As a former anthropology major and current anthropology geek, I have a huge soft spot for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which is coming up at the end of June. Each year, the Festival highlights three traditions that have contributed to American culture -- some indigenous, some brought over and adapted by immigrants -- and hosts people from within that tradition for public performances, demonstrations and workshops. It's a great learning experience, and it's genuinely refreshing to see "culture" defined as "something people do" rather than "something people believe." (The latter is much more liable to lead to the sort of mishigas that ends with "Lying is part of Muslim culture.") I have huge reservations, however, about one of this year’s themes: the Peace Corps. Sure, after fifty years’ worth of bright, mostly idealistic Americans have gone through the program and into the wider world, the Corps has accumulated a “folklife” and cultural practices all its own. (Presenting these at the Folklife Festival could actually be pretty fun: I’m picturing a self-deprecating but informative demonstration of how Corps volunteers in different remote areas learn to adjust their personal hygiene routines, or a display of phone cards and postcards.) But the Peace Corps’ own culture isn’t what the Smithsonian wants to focus on: their website promises to “bring together Peace Corps volunteers—both past and present—with many of the people with whom they have served from countries around the world” for craft displays and performances. So it’s using the Peace Corps as a theme to present “folklife” from a variety of places Peace Corps volunteers serve – but making the service, not the folklife, the star. This seems like a serious disservice to both Peace Corps volunteers and their local partners. First of all, Corps service is defined, if anything, by the diversity of volunteers’ experiences – mashing together performances from a hodgepodge of service sites reinforces the idea that the “developing world” is all the same. More importantly, though, using the culture of places where Peace Corps volunteers go as a way to celebrate the Peace Corps makes it a story where the visitor is the protagonist, not members of the culture themselves. We’ve seen this movie before — it was called Dances with Wolves, and later it was called Avatar, and it’ll go by many other names before the trope finally dies. The communities and people Peace Corps volunteers serve are important for a lot of reasons, but not because they help white girls learn to dance. I’m sure it’s true that, in many cases, Peace Corps volunteers play a role in protecting and strengthening local traditions — by partnering with dance education groups or helping turn traditional artisans into entrepreneurs, for example. But it’s extremely hard to acknowledge the role “development” volunteers play without overstating it and turning the Americans into the Heroes Who Saved the Village, and it’ll be even harder when the program is designed to celebrate the Peace Corps to begin with. If the Smithsonian does manage to do this right, it’ll be because they use the Peace Corps to explore how different peoples in the “developing world” respond to the globalization and “development” the Corps represents – which songs, crafts or foods have been preserved, adapted, or exported. Focusing not on what volunteers do while they’re there, but what their effect (and that of other globalizing forces) has been over time, would be a more honest way to honor them. I hope the Smithsonian manages to pull it off.
