these things were really kind of pressing and Ecuador was really trying to like figure out ways to participate in this world and what I was looking at specifically was how are the divisions between the general mestizo population so the population that we in the US would probably call Latino, Latinx that mixed kind of white Spanish ancestry with indigenous ancestry that's the mainstream population how was that population using technology in ways that differ from the indigenous population and the government had this rhetoric through its programs that indigenous people needed help using technology they needed classes they weren't kind of as advanced or tapped in as the general mestizo population who was living in cities and was very mobile and you know whatever else and I really didn't find that to be the case particularly with smartphones because of the mobility of smartphones because it didn't need the infrastructure that something like landlines would that actually indigenous people were using it and they were using it to keep up with friends and relatives in different countries who were traveling selling goods or whatever they might be doing so this whole narrative of the nation state was actually basically the opposite the most advanced technology or the more advanced technology is what they had because that's what they were able to use let's say in the Highland Mountains or in more rural areas because there wasn't the infrastructure something like landline telephones or televisions or whatever else so they would have the most cutting edge technology because they were in such a remote location to be able to communicate with others so they would actually have an actual cell phone yeah they would have an actual smartphone and it might not be the most expensive version of that but some Ecuadorian mestizos in the city didn't have the most expensive version of that just because there are very high taxes on imports in Ecuador so technology is incredibly expensive in general interesting but they would have essentially something on par with normal at least the rest of the metropolis they would have similar tech okay and this is also this brings up another point from one of our interviews with Leslie Clark on Indigenous diplomatic people of Nigeria and how they are also using telecommunications technologies like smartphones through WhatsApp voice messages to each other and I think that's also really interesting for them to pick up a technology that enables them to do stuff like send each other those voice messages and they've been able to unlock a whole new array of behaviors and tasks that they are able to achieve based on that so it's really interesting hearing about what can people that are now being introduced to like this voice technology what can they accomplish now so that's some of the tech discoveries that you did in the masters okay and then you went then you came back and then you decided to do University of South Carolina for the PhD in anthropology and then you wanted to go again to study Ecuador but this time through a more of a fashion anthropological lens okay take us on this journey okay so when I was doing my masters fieldwork I had already started unknowingly thinking about my PhD fieldwork because I was already asking questions about dress one of the people that I interviewed who's known as one of his names like the Kichwa Gamer he does robotics but he's Kichwa which is an indigenous population from the area so he always when there are newspaper articles written about him or like TV shows highlighting him whatever it may be he's I would say always I'm trying to think of a time when I haven't seen him wearing it but he'll wear like at least he'll wear the poncho with kind of the white traditional white pant and shirt underneath as a means of representing his indigeneity in these very high tech spaces right to help kind of break this dichotomy again what we're talking about between indigeneity and modernity this idea that they're not one in the same and so he's very openly using this dress as kind of a marker a cue of identity of indigeneity in modernity of his subculture of indigeneity within modernity exactly yeah I've actually noticed that we had a Kogielder on the show from Colombia and they also wear all white they have a very distinct hat they have their very distinct items that they carry with them very spiritual items and you can tell they're striped bags that they have and it's just like that's interesting so clothing and exterior clothing can also be a tell of where someone is in their what subculture they belong to and visionously in the middle of like a busy street in a metropolis absolutely and it's one of those things what I like to look at is how this creates what I call semiotic communities but talking about it not through language but through the language of dress so essentially there's lots of different subgroups in recognized indigenous nations within Ecuador but that's because one of those nations is just Kichwa which actually is a language not necessarily just a population and within that there's actually several different populations so the Purua who I work with are considered Kichwa sometimes when it's like talked about like tourist pursuits or whatever else they may be kind of wrapped into that but they consider themselves their own specific cultural group pronounce this again the Purua Purua yeah it's the accent is at the end it's the Kichwa language structure but so they have particular regional dress and other groups that are considered Kichwa are within the kind of Kichwa broader designation all have regional styles so if you have enough knowledge about it you see somebody walking down the street well okay that person is from Otavalo that person is from Rio Bamba you can see what even towns and provinces people are from if you have that knowledge but in order to have that knowledge for the most part either you're part of the community or you study it right so if you are part of that community and this actually did happen to one of my interviewees about the fact that she went to the US and she was I think in St. Louis or some place and she was going