When confronted to marginal practices, there are two attitudes that are very common and, even though seem different and opposing between each other, they are actually rooted in the same patronizing tone of the colonial discourse.
One of this attitudes is a pitiful one, in which the people that practice them are regarded as indignant or vulgar, for what they do is measured with the same yardstick that professional practices; this also results in highly welfarist and patronizing outcomes. This is very common in aid-related projects from the first world to the third world, and parts from the base that the citizens of the receiving country cannot solve their issues on their own, but need the intervention of a civilized and experience culture. In this case, there is a flux of knowledge and information from the center to the periphery.
Now, just as dangerous as being pitiful, though more honest with what it wants to achieve, is the romanticization of these practices. Being nostalgic about the developing-worlds’ slow-life, evidences how uninformed is the center which, with the intention of being comprehensive to the condition of the other, ends up being ever more discriminatory. In this case, there is a flux of knowledge and information from the periphery to the center, but is still taken and curated by central forces, and rarely overcomes the closed circle of the art and design world of the developed country.
it is what it is 