Organizer and Chair: Carol J. Ireson-Doolittle, Willamette University
The shifting production, appearance, and use of textiles
among Laotian peoples has encouraged this panel’s broadly based reconsideration of long-standing
assumptions of how textiles mark gender and ethnic identity, function as religious
artifacts, and are exchanged as commodities. As women in Laos renegotiate their
roles in contexts of economic liberalization, tourism, globalization, and associated
changes in their communities and households, their textile-related activities
and products also change. Individual panelists will analyze different aspects
of these textile transformations. For example, these days Phuthai women in the
Lao PDR produce hand-woven cloth for new as well as old markets. Iu Mien women
seldom wear the richly embroidered clothing for which they were famous, but
continue to exchange their embroidery in ways that bind together the now globalized
Mien communities of people, ancestors, and spirits. Women still provide banners
to Lao Buddhist temples, but now, rather than weaving these banners, women sometimes
make them from plain, purchased fabric or purchase their banners outright at
the local market. Finally, despite moving from looms under the house to newly-established
weaving workshops, Lao women uphold weaving’s central place in ensuring
family health and well-being. The panelists and discussant will slightly abbreviate
their presentations to engage in conversation with each other and members of
the audience. Collectively, we will explore both changes and enduring values
embodied in Lao textiles in the context of shifting gender systems, other social
and cultural transformations, and women’s active participation in these
changes.
Linda McIntosh, Simon Fraser University
Little is known about the nature and role of the textiles produced by the
Phuthai peoples living in central and southern Laos. If one asks a Phuthai
woman to describe her dress, she will answer, “sin mii lae suea lap lai,” or “skirt
decorated with weft ikat technique and a fitted blouse of indigo dyed cotton,
decorated with hand-woven, patterned red silk.” In traditional Phuthai
society, following the gender roles in Tai culture, women have been the primary
producers of cloth. Women have been responsible for all stages of textile production,
and young women’s mastery of the skills is considered their coming of
age. Phuthai women still grow indigo and cotton; indigo-stained hands and the
repetitious sounds of weaving are still found in Phuthai villages. This paper
focuses on Phuthai women living in Savannakhet Province, Laos, where the presenter
conducted fieldwork during 2004 collecting data using interview, observation,
and other research methods. The roles of women and hand-woven cloth constantly
adjust to the changing environment, and as the Phuthai experience political,
economic, and social change, women and textile production undergo transformations.
The number of households producing hand-woven cloth has decreased with increasing
opportunities for formal education and employment outside the home. Today, as
a result, textile production is only one of several activities that may signify
a woman’s coming of age and only some Phuthai women continue to apply
their weaving skills to provide for their families, using their income from
the sales of their textiles for this purpose.
Sandra Cate, San Jose State University
In considering new and enduring contexts for the “self-fashioning” projects
of the Iu Mien – those living in California as well as those in Laos and
Thailand -- this paper challenges the salience of their “traditional” clothing,
with its colorful and densely patterned needlework. As many Iu Mien women have
put away the clothing that marked them as Mien in the Thai and Lao highlands,
now wearing lowland-style sin there or Western clothing here, the centrality
of embroidery as an obvious marker of ethnicity and gender – as what Iu
Mien women do and wear – seems to have faded. Yet, the continuing global
trade in such needlework, the infrequent, but spectacular display of Iu Mien
dress at the King Pan’s Birthday celebrations, the circulation of video
images, and the discourse about their needlework by Mien women themselves,
suggests its shifting, but still relevant function in the production of Mien
culture. Building upon long-term ethnographic research in Mien communities and
villages in both Northern California and Southeast Asia, a 2007 trip to Laos
accompanying five Mien women provides current interview and observational data
to consider how their embroidery negotiates relations between diasporic Mien
and family members remaining in Southeast Asia, their status in national imaginations,
and their place within an expanded universe of humans, spirits, and ancestors.
Rebecca S. Hall, University of California, Los Angeles
Lao Buddhist banners, mostly textiles hand-woven by women for donation at
local temples, are found in many villages and towns throughout Laos and the
surrounding region. As with other Lao textile types, these banners typically
reflect regional weaving styles, and thus differ in appearance from one location
to the next. The differences in Lao banners are largely aesthetic, with variations
in motifs, design execution, color, materials, and size. Such disparities
reflect not only community preferences, but also women’s personalized interpretations
of Buddhist symbols, stories, and themes. In fact, the display of these banners
at Lao temples provides women with the opportunity to make merit and adds women’s
agency and individual interpretations to an otherwise predominantly male
space. In recent years, numerous and ongoing changes in Laos have transformed
banner production and appearance. For example, the use of plain manufactured
cloth for banners without any inclusion of the motifs found on the hand-woven
ones is the predominant result of modernization in the area. Additional changes
include the replacement of locally-produced hand-woven banners with market-purchased
banners and thus an increase in uniformity and decrease of regional variation
in banner styles. I will also discuss specific modernization issues and provide
a gender-related, religious contextualization regarding the transformations
that may have developed in the current environment of modernization and change.
This presentation is based on interviews and observations conducted in Laos
in 2005-2006 as part of a larger study.
Kristin Lundberg, University of Kansas
Lao women directly support their families with their hand-weaving but they
labor not just for cash. As women weave, they shape their own well-being
as well as that of their families, producing and reproducing households in the
process. Health occurs, to a large degree, because of commitments to relationships,
institutions, and productive means. These resources are affected by historical,
ideological, political, social, and economic forces. Although these influences
have changed weaving work arrangements in Laos, they have not yet altered
hand-weaving as a resource for the social reproduction of health in Lao society.
This paper describes how Lao textiles embody what happens in people’s
lives. It explains how hand-weaving exemplifies health as it is socially reproduced
in Laos. A social reproduction of health perspective focuses on how health is
created, maintained, and perpetuated by the ways individuals, in the context
of family and society, utilize resources of relationships, information, and
material goods. These are, of course, gendered processes. Data for this paper
was collected in Laos over fifteen months from 2003-2005 using standard anthropological
methods that included participant observation, interviews, and surveys. With
a few exceptions, women are still the primary producers of Lao textiles. They
continue their key roles of ensuring not just survival of individuals in a biological
sense, but also maintenance of a way of life. By exploring the impact of differing
weaving arrangements, this paper hopes to stimulate discussion of the effect
of economic forces on how women weavers ensure the well-being of households.
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