ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the production of the authorship of Oaxacan woodcarvings which are made in small rural villages for the tourist and ethnic art markets of Mexico and the United States. It suggests that the question is also fundamental to the anthropology of art and craft, and the discipline more generally, as authorship—in its many configurations—is at the heart of current processes of privatization, neo-liberalization and the consolidation of formal property regimes at national and global level. The chapter provides valuable insights into the development and variable nature of authorship and cultural property more generally, thus throwing light onto key contemporary issues in anthropology. A key theme that has emerged from the practice-oriented research is “material engagement” or “engaged material consciousness”. This idea suggests that what distinguishes the special kind of embodied knowledge of artisanal and creative production from other kinds of material knowledge is the dynamic way that the artisan feels connected to the objects and tools.