to a church and she saw a woman wearing a specific regional dress style that she recognized and she was just like overwhelmed because you know that's my person I know exactly where that person is from not just I know what country that person is from based on their accent or whatever else but I know what province and town and the community pull a name or two out of my bucket to say very much so very much so within my community a lot of people know each other some of the fashion designers I work with that are the most prominent I learned this too late in the field the first time around but I should have been name dropping because as soon as I did people were like oh yeah I know that brand I know that designer I really love her stuff she is this community that gets built just based on being able to recognize that person yeah so then does this then become something that we can have the influence of consumeristic capitalistic modernity just in a non ethically thought out way just take root in I mean it just those things don't feel like we get that there's this beautiful way of having decorating this sacred vehicle of the body and then being able to see somebody else and like that's so profoundly interesting to be able to do that but then when it becomes like there's just something about it like when someone goes and like I don't know could you imagine like an indigenous division to like Louis Vuitton or something like where they go and like try and like make you know like work with indigenous people there to try and make like really high priced or even like you know low priced from like I don't know Nike or something when you find out how to do it or whatever but just like or even just an independent fashion designer that then makes a you know like an Instagram account for the and then decides to to work with them and give them money and then they get fueled by you know capitalism to get out of poverty is like what the cell is how do you feel about all of that it's complex one the designers I think one of the issues to is I'm looking at it at a very local context slash national context I'm looking at it in the context of Ecuador right now and so mestizo people in Ecuador aren't wearing indigenous clothing they have access to it and they can afford some of them can afford I'm talking about also like there's you know obviously class issues that go into this different you know other factors that go into this but some designers are very very high end they're making very expensive pieces so Cisa who is one of the designers I work with and one of her blouses could cost around $140 right so that's especially in Ecuador where the income level I want to say it's average like 300 a month something like that it's a very very expensive piece and it is all couture she hand makes it I've seen her make them so these are very expensive pieces but you know there are wealthier people in Ecuador whether they be indigenous or mestizo or something else part of the immigrant population who can afford these pieces but they're not necessarily going to wear them and I argue that there are several reasons for that part of it having to do with the history of racism which I'm sure you know part of it having to do with mestizaje there which is this process of whitening that when the Spanish came people started mixing they freaked out and obviously they're always going to preference whiteness right so trying to whiten people so basically have more white partner so that slowly the population becomes whiter and whiter but because of this process of mixing unlike to an extent again all of this has variations but to an extent unlike in the US where they came in and just wiped out the population there was a much more subtle kind of wiping out but in that process it means that a lot of mestizo people look like indigenous people I could pass for indigenous there if I wore that style of dress I have like cisa has about the same skin tone as me we have similar features things like that and so I do one of the arguments I make is that these kind of lingering ideas this fear of passing as one or the other keeps them from wearing indigenous dress but I think it also is a respect thing understanding that this is part of also culture and heritage and not wanting to take that not wanting to appropriate that so it's kind of both sides of the coin it's a market opportunity look really it's a market opportunity to cut down trees and build houses with them there's got to be a point where we figure out it's a market opportunity for me to burn false fuels, pollute the air there's got to be a point and at some point people are somewhat self-aware like maybe this isn't for me that's not to say that there aren't mestizo people white people in Ecuador who are appropriating indigenous let's say patterns and designs because certainly that happens a lot of these like folk art galleries they're really beautifully curated galleries some of them have indigenous things but some of them are you know mestizo made things or even what I'm saying white so like just Spanish or just let's say German immigrants or something like that these people making things sometimes in conjunction with indigenous communities but sometimes not and even when they are in conjunction with indigenous communities they're not saying I worked with this indigenous designer they're saying I worked with this community and I did so much good and I helped them and but this my name is on this because this is my design so there's issues like that that I apologize call this like extractive versus like community driven collaborative yeah and so that would be what I would worry about if let's say there was a movement in the U.S. there was an interest in this style and these very high end well known designers start working with indigenous communities because we see it in the U.S. that there are fair trade brands that there are these companies that you know will sell shoes with weavings on them that are indigenous but they don't talk about the indigenous designers as designers as artists they talk about them as a community in need that they're helping and it's still marked as their brand not