Transnational Objects

One of this week readings that I found enjoying very much is the work of Stephanie Rain's "Celtic Kitsch: Irish-America and Irish material culture". His article presented the way that Irish material culture presented to tourists and such objects act as menentio of the tourist experience. In this regard, the object becomes some kinds of national symbols. According to Rain, there are two characteristics that the objects need to have which include the following (1) level of familiarity and (2) the context that diasporic consumption contributes to their making kitsch and inauthentic. When reading this article, one thing i found very interesting is the idea of Touristic representation of consumption. That is, the idea that "visitors attempt to create the sensation of belonging to the culture they are visiting". To be honest, I never thought of this idea until I read this article. I always wanted to know when people visited to a place, why did they want to buy a small gift or souvenirs from that place? Thanks to Rain, I now find an anwser for such question as it is a feeling that visitors want to have a place where they are belong to. I like the way he introduced his essay as it is very clear how he expected the readers to follow his arguement. To me, the essay is short but it is well-written and well-presented with a lot of examples, pictures as evidences to support his claim.
On the other hand, David Parkin's work "mementoes as transitional objects in Human Displacement" went into a different direction. His main arguement was that the movements of people are associated with the objects that people attached themselves to it. In other words, his main concerned was to understand whether physical objects associated with particular persons or their personhood that go beyond their individuals' biological body. In his research paper, he found that people who left their home country during or because of crisis, often bring objects with them resembling their selective remembering, forgetting and envisioning of home. When reading Parkin's article, I felt very much related to because I am an immigrant myself. However, I found several points that I had to disagree with the authors (1) his example of refugees came to a new place and brought with them an object that made them to remember of their homeland, is too simple. By means, the role of these transitional objects is not just for activating memory, but also it helps to shape the new life experience as well. For instance, when an immigrant comes to a new country, he brings with him an object for remembering his homeland. However, it does not stop here. The object is a like a mirror reflecting his culture in a new place, it is not his personal item. Rather, it is a piece of cultural possession. People would look at it and pretty much have an idea of what his culture is and sometimes an object can have a positive and negative meaning attached to it. Say, a muslim immigrant came to a new country and have a job interview. She wears a turban on the day of an interview. This can shape her personal experience as (1) she might get the job because of the impression that she make or (2) she might face with discrimination because she was seen as foreigners who is inacapable of doing work. I guess that I understand the point that Parkin made but I wanted to say that transnational objects do not just act as an object that used for remembering, forgeting or envisioning of home. Rather, it has more meaning to it as it reflects a person identity and potentially shape his personal experience in totaly different ways.

My memento is a tradtional "ao dai" dress given by my mother who also recieved it from my grandmother. According to my mother and grandmother, the dress is supposed to represent luck. The dress, for me, is an image of home and for my proudness to be a Vietnamese. I wear it to every big event that I have to attend. However, once I wore the dress to a Vietnamese festival held in Toronto. I realized that there is a differnt meaning attached to this dress. At the party, I was treated differently and in some extent, I could say that I was partially discriminated within my own group. Later, I found out that it was because of the dress I am wearing is representing some kinds of communist symbol.THis is something that I felt related to what Parkin's example of Girima in his article as well as Rain's example of national object.

Question 1:
Can the idea of internet shopping that allowed people to extend their markets be considered as diasporic consumption object? Do people have to go to the place to buy that souvenirs are the ones categoriezed as diasporic consumptions?

Question 2:
We buy things that we like and most often luxury stuff is attached with economic value and social status. Can diasporic objects have value since they have only personal relations attached to it? How can we measure the value of those diasporic objects?