Textile Economies

Power and Value from the Local to the Transnational

Edited by Walter E. Little University at Albany, Patricia A. McAnany

Hardback - £117.00

Publication date:

22 September 2011

Length of book:

342 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

Dimensions:

239x167mm
7x9"

ISBN-13: 9780759120617

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.