Textile Economies: Power and Value from the Local to the Transnational

by Walter E. Little (Editor), Patricia A. McAnany (Editor)

Overview

The economy of textiles provides insight into the fabric of social relations, local and global politics, and diverse ideologies. Textile production and exchange represent a key node for the intersections of multiple aspects of ancient and modern economies, including social-class relations, gender, tourism, exchange, commerce, and transpolity relationships. A political economy of textiles, discussed from a broad interdisciplinary perspective, offers ways to understand cloth and clothing as parts of mutually constitutive processes that shape and reflect economic practices, cultural ideologies, and sociopolitical rank.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759120617
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/22/2011
Series:	Society for Economic Anthropology Monograph Series
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Walter E. Little is associate professor of Anthropology at the University at Albany, SUNY, and director of the Ethnographic Field School in Guatemala. He is the author of Mayas in the Marketplace and co-author of Mayas in Postwar Guatemala. Patricia A. McAnany is Kenan Eminent Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Ancestral Maya Economies in Archaeological Perspective and Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society.

Table of Contents

Introduction Part I. Creativity and Value Chapter 1. Exchange without Brokers: Weaver-Client Relationships in Senegal Laura L. Cochrane Chapter 2. Heritage and Authorship Debates in Three Sumatran Songkets Susan Rodgers Chapter 3. Creativity, Place, and Commodities: The Making of Public Economies in Andean Apparel Industries Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, Jason Antrosio, and Eric C. Jones Chapter 4. Tivaivai and Value in the Cook Islands Ritual Economy: The Creation of Value, Values, and Valuables in a Diasporic Community Jane Horan Chapter 5. The Political Economy of an Art Form: The Akotifahana Cloth of Madagascar Sarah Fee Part II. The Power of Cloth and the Sanctity of Power Chapter 6. Textiles and Chimu Identity under Inka Hegemony on the North Coast of Peru Cathy Lynne Costin Chapter 7. Late Classic Maya Textile Economies: An Object History Approach Christina T. Halperin Chapter 8. Hohokam Cotton: Irrigation, Production, and Trade in Perhistory Robert C. Hunt Chapter 9. Neighborly Ties and Sohbet: Global Capitalism and the Work of Weaving in Konya, Turkey Damla Isik Chapter 10. Sanctity, Social Distance, and the Price of Cloth in a Moroccan Suq John A. Napora Part III. (Re)invented Traditions in Transnational Context Chapter 11. Good Hands: Silk Weaving and Transnational Artisan Partnerships in Cambodia Susan Falls and Jessica Smith Chapter 12. Recommunitizing Practice, Refashionizing Capital: Artisans and Entrepreneurship in a Philippine Textile Industry B. Lynne Milgram Chapter 13. The Decline of a Weaving Cooperative in Western Turkey Kimberly Hart Chapter 14. Made in Italy: Metaphors for Merchandising Textiles in a Global Economy Joan Weibel-Orlando Chapter 15. Creating Fame and Fortune from the Ruins of Handloom in Kerala, Southern India Lucy Norris

Editorial Reviews

Spanning every continent, and a temporal arc that begins in pre-history and takes us to the present, this edited collection demonstrates how much we can learn through textiles—among the most potent, meaningful, and desired of human creations. Privileging the artisanal domain of textile production, while at the same time acknowledging the significance of industrialism, the respective authors illuminate labor processes, societal inequality, global interactions, and the constitution of both spiritual and material value.

Jane Schneider

Textile Economies brings together a group of intelligently researched and argued articles that examine how different systems of value play into the lives of textiles and the people who create, market, and consume them. Relationships of power and strategies to negotiate these thread through richly detailed case studies that focus on the local but are ever mindful of the global flows and creative (re)imaginings in contemporary and historical contexts. A welcome contribution to the growing literature on the social life of textiles.

Carol Hendrickson

Textile Economies brings together a group of intelligently researched and argued articles that examine how different systems of value play into the lives of textiles and the people who create, market, and consume them. Relationships of power and strategies to negotiate these thread through richly detailed case studies that focus on the local but are ever mindful of the global flows and creative (re)imaginings in contemporary and historical contexts. A welcome contribution to the growing literature on the social life of textiles.--Carol Hendrickson, Marlboro College

Spanning every continent, and a temporal arc that begins in pre-history and takes us to the present, this edited collection demonstrates how much we can learn through textiles--among the most potent, meaningful, and desired of human creations. Privileging the artisanal domain of textile production, while at the same time acknowledging the significance of industrialism, the respective authors illuminate labor processes, societal inequality, global interactions, and the constitution of both spiritual and material value.--Jane Schneider, City University of New York

From the Publisher