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gender, ethnicity, employment and tradition.
The term handicraft is often interchanged with
craft and handcraft. While handicraft tends to be
applied in developing countries, the terms craft and
handcraft are generally employed in scholarly
literature generated in industrialised countries.
Individuals who produce handicrafts may refer to
themselves as artists, artisans or craftspersons. The
growth of handicrafts as a tourism commodity has
engendered positive and pejorative labels that focus
on the intended consumers, tourists. In addition
to terms listed in the opening paragraph, other
tourism labels for handicrafts include art by
metamorphosis, art of acculturation, art of
transformation, boundary art, commercial art,
ethnoart, ethnological art, folk art and transitional
arts. Distinctions between art and craft have been
made in early scholarly work; however, the
boundaries are blurred between the two terms. In
particular, a difference between art and craft
objects may not exist for many producers. However,
some contemporary scholars do delineate
ethnic art or craft products from tourist arts. The
former category describes objects produced with a
local, regional or indigenous orientation, while
tourist art production is externally oriented towards
a tourist or export consumer.
The study of handicrafts and their linkage to
tourism draws from a range of disciplines that
includes anthropology, art and design, business,
cultural studies, environmental studies, international
development, marketing, museum studies,
sociology, textiles and apparel, and women's
studies. A seminal volume edited by Nelson
Graburn is credited as one of the first collections
of scholarly studies that examined handicrafts and
their linkage to tourism. Since the 1970s, academicians
have addressed handicraft issues that focus
on the various participants in the marketing system
of producers, intermediaries and tourist consumers.
Both applied and theoretical applications have
been explored. Topics concerning authenticity,
ethnicity, gender, tradition, handicraft typologies
and linkages between handicraft consumption and
tourism styles have provided lively debate revealing
the complexity surrounding handicraft production
worldwide.
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Handicraft typologies describe the stages by
which products that have long been produced and
used for local consumption are transformed to
commodities intended for outside markets, including
tourists. As handicraft products are transformed
for the latter, change is often evident for
raw materials, mechanisation, form, ornamentation,
coloration, function, quantity and quality of
production, and symbolic content. Local artisans
associate maintenance of their handicraft traditions
with retention of long-used production
processes and technologies, despite their application
to new tourism-related products. In contrast,
outsiders, often unaware of indigenous production
patterns, associate loss of handicraft traditions
when they observe change in products for tourist
purposes.
The intersection of handicraft production with
tourism is a vital junction. Fuelled by increasing
levels of tourism activity and expenditures worldwide,
handicraft production provides a means of
income for many marginalised peoples, including
large numbers of women and ethnic minority
groups. Handicraft production is often noted as a
means of income production that supplements
agricultural production, fits with rural and agriculture
lifestyles, is promoted by government and
non-governmental organisations for development,
foreign exchange and maintenance of
indigenous traditions, and provides handmade
objects desired by consumers of industrialised
nations. For many of the world's craftspeople, their
local markets have been replaced by machineproduced
products. Developing handicraft products
that appeal to tourists provides one avenue by
which artisans may maintain their craft for income
generation.
One-third of tourists' expenditures are devoted
to retail and shopping-related activities. Handicrafts
comprise a major category of their souvenir
purchases. They define handicraft authenticity in
terms of raw materials, production processes,
workmanship, aesthetic qualities, indigenous use,
and historical and cultural integrity. Through
purchasing and using handicrafts, tourists experience
indigenous lifestyles, expand their worldview,
differentiate the self from or integrate with
others, express creativity and experience aesthetic
pleasure. Tourism retailers, in attempting to