Sámi for sale: multimodal commodification of indigenousness

This projects explores how notions about indigenous groups are capitalized on for commercial purposes. By studying how ideas about Sámi culture (the only officially recognized indigenous people in the European Union) are recontextualized in commercial settings - e.g. in the branding of clothes, tourism experiences, food and artifacts - the project sheds light on the discursive processes involved when indigenous groups and minority cultures are transformed into symbolic and economic assets on global markets. How are ideas about the Sámi culture reinvented to attract and seduce consumers and tourists? What linguistic, visual and material recourses are employed to do so? In what ways are contemporary commodification of the Sámi related to historical practices of colonialism and exotification?