Textile Economies
Power and Value from the Local to the Transnational
Patricia A McAnany editor Walter E Little editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:AltaMira Press,U.S.
Published:22nd Sep '11
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Textiles have been a highly valued and central part of the politics of human societies across culture divides and over millennia. The economy of textiles provides insight into the fabric of social relations, local and global politics, and diverse ideologies. Textiles are a material element of society that fosters the study of continuities and disjunctions in the economic and social realities of past and present societies. From stick-loom weaving to transnational factories, the production of cloth and its transformation into clothing and other woven goods offers a way to study the linkages between economics and politics. The volume is oriented around a number of themes: textile production, textiles as trade goods, textiles as symbols, textiles in tourism, and textiles in the transnational processes. Textile Economies appeals to a broad range of scholars interested in the intersection of material culture, political economy, and globalization, such as archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, economists, museum curators, and historians.
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
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
ISBN: 9780759120617
Dimensions: 239mm x 167mm x 25mm
Weight: 662g
342 pages