2022 Spring Issue - Craft
Craft as Production of Cultural Space and Identity
How are craft production, techniques and skills interwoven into the space of the “everyday” as culture and identity in South and Southeast Asia? How are different understandings of tradition and indigeneity to be incorporated into such a discussion? That is, crafts’ practices and values seem to raise interesting questions, tensions and anxieties about tradition as the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, and something that is indigenous by fact of originating or occurring naturally in a particular place. Consequently, ideas of “heritage” and “indigeneity” that are increasingly important in framing crafts draw their discursive and practical power from whether a practice originated in a certain place, how it came to be in a certain locale/nation-state, and whether it will continue to be transmitted. These questions are not just abstract ones but operate within the space of craft as politics, whether of the handmade, development, worship, identity, etc. Further, we may speak of craft aesthetics as the routing and channeling of forces (spiritual or economic) to shape space, and determine the form and contents of the space.
By looking at craft as the politics of making and shaping cultural space via identity of people and their objects and practices, this issue draws our attention to practices of communities in relation to production, circulation and consumption of crafts in an Asian context, more specifically, a juxtaposition of India and Indonesia, two countries that have long been connected by trade routes. Each example in this issue exists in the interface between culture, commodity and networks, and the dialog between tradition and indigeneity. Maintaining a clear distinction between tradition and indigeneity, Geoffrey Gowlland criticizes how indigenous crafts are often defined as traditional. In this context, he suggests that ‘Indigenous crafts are particular kinds of crafts not because they are ‘traditional’ as such, but simply because they are made by indigenous people’ (Gowlland: 52). This statement hints at the kinds of complexities we find in this issue.
The four papers incorporated in this issue are studies from Indonesia and India involving different types of crafts and communities. Across these instances, we see how crafts are determined by various factors, such as the ecological conditioning of craft to the caste order, found in the Indian context. This issue delves into how craft can come to be associated with cultural identity and the recognition of indigenous groups/communities through practices that produce not just objects but also certain forms of relations, supported by embodiment, aesthetics, experiences, etc. Drawing upon their ethnographic research as designers, architects and social scientists, the authors in this issue are also situated in specific locales. They try to understand various materials, techniques and forms of craft such as textiles, basketry, pottery and clay idol making. As practitioners, some of them are also involved in craft design and development, and bring those insights into the analysis. For all, attention to techniques and practices (of making, material manipulation, usage, ecological interactions, movements between work and home, formation of neighborhoods through crafts, festivals, etc.) forms a significant aspect of their study.
The relationship between craft-makers and the craft remains a significant point of inquiry throughout this issue. The renowned scholar Vijaya Ramaswamy while situating the handloom weaving and weaver community in Southern India, wrote that “in a craft based society, as would be true of many pre-industrial traditional societies, all crafted objects were an extension of the personality of the craft-person” (Ramaswamy 2013:9). Of course, the craft societies explored here are in a post-industrial scape and this creates further complexities in narratives of craft as identity. Innovation for some of our interlocutors is the negotiation between new and old techniques as they move between different times and spaces, what are often referred to as “traditional” and/or “indigenous” and that of the “modern” via the craft ‘industry’. Such shifts herald new socio-political conditions and the creation of new cultural spaces both for craft-makers and consumers of their products.
Tim Ingold (2000: 291) notes that skill is “not an attribute of the individual body in isolation but of the whole system of relations constituted by the presence of the artisan in his or her environment.” The artifact’s form results from these relations. Combined with LeFebvre’s observation in The Production of Space that humans do not “live by words alone” (1991[1974]: 35) and that space is a “social reality”, a “set of relations and forms” (ibid: 116), we can propose that craft produces space through entities such as skill and technique, via the making of relationships, objects, images and other entities. People craft artifacts and experiences as forms and expressions of their (embodied) beliefs. The issue attempts to discuss crafts and craftsmanship, the varied meanings of artifact production and creation in contemporary South/S.E. Asia as the creation of forms of space in all their complexity.
In our first offering, Lira Anindita Utami explores “Gringsing Fabric as Spatial Cosmology and Relation-making”. This article is based on an extensive study of the textile-making culture of Tenganan Pagringsingan, a village located in the region of Karangasem in the southeastern part of Bali island in Indonesia. In this village, a type of double-ikat woven textile called Gringsing has been produced for generations by the Bali Aga (the indigenous Balinese). It is believed to be a sacred healer and is highly sanctified by both the producing community and the rest of the Balinese Hindu community. Gringsing is used by the Bali Aga in various individual and communal rituals as offerings and ceremonial costumes to ward off sickness, guarding both humankind and the land against calamity and defilement. Through ethnographic and literature research, this paper explores how Tenganan producers innovate the sacrality of double-ikat Gringsing by embodying a set of spiritual, cosmological and environmental perspectives and values