New Jersey Decoys PDF Download

The apparent history of the duck decoy may be described in terms of a series of transformations from hunting tool to collectible artifact to commodity. This transformational trajectory may be viewed, moreover, in an economic light: the decoy originally functions to provide ducks for subsistence or profit; it next enters collections which are at first owned by individuals who had some connection to the decoy as hunting tool, and where it begins to acquire associations with (market) price and to become dissociated from social and cultural relations of value; and it finally becomes a more or less "pure" commodity, where price (based on provenance) figures almost exclusively in defining its identity. This dissertation traces these transformations of the duck decoy, but does so by uncovering its dynamic history and displaying this as a part of the mentalite of coastal New Jersey in the last half of the nineteenth century. The argument is grounded in a close reading of three distinct but related bodies of material: (1) nineteenth century published sources such as sportsman's manuals and ornithological literature; (2) nineteenth century primary source materials generated locally along the New Jersey coast, such as newspaper accounts, census records, diaries, business ledgers, and related materials; and (3) interview materials collected ethnographically with twentieth century decoy carvers, hunters, collectors, haymen and local residents of the coastal towns. These materials collectively suggest that the decoy was part of a society and culture that actively resisted the penetration of capitalism and capitalist relations. It is on this ground that the decoy is a highly contested object today.