American Aloha: Cultural Tourism and the Negotiation of Tradition by Heather A. Diamond

At the 1989 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, throngs of visitors gathered on the National Mall to celebrate Hawai'i's multicultural heritage through its traditional arts. The "edu-tainment" spectacle revealed a richly complex Hawai'i few tourists ever see and one never before or since replicated in a national space. The program was restaged a year later in Honolulu for a local audience and subsequently inspired several spin-offs in Hawai'i. In both Washington, D.C., and Honolulu, the program instigated a new paradigm for cultural representation.Based on archival research and extensive interviews with festival organizers and participants, this innovative cross-disciplinary study uncovers the behind-the-scenes negotiations and processes that inform the national spectacle of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.Intersecting the fields of museum studies, folklore studies, Hawaiian studies, performance studies, cultural studies, and American studies, American Aloha supplies a nuanced analysis of