as a brand coming from within the community so I would worry about that but I will say within the U.S. that U.S. native designers have been doing an excellent job just there's some beautiful U.S. designers Bea Yellowtail is one of them she has an amazing line of clothing that I cannot afford but I wish I could so a lot of this is just I don't even think you need that collaboration it's basically what I'm trying to get at I think they're you know these designers are doing it for themselves they're much more entrepreneurial than I am they they have amazing I mean they're just amazing talented designers regardless of background and so I don't think they're going to help I think they're going to get there one way or the other and in part I think they're going to get there because I think people are becoming disillusioned with those other high-end brands are we talking like macro level perspective there's different subcultures of indigeneity across the world that all have their own unique patterns and clothing styles and ways to make shoes and ways to make pots and pottery and all different kinds of things and someone either goes to one of those subcultures and learns that process and brings it back and then to their homeland that is a modern place and then they themselves decide to create a business around what they learned and then some of them more I guess so this is where someone could say hers when maybe the person does not acknowledge whatsoever where they learned this craft from this art from if they don't care at all about giving back in some way again like what do you do when you give back what does that even mean how do you do that how do you give recognition how do you tell a story about that so it preserves the subculture that we're talking about so that's the macro level that you're talking about I mean this concept of what I teach a lot about is where are the lines between cultural exchange and appropriation right cultural exchange can be great obviously that's how the world works whether you like it or not people exchange ideas and within exchange ideas they exchange aesthetics people like to surround themselves with beautiful things people like to put beautiful things on their bodies people do and so these things are going to be exchanged but how do you do that in a way that benefits everyone involved and gives the people who are the kind of core of this aesthetic or core of this style the credit that they deserve and a lot of it does have to do with giving credit where it's due whether that be monetarily whether that just be in reference in saying this is where I got this idea or whether that being really letting them take the lead within that kind of design or that aesthetic and you kind of acting more supportively if you really want to work in that same aesthetic right but you kind of have to go from a perspective of you're being invited into this I think the problem is that there is still this mentality and a lot of again I'm going to say the western world but in a lot of spaces that we can go and take and this is something pretty and I'm going to go by this and I'm going to use this and I'm going to make it something that's my own and that's fine without having to acknowledge where those ideas where those aesthetics came from and so I do think that idea of kind of taking right it's like that old like the British archeologist goes into Egypt and just take stuff brings it back to the British Museum and nobody says anything about it until many hundreds of years later and then all of a sudden people are like I should probably go back to Egypt so I think that's the issue too is there is this history of kind of like going into spaces, taking and then leaving which is something that anthropology has been trying to get around for ages Oh man that one yeah that's interesting cultural exchange versus appropriation and what the hell is in the nuance of that so cultural yeah exactly cultural exchange is going to again be that more balanced what does that mean we're balanced and what does that mean means again A asking you know asking them when you're there hey would it be okay so that's the first step so yeah let's do this breakdown point number one so let's just come up with a scenario because that's the easiest way to have this imaginary scenario because there's all nuances to all different types there's a difference if you're staying with a host family and they want you to wear traditional dress to family gathering versus if you're just going in and you're like let me throw on a kimono so let's say you're going to a Latin American indigenous community you really like something the weaving pattern right so the first thing you might want to do if you like this weaving pattern or you like this aesthetic and you're like oh I kind of want to use some of that ask your clothing is what comes to mind like what if they had picked that pattern of you know boats sail boats that are like that and is this a very widespread pattern already does it exist in multiple spaces is there anything sacred exactly is there anything sacred or very kind of deeply personal for the heritage or the community or the family that it would be strange like you don't want to put a sacred print on a pair of thong right or thong underwear that kind of idea of like okay where is this going also so what does this mean to the community directly asking would you be okay if I use this or something similar also similarity if it's there's a difference between wearing a full kimono right or having a dress that you design that has a kimono sleeve it just has a you know that shape of sleeve that's different that's interesting so there's levels of nuance right and maybe a couple sailboats instead of just a whole sheet exactly right or maybe it's okay to have it on a blouse but not necessarily like you don't want it on shoes because there's something associated with feet in the dirt or something exactly so there's all these little nuances but and in order to have good more or less there's always going to be a power imbalance when we're at the other for whatever reason but as equal as you can get it part of that the basis of that