Textile Society of America Newsletter — Fall 2005

Collections Management and Preservation Project for the Kala Raksha Trust, Kutch, IndiaSymposium 2006From the PresidentTSA NewsTSA Study ToursCollections NewsConservation NewsTSA Member NewsCorrections ResearchConference ReviewsExhibition ReviewsBook ReviewsResourcesCalendar-Exhibitions, Lectures, Seminars, Workshops, Tours, ResidenciesConferences and SymposiaGrants and AwardsOpportunitie

Intangible Cultural Heritage in Japan: Bingata a traditional dyed textile from Okinawa

My thesis is an ethnographic investigation of the social impact of Japan’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) policy, a government scheme that supports practitioners of traditional crafts and performing arts and defines their skills accordingly. This concept of heritage was developed in Japan immediately following the Second World War, when the country, then under the USA’s control, was attempting to establish a social value of ‘tradition’ while also pursuing the economic and social development that has facilitated the nation’s Americanisation. People in contemporary Japan continue to engage in many traditional practices despite drastic social and cultural changes over the last century. Highly skilled artists and craftsmen, recognised as custodians of traditional cultural expressions, are known as ‘Living National Treasures’ and enjoy widespread respect. The Japanese concept of heritage differs significantly from that found in Euro-North American academic discussion, which has been developed chiefly through the orientation to seek the ‘sense of origin’ by preserving tangible heritage such as historic sites and monuments. Since the United Nations Educational, Science, and Cultural Organi[s]ation (UNESCO) established the Convention for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2004, the idea of ICH has been incorporated into Western heritage studies. In this context, however, ICH has focused mainly sociopolitical impacts on post-colonial countries. Little attempt has been made to understand how people experience ICH in their daily lives and why ‘tradition’ is needed in contemporary society. Japanese ICH comprises established social institutions in the context of a large, highly developed society where Western influence has led to homogenised ways of living. This thesis aims to question the generally held assumptions about ICH being a social norm through which people respect ‘tradition’ and expect it to be safeguarded for its own sake as a counter value of modernity, westernisation and globalisation. To challenge this monolithic assumption towards ICH, an anthropological analysis is essential to considering ICH as a cultural form of living human activity in an ever-changing society, which has come to be shared by people as a result of modernity. To observe a cultural form inventoried as ‘tradition’, the focus is placed on several entities such as the practitioner, the work, the production techniques, the consumer, and the space where the form originates, including the people who inhabit this space and their relationship with others. A key question is ‘what has happened to the relationship between these entities since the inception of the ICH policy in 1950’? To demonstrate the complexity and sophistication of a cultural form identified as ‘tradition’, I provide an example of a traditional textile-dyeing technique, known as Bingata, practised in Okinawa Prefecture. This study explores the transformative social meaning of Bingata through the process of its ‘traditionalisation’ and its impact to contemporary society. My ethnographic research provides examples of the practitioners’ and local people’s past and present relationship with Bingata, and the culture of consumption surrounding the use of Bingata material. Based on the personal narratives, my observations of people’s bodily actions through the Bingata material acquired during my field research, conducted at Bingata workshops, museums and tourist sites in Okinawa, and a kimono market in Tokyo, I will reveal the metamorphic character of Bingata ‘tradition’, realised through the transformation and innovation of technique, materials and form as a result of craftspeople’s experience of social dynamics and feedback from consumers. Through people’s physical and emotional engagement on the material in several different locations, I analysis the social capacity of production and consumption of Bingata as ‘tradition’. From the anthropological analysis of Bingata practice, I present a constructive approach to ICH, viewing it is a social milieu in which people and their actions and emotions are actively related, by establishing the value of ‘tradition’ in a cultural form. I emphasise how the conservation activities implied by the concept of ICH are better understood as an effort to establish a social institution of ‘tradition’, in which people recognise the value of a cultural form by producing and consuming it

Silk and post-conflict Cambodia: Embodied practices and global and local dynamics of heritage and knowledge transference (1991-2018)

My thesis examines silk in terms of craft, heritage and use in contemporary Cambodia under the perspective of a history of trade, conflict, loss, and foreign influence. In Cambodia, silk weaving developed into a cottage activity since the twelfth century, producing ceremonial textiles for the domestic market and trade. The Khmer Rouge regime, which claimed close to two million lives between 1975 and 1979, heavily impacted this ancestral craft by impeding silk yarn production, weaving, and skills transmission. The country’s slow reconstruction boosted by the reopening of foreign investment in the 1990s has deeply modified its cultural landscape. How to sustain threads of knowledge and cultural identity in a postconflict context? In this thesis, the dynamics of rupture and revival of cultural practices and knowledge redefined under local and global tensions are investigated through the scope of silk. In doing so, the position of silk in Cambodia and its global diaspora since the fall of the destructive Khmer Rouge regime opens the way to a polyvocal exploration. Angles of analysis include looking at the enmeshment of silk in Cambodia’s history, geography and geopolitics and the structuration of the silk sector via its main foreign and domestic actors since the 1990s. Recentring on the weavers’ key role in skills transmission, the craft of Cambodian silk weaving and the meaning of textiles and dress are lenses through which this study explore themes of embodiment, tacit knowledge, cultural memory, identity, and empowerment. Through several periods of fieldwork in Cambodia and Long Beach, California, combining ethnographic methodologies, interviews and Action Research, this thesis produces its own base of primary oral and visual resources. This prime material on contemporary silk practices in post-conflict Cambodia are put in dialogue with archival and object-based studies to reveal an updated critical perspective on the multilayered nature of silk. Ultimately, the polyphony of the human geography forming the silk sector aims to delink monolithic narratives on Cambodian cultural identity and heritage

The Kyoto Brand: Protecting Agricultural and Culinary Heritage

Farmers, chefs, government officials, and consumers in Kyoto, Japan have worked to protect their gastronomic heritage and promote the local food industry using place brands that allow them to engage with outside actors and resources, resulting in a comparatively open and inclusive localism. Stakeholders in Kyoto’s agricultural and food sector have sought to minimize the negative impacts of globalization not by trying to close their borders or enact rules that strictly define and demarcate Kyoto’s food culture as separate, pure, and resistant to change but rather by allowing for the development of multiple place brands that can help better position Kyoto’s agriculture and food industry on the global stage. Kyoto’s place brands tend toward inclusiveness and fluidity, enabling overlapping and nested place brands to co-exist and supporting the incorporation of objects, ideas, and people from outside of Kyoto. At scales that vary from neighborhoods to the entire prefecture, these brands draw on Kyoto’s appeal as Japan’s “ancient imperial capital,” a trope that has helped make Kyoto one of Japan’s most powerful place brands according to recent consumer surveys. This research pays particular attention to place brands for three different products: heirloom vegetables, green tea, and local cuisine. In this dissertation, I analyze data obtained from fieldwork conducted in Kyoto in 2012-3, including semi-structured and informal interviews and participant observation at events centered on Kyoto’s food culture, from farmers’ markets and culinary research meetings to annual events like the prefectural and national agricultural fairs for tea. I also utilize discourse analysis of government documents, marketing materials, and various media. By demonstrating how people treat place as a brand and analyzing the repercussions this has, this research adds a new dimension to the theoretical literature on place. It also provides an ethnographic case study about boundary maintenance to the literature on branding and place brands. Kyoto’s example also holds lessons for local economies seeking to strategically position themselves in the face of new challenges, demonstrating the power of place brands as well as the insight that openness and flexibility can serve to protect and revivify local industry and tradition