International Relations Committee invites you to a talk by Dr. Sam Pack.


Sam Pack is an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kenyon College in the USA.  His research interests address the relationship between media and culture and specifically focus on an anthropological approach to the production and reception of television, film, photographs, and new media.  Dr. Pack has authored almost 50 articles published in a wide variety of peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

This talk will address legacy of Dean W. Worcester, an American anthropologist working as a colonial official, who traveled through the northern Philippines in the early 20th century to compile an extensive visual record of the indigenous groups known as the "Igorots."  Worcester later used these materials to campaign against the early granting of Philippine independence from American rule by depicting these natives, who presumably represented all Filipinos, as uncivilized and incapable of autonomy.  A hundred years later, domestic and international tourists flock to the popular destination of Baguio, referred to as "the summer capital of the Philippines," to dress as Igorots as well as to pay Igorot people to pose for photographs that will invariably be shared in various platforms of social media.  Some observers have condemned this practice as "photogra-fee" or even photographic prostitution. It is also eerily similar to the fabricated depictions and unequal power relationships in the Worcester photographs and film.  But perhaps this is not the demeaning spectacle that it appears to be, and there is something more subversive happening in this touristic encounter. The conformity by natives to the expected images of tourists suggests that the issue is not simply the assimilation of the other but rather who is assimilating whom.