is having knowledge and seeking that knowledge out honestly and one of the problems is with these corporations or even with these high-end designers is they don't care because they know they can make the money off it and then you know when it's called a preparation by the community or the other designer if let's say it's an indigenous designer calls them out for what they're doing they'll just kind of either pay it off or kind of let it fade in the background because that designer doesn't have the clout yet doesn't have the status yet to really make enough waves that it would put this let's say Lou Vuitton out of business right so yeah so that's kind of that really the core of whether it's cultural exchange or appropriation has lots to do with knowledge and has a lot to do with just straight up asking and power trying to keep power as balanced as possible damn wow okay so damn this is really interestingly complex yeah who would have thought that yeah that's something like yeah fashion anthropology would come down to cultural exchange versus appropriation in many ways and I think this is that's a really interesting point within the fashion anthropology and actually you were mentioning this earlier too is just in archaeology has had the same problem of cultural exchange versus appropriation because this is happening where all the artifacts from before they make it to all these museums and these metropolises where do they come from indigenous people are mad because they a lot of them were put there by indigenous people for very specific sacred reasons that we then bury we dig them up and then put them in the museums and then there are imbalances that occur in natural areas because we don't understand that type of intelligence we're trying to use rationality for something that may be a little bit more intuitive that rationality needs to somehow be able to understand but it's trying I don't know it's hard because intuition can sometimes also be strangely wrong I guess also yeah because anyway so do you have this big issue with cultural appropriation versus exchange happening and you figure out like is this just the sleeve of the kimono is this the whole thing is this just the little tiny three boats of the pattern is this on the whole entire already putting it on wallpaper now is this not supposed to go on the shoes or a thong is this supposed to go only on like a sacred maybe earring or something and how do you ask how do you even ask when I go there and I see something great you know what do I say how do I how do I engage them in if I am a massive corporation that's completely different than if I'm just like some independent you know kid that's coming to visit that is just became fascinated and wants to be a cultural exchange anthropologist with that baby so I mean what would you like what would that circumstance look like if I'm you know if I'm just kid and I only have that much power and I'm really interested in cultural exchange versus if you're a corporation and you have that much power and you're trying to ask them questions about where you can actually put that pattern well I think let's say if you're just a kid going in I think a lot of times the stuff you're going to encounter anyway some of that is going to be for sale right some of that is going to be things that you kind of know at the outset at least I can purchase those things because those things are being sold directly to me regardless of whether or not I can take that and then use it for my own product but really it's about regardless of if you're a big company or an individual person it's about building community and that's kind of the answer sometimes people don't want to hear because that's the answer that takes time you really have to spend time with people and it's one of those things in Latin America it's still kind of a thing in a lot of open air markets whether it be a food market or an artisan market or whatever that you have one vendor and you go back to that vendor and you build trust with that vendor and they start giving you deals or they start finding things specifically for you so it's a different way of kind of doing business or shopping it's based as much on that relationship that you make with your certain let's say tomato seller as it would be like here like oh I just want to find the prettiest tomatoes or the best tomatoes a lot of it's based on that relationship and so if you're going about it that way you build a relationship with the person you talk to the person you get to know things about their culture you ask them and as long as I would say obviously human beings are all different but I would say as long as someone's being genuine with you and kind of asking things in a way that's respectful then you'll get your answers but with companies I think the problem is again they don't want to do that work they don't want to send somebody down there for a month at a time so that they can build these relationships so that they can find out if it's okay to use this pattern some of them maybe do try I'm not sure and it's going to be different again between your designer versus let's say somebody who's doing like free trade an online website or something but really that's the crux of it it takes time it takes relationships yeah that was an interesting point that you bring up from this with that whether it be so many of the different anthropologists that we've talked to or other people that we've had on the show that are going back and hanging out with people from different subcultures around the world it's fascinating because the ones that continuously go back and build community are the ones that gain the deepest connections with the other people's psyche and their lineage and then it doesn't feel like it feels more like cultural exchange instead of appropriation like you said it's the time it's the relationships, the community with that it just feels weird even in the first place for some reason having some indigenous subcultures from around the world like selling things there's such a strange thing here because it's like selling it both awakens people to that indigenous cultural item and artifact and what