Organizer and Chair: Penny Van Esterik, York University
Discussant: Sandra Niessen, University of Alberta
Southeast Asia is renowned for its culturally expressive crafts such as textiles, woodcarvings, and ceramics. Their creation and use make visible the relations between people, technology, politics, and economics. Recent anthropological interest in material culture combined with theories of simple commodity production have addressed how the introduction of new technology, expanded markets and a growing cash economy affects the division of labour in small-scale craft enterprises at the household level. This panel explores the extent to which artisans resist or succumb to these transnational forces.
The panel papers focus on women's contemporary cloth production in Lao P.D.R. and in northern Philippines, women's ceramic production in Northeast Thailand, and on men's woodcarving in northern Sumatra. They address how the modern market economy has been able to transform "traditional" systems of production and marketing by restructuring practices and transforming the meaning of objects. They explore how the macro-forces of state policies have appropriated indigenous crafts to serve the representation of the nation state and tourist-consumer demands. By focusing on specific local contexts, each paper illustrates how artisans and traders perceive change and shape their responses to externally-exerted pressures of economic transformation and development. This panel places agency and gender into the analysis of transformations in contemporary crafts, and provides an opportunity for micro-level exploration of instances of adaptation, reinterpretation and resistance in developing Southeast Asia.
Fabricating National Identity: Textiles in Lao P.D.R.
Penny Van Esterik, York University
Commodities solve problems for households; they also solve problems for nation states. This paper examines how woven textiles help solve the problem of creating Lao national identity. The Lao state faces two problems: first, the problem of creating "unity in diversity," among more than fifty ethnic groups, and second, the problem of obliterating the royal center as a source for inspiration in design and meaning, particularly with reference to sumptuary laws and traditional relations between textile producing villages and royal centers.
Lao P.D.R. is resource poor-except in the domain of textiles where its many ethnic groups produce a wide variety of woven, embroidered, appliquéd and otherwise decorated cloth. Recent observations (December 1994 to February 1995) in the markets of Vientiane and Luang Prabang revealed a wide range of textile products whose meanings have altered. How are textiles read by different audiences in the context of transforming Lao identities? Consider Lao officials who want Lao women to continue to appear "traditional" and easily distinguished from Thai women; tourists who seek authentic, elaborately decorated textile souvenirs; monasteries who hope to regenerate Buddhist piety through donations and the reciprocal provision of ritual celebrations; and women who need to generate cash for household purchases.
Underlying these economic concerns are a number of deeper analytical issues which are made visible through commodity production. These issues require consideration of the historical and cultural context of textile production in Lao P.D.R.
Interchangeability in Men's and Women's Craft Production in the Upland
Philippines
B. Lynne Milgram, York University
Macroeconomic theories of development argue that simple commodity enterprises have been dramatically restructured by articulation with the capitalist economy such that women's positions have been marginalized. This scholarship (Boserup, 1970; Etienne, 1980) maintains that this is especially true for women working in household craft production since these women often work in return for low rewards to combine their work with their reproductive tasks. Such an approach, however, overlooks the agency of individual actors to ensure their continued access to the means of production and distribution.
This paper focuses on female handicraft producers in Banaue, Ifugao, upland Philippines to argue that, with expanded markets, artisans are actively adapting and reinterpreting traditional production processes to meet contemporary demands. Rather than passive recipients of change, weavers have selectively incorporated new technology, upright vs. backstrap looms, with the result that they remain independent artisans in a largely "holistic" rather than "prescriptive" (Franklin, 1991) system of cloth production. Practicing "occupational multiplicity" (Comitas, 1973), female artisans cross and recross borders between their varied activities-reproduction, agricultural and craft production, trade-transforming their skills and knowledge of one sphere for use in another. With changing consumer tastes, some weavers are now producing baskets and woodcarvings, crafts previously the prerogative of men, while others have accumulated enough capital to begin their own businesses.
With the commercialization of Banaue's handicraft industry, female artisans have chosen to participate in capitalist practices in highly variable ways. As "commodity-producing peasants," (Cook 1984) they move in and out of capitalist systems depending upon the context of the situation to maximize their personal position and that of their household.
Stealing a Good Idea: Innovation and Competition Among Toba Batak Woodcarvers
Andrew Causey, University of Texas, Austin
Tourism on Samosir Island (North Sumatra, Indonesia) has provided numerous business opportunities for those Toba Batak woodcarvers who have the tools and knowledge necessary to produce objects based on traditional forms and designs. Nevertheless, competition in the marketplace is intense and carvers are always looking for ways to increase their sales. Some carvers specialize in making inexpensive trinkets in the traditional style which have a quick turnover, while others specialize in the creation of innovative sculptures.
Those carvers who specialize in producing innovative forms find that their cipta baru (new ideas) are extremely susceptible to theft by less creative competitors. This unfortunate situation arises because innovative works, like all other carvings made for tourists, must be publicly displayed in the marketplace in order to be sold and are thus revealed for inspection by the entire community of carvers. It is not uncommon that an inventive woodcarver finds his cipta baru reproduced in dozens of badly-made imitations with a week of his creation. This undermines not only his competitive edge, but also his desire to continue innovating. This paper, based on 15 months of field research on Samosir Island, examines how Toba Batak woodcarvers create and compete in order to be economically successful in the marketplace of tourist souvenirs.
Women at the Center of an Industrializing Craft: Earthenware Production in
Northeast Thailand
H. Leedom Lefferts, Jr., Drew University
This paper discusses the transformations in women's contemporary production of ceramics among members of Northeast Thailand's Thai-Khorat ethnic group. As in Southeast Asia generally, women produce earthenware pottery. Traditionally, women produced and distributed pots on an intermittent basis. Over the past two centuries, Thai-Khorat earthenware producers have expanded out of their original locations. Today, Thai-Khorat pottery-making households form distinctive neighborhoods or villages across much of the Khorat Plateau. Without access to rice land, these households specialize in full-time, year-round earthenware production of a narrow range of pot forms. Women form the pots, but other family members assist in other aspects of production. Recent developments in the region include the establishment of an extensive road network reaching into most villages and the availability of cheap motorized vehicles. This has resulted in men marketing women's ceramic production.
Thus, over the past 50 years, Thai-Khorat households have become industrialized craft units based on women's work. This industrialization of craft production and the appearance of some forms in metal and plastic may have overwhelmed or undersold intermittent earthenware production by neighboring Thai-Lao women and contributed to the development of an ethnic underclass. This emerging economic underclass is identified with women's production of earthenware pots.