Assembling smallness : the American Small Industries Exhibition, Ceylon 1961

Abstract

The American Small Industries Exhibition was the first instance during the Cold War wherein the USA assembled a solo exhibit outside the framework of an established trade fair. It toured three nonaligned nations between 1958 and 1961: India, Ghana, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Ceylon's political climate was suffused with mounting anti-West sentiment, and the exhibition constitutes one of the few moments of sustained interaction between Ceylon and the USA. Using the exhibition's nomenclature as a provocation, this thesis examines the Small Industries Exhibition's aspirations in relation to political realities of 1960s Ceylon. Its aims were apparently clear: to support industrialisation and establish trade ties with three non-aligned, socialist-leaning nations shifting from an agricultural to an industrial economy. It was intended to serve as a clear endorsement of capitalistic modernisation, while refuting the socialist, state-centred models of development embodied in multi-year planning documents released by each of the three host countries. Descriptions of the fair, however, are contradictory and unexpected, commencing with the unusual presentation of the USA as a wellspring of small-scale industry. This thesis disassembles the exhibition into its many components, making a case for studying the very small to illuminate the very large. When examined closely, objects on view project a range of messages and betray a vast array of physical and ideological infrastructures. However, the thesis also examines the slender site of the suture - the manner in which objects and agents are assembled and deployed - not only to understand the composition of these contradictions, but also to read the act of translation. It argues that to dissect these assemblages is to peel away at the constructed line of the 'national' boundary, prompting an examination of knowledge transfers, affinities, and differences that are simultaneously local and transnational in their scope and impact. In particular, the thesis examines the fragmented, contingent, conflicting processes that are gathered together and described as modernisation, and challenges the measures used to divide the globe into 'developed' and 'developing' nations.