it means if it's sacred you know all that cool stuff but then it also loops the whole process into like a transactional economic machinery which then takes them out of poverty which is always the message that is propagated by capitalism and then the and then some of the things happen like we're talking to Ramona Perez on the show about how over time it was actually that as the indigenous community, indigenous subculture near Oaxaca City actually had more of resources that they were using for making the pottery they actually had to start using more lead instead of less lead in that pottery and then over time they got lead poisoning from that process and so there's economic machinery can have a cause like health issues like that too so there's so much complexity here basically is it that your work you want to just shine a big like on this field and this a fashion and apology and cultural exchange for appropriation at large yes particularly because I think it is something that keeps happening I keep seeing news articles about things like appropriating indigenous dress or indigenous aesthetics in one way or the other we still have museums not all a lot of museums have been doing a great job with things like repatriation but there are still museums who don't do such a great job and who don't do such a great job in knowing how to display certain things versus other things so we still very much have this culture of take and so just to kind of talk about what are the alternatives to that and also yes just to shine a light because I don't think even with an Ecuador I remember talking to a friend of mine a couple of friends of mine and they're you know mestizos they had no idea that within their own country that designers were doing all this work and so I was explaining to them what they were doing and you know how much these pieces were going for and what they looked like and that there was a buyer's market because there is and I will say there are mestizos and I'm saying mestiza women because most of it is women's dress for the designers that I work with there are mestizos who are models for these designers and who will buy these products too it's just it's not as much as the indigenous community and often times it seems it seems that those mestiza women have either regional ties so they might be from the same city right in the same area or they might have some sort of other like family or community tie to the area it's not the most kind of mainstream broad swath of the population so yeah there's still people within their own country that these designs are being done that these people and they're successful they're making an income they're able to sustain themselves on this business this is the next point I wanted to ask because Ramona Perez had a very similar story next to Oaxaca City that indigenous area gained the females gained autonomy they gained independence from the pottery but then the increase in lead cause those health issues etc then there was like oh my gosh what do we do now the decrease in autonomy now happens so you also see when is this true that when the big move in like of an indigenous subculture decides to enter their art into the economic machinery that then women that if they make that art themselves they can become autonomous they can become independent and that can maybe decrease violence they can maybe increase them finding out what they actually care about and want to do in the world and not maybe necessarily just be you know married and have kids and etc yeah I mean I think just with even broader female populations I think that I've noticed within the Peru the women that I've worked with there are more women who are single later who are childless or who at least see these things as a positive as opposed to a negative for instance a lot of them will obviously you know they'll ask me about my life and their reaction to me being a single woman in the field with a career at 32 yeah you know how old I am is a very positive reaction right and a lot of them also like Cisa for example like she is very independent she's done this business herself but part of it is also that she's brought in her female friends to help her so some of her friends will run the shop when she's you know sewing in the studio or you know she's sewing the studio so one of her friends will go deliver a product that's sold to a girl across town she wants to hand deliver it because they're very finely made pieces so she's not only helping herself she's also helping the women around her in her community providing them with work providing them with work providing them sometimes with you know spaces to stay you know and it's much more interesting the way she works and I would say probably a way that a lot of people work from what I've observed it's very reciprocal it's very people well go get food for one another if the other person can't leave you know if they need change they'll give each other change and they may be competitors they may have stores right next to each other but they hang out they talk to each other you know they do all these things because again there's also that culture of like well this is the person I go to so I'm always going to go to that person so there's several reasons for that but yeah I mean they'll you know make food together hang out so it's nourishing not just in the sense of she's giving these women more economic freedom or really giving it to themselves but she's helping them get it but also that she's there's a community nourishment you know there's this kind of familial relationship between women who are working together that they might not otherwise have so it is a sense of independence via literally just having more money but also via like when your friend succeeds you succeed yeah so the social networks and the rising tide lifts all boats hmm this is so this is so tough to figure out because I just I don't know if there is like ugh it's like what aspects to the excellence of the cultural exchange part can be amplified the most excellent parts of the cultural exchange part being amplified and then there's like parts that are like are not balanced there's power imbalances