Commodity pathway diversion
A similar approach is taken by Nicholas Thomas, who examines the same range of cultures and the anthropologists who write on them, and redirects attention to the "entangled objects" and their roles as both gifts and commodities.
[4] According to anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, "the flow of commodities in any given situation is a shifting compromise between socially regulated paths and competitively inspired diversions.
Appadurai suggests that in societies where "what is restricted and controlled is taste in an ever changing universe of commodities…diversion may sometimes involve the calculated "interested" removal of things from an enclaved zone to one where exchange is less confined and more profitable.
For example, individuals facing economic hardships may sell family heirlooms to commoditize and profit from previously enclaved items.
Similarly, warfare often commoditizes previously enclaved items as sacred relics are plundered and entered into foreign markets.
"Kingly things" (term coined by Max Gluckman, 1983) are examples of institutionalized enclaved commodities that are diverted by royalty in order to "maintain sumptuary exclusivity, commercial advantage, and display of rank.
"[18] Examples of this may be landed and movable property, or the "exclusive rights to things" that aid in the "evolution and materialization of social institutions and political relationships.
"[19] According to Kopytoff, "kingly things" often make up the "symbolic inventory of a society: public lands, monuments, state art collections, the paraphernalia of political power, royal residences, chiefly insignia, ritual objects, and so on.
[25] According to Appadurai, "the best examples of the diversion of commodities from their original nexus is to be found in the domain of fashion, domestic display, and collecting in the modern West.
The value of tourist Art—objects produced in small-scale societies for ceremonial, sumptuary, or aesthetic use which are diverted through commoditization— is predicated on the tastes and markets of larger economies.
[27] Though not produced in a small-scale society, current tastes and market demands (2010) for Chinese jade artwork has caused previously enclaved objects – once belonging to royalty – with aesthetic and sumptuary value, to be commoditized by European collectors and auctioneers(4/28/2010)[1].
Dada artist Marcel Duchamp's now famous work "Fountain" was meant to be understood as a rejection of art and a questioning of value (1968).
Artist William Morris argued that "under industrial capitalism artificial needs and superficial ideas about luxury are imposed on the consumer from without and …as a result, art becomes a commodity" (1985:8-9).
Bauhaus artists like Morris and Walter Gropius understood commodities in purely Marxian terms as things which are immediately produced, having inherent market value.
"[28] Thus, when diverting industrial materials from their commodity pathways to produce art became culturally valuable, the objects themselves gained value (1985).
Finally, pop artist Andy Warhol, created artwork couched in what Appadurai refers to as the "aesthetics of decontextualization.
"[29] In his famous Campbell's Soup painting, Warhol diverts advertising from its commodity pathway by reproducing it as a work of art.
In Journal de la Société des Océanistes 33(54/55):39–53 Munn, Nancy 1983 Gawa Kula: Spatiotemporal Control and the Symbolism of Influence.
