Deep Weft: Hand-Made Textile Making in Oaxaca (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant)

Summary

This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

This ethnographic project investigates the role that artisanal objects and ornamentation play in the constitution of gendered daily practices and ways of life in Oaxaca de Juárez (Mexico). Hand-made textile production is at the center of the social life of several rural Mexican communities. In this plural cultural context, servilletas are ordinary and richly adorned pieces produced by women artisans and associated with everyday and festive food. Despite their notorious presence in social life, they are absent from the Mexican textile debate. In order to analyze the social lives of adornments I will conduct participant observation over a period of 18 months. I will participate in servilletas producer’s embroidery classes, make weekly visits to popular markets, and interview women who regularly use adorned objects in their everyday activities. My research seeks to discuss how objects are entangled with the creation of gender relations, and looks at craftsmanship as gendered. By carrying out a research internship at Museo Textil de Oaxaca my research seeks to analyze the criterias applied to form the institution's textile collection. This project will shed light on the meanings of daily life aestheticization as a human characteristic, and the political role of embellishment in culturally shared life.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• WGF - Support for Research Projects   •
• Wenner-Gren Foundation

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Contact(s): Wenner-Gren Foundation

Notes

Rights & Attribution: This resource is an application from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been approved by the grantee solely for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cite, circulate, or duplicate any part of these documents without the express written consent of the author.

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