like you were describing and how can you take the appropriational parts, appropriate parts how you can take those and just decrease those or just eliminate them completely so it becomes basically solely focused on cultural exchange and not on appropriation yeah honestly one of the ways that it could be done is by hiring more anthropologists who do work that I do within the industry i.e. the fashion industry to basically tell these designers and these businesses ahead of time act as a consultant say you know this is the group I work with let me tell you how things work down there let me tell you in what ways you can do actual good and what ways you can do harm and having more of those within businesses may help a lot of businesses are hiring anthropologists now just in general because there's this kind of new buzz word within businesses of like culture but like a business culture right so they want people who understand how culture works so part of it I think would be the responsibility of those businesses or those designers to take it upon themselves to care enough to hire whether it's an anthropologist or somebody else who can do the same work to hire somebody who can do work like that but they have to care first they have to actually worry about the fact that they're appropriating so maybe there needs to be some sort of like a that first principle system that you were initially describing to us on this is how you focus on cultural exchange yeah okay first one again was ask and then ask in a way where you recognize your power compared to their power so like ask power like together kind of ask power then you know I guess there's just more ask about where is it sacred is it divine you know your own research too like there are ways often times I think with with people especially if they're already kind of people so within my community within Ecuador a lot of indigenous people are so used to anthropologists coming in that they're just kind of like sure I'll answer your questions which is sad to some extent because it means they're just used to being this kind of endless well of knowledge for people who come right so yeah I mean a lot of it is asking living with the population making real relationships but also like there's information out there there's information out there on you know sacred patterns there's information out there that exists from other anthropologists or you know from other people doing similar work about what these textiles mean within this community so like part of it is also your responsibility to do not just that field work part but also start looking for articles start looking for books okay so these like ask and research and power and understand power those are kind of the principles are there other ones that we maybe can think of so maximizing cultural exchange yeah I mean those are really those are the core outside of that it would really be just kind of fine tuning then you're already getting into this piece of the specific culture right because in some cultures it might be more appropriate to ask in this way versus this way or you might want to actually live with a family or you might not want to because that might be too invasive so really at that point you might want to bring a gift that you've researched that they appreciate that shows that you are ceremoniously bring them something as sometimes within field work there's the question of what are you giving back and sometimes people are like well I want to give them money you know in exchange for let's say their time or whatever and that may not be right and often times it's not appropriate yeah exactly so this brings up the point again of the whole economic machinery thing is that it's just if that's not appropriate in the cultural circumstance they don't want it they don't want to play in the big monopoly board game that the whole planet is playing in then why is it that their goods even in the first place should enter into the I guess for awareness about their story maybe they don't want that no this is all hard to it all depends and that's the thing it all depends so you have to do research and ask yeah and the thing is you know people are going to if they do just like the people I work with they do want their dress to be out there not as necessarily a bought and sold commodity although they do say pretty much for anyone who likes it but they want it to be out there because for so many years even using that dress style was repressed so for a long time it's really only been the past ten years that they've started using the dress style again because prior to that being visibly indigenous especially if you were trying to go into the city to get a job if you were trying to you know kind of move your way up the ladder you didn't necessarily want to look visibly indigenous because you would get treated terribly you would get things yelled at I mean this does to some extent still happen but you get things yelled at you at the bus you would be called dirty all these different things that are associated with you looking indigenous so for them it's actually very very important that this does circulate and circulates as widely as possible because it's about reclaiming the power to wear that dress and being visibly indigenous but you know again like you said there are some groups that may not want anything to do with that and they may feel the actual planet suffering because of modernity exactly and they don't want any piece of it and may not want to enter into the global economy in the same way right and so again it's all going to be very very specific ask research do hardcore understanding of that and understanding the power dynamic and then tailor that towards each subculture so this is even going in having read a lot that is go in having read a lot wow what a complex study this is you just like open up the can is just pouring out it's just pouring out and it also just like the big global economic machinery board game of monopoly that's happening with top down power structures just it doesn't feel as though I guess okay if you ask and research in indigeneity the subculture says yes please I would like to feel more empowered wearing my because I wasn't able to previously wear this and feel empowered so please help me with that process or please do share the story of our subculture through and every single time somebody gets this the sacred bracelet with our patterns on it please include a card about who we are and why this is sacred and on your messaging on your website on your Instagram on your Etsy whatever Pinterest etc just include that okay okay great we can do that then there's there's just what is it why is it that it feels like the planet is saying that modernity is choking ecosystems and that we have the obsession to continue propagating subcultures of indigeneity into that machinery and so that also feels very makes me feel unwell at the same time well and what you're talking about as modernity is specifically it's not just the conceptualization of like a modern society right it's a very specific modernity it's a modernity that we're experiencing right now that is a western modernity that is based on still certain principles of enlightenment that's based on industrial revolution that's based on now this mass technology kind of evolution that's happening it's to rapid pace it's a very very very specific form of modernity so with a lot of indigenous knowledge what's happening I think or what will probably happen is that that is going to start influencing as opposed to you know everybody thinks of globalization as like oh western civilization just goes out and converts all these other places into little mini US's or little mini Europe's or whatever it may be when in reality what happens is you know a McDonald's goes into this area and people change it to make it fit their culture better you know or it might not succeed because they don't want it so people really they absorb what they need but they don't absorb what they don't need and I think also there's an increasing movement from the other end influencing western society or what we're calling western society I don't think it's just a one way road I think it's just that we tend to ignore the ways that we're influenced by let's say indigenous economies right? by ideas of reciprocity those are going to get stronger and stronger and again that work is being done by people themselves it's not up to you know us to say oh yeah let's integrate this let's bring these people in like they're going to cause this shift in themselves whoever they are whether it be activists on the ground or designers or artists or whoever people coming up in academia intellectuals in that sphere these people are going to be doing it themselves that it's really not up to us to say oh how do we incorporate you you know I like your focus on the absolute positive possibility of this that's where we aim to hone in hone in our attention and focus on the show towards that as well so let's say that if you take these best principles of cultural exchange we go back to the very first thing we said which is maybe indigeneity plus modernity can actually be a good synthesis for a good path forward fine then you see cultural exchange principles you know ask research power etc if you do that really well you can maybe take some of the culture of indigeneity and actually really holistically bring it and actually take what is kind of like a little bit problematic at times modernity and actually augment it quite well potentially maybe when there's more sacred indigenous arts in modernity maybe people will more frequently be like well what is that very sacred necklace that you're wearing right now what does it actually mean oh it came from this subculture around the world that has this story where they feel more interconnected all the time in these ways and then all of a sudden little the same frequency that you see food restaurants in metropolises all of a sudden you'll see like little like emotional intelligence centers meditation and yoga meaning union with the divine or with the one in Sanskrit that maybe you'll see more of those little centers popping up everywhere so it could be it could be a way to evolve consciousness that we don't even know is actually happening yet like you're indicating and I love that I love that I love that so as long as there's no appropriation that's the thing in the process decrease the appropriation of that beautiful cultural exchange okay I'm down yeah I'm down is that that hard? just a little time a little effort that was pretty cool I like how we got there okay last question okay we have to call our guest what is most beautiful most beautiful we'll see that's interesting from somebody who works in aesthetics beauty is subjective in all ways so I'd say you know on a basic human level love, empathy, compassion is for me the most beautiful thing you know that sounds a little hokey but it really is where change comes from I mean yes change also comes from anger change also comes from struggle for life but whether it be kind of an inner sense of love or a love for your community or a love for someone you've never met before a love for your environment or the universe or whatever it may be that's where a lot of real change comes from I think I hope that means amen yeah wow yep love empathy, compassion yeah that's right on ACEs it's been such a pleasure it's been wonderful thank you so much thanks for coming on the show thanks everyone for tuning in we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode let us know what you're thinking about all the cool stuff that on ACE was teaching us check out her links in the bio below support her work also check out the links in the bio below to American Anthropological Association check out their links support them you can find all of our links in the bio below to simulation you can support us you can find our PayPal Patreon cryptocurrency league you can design cool merch and get paid all those links are below and also support the other artists, entrepreneurs spiritual leaders, organizations in your communities and around the world that you believe in support them and help them flourish and go and build the future everyone manifest that next world we love you very much thanks for tuning in we'll see you soon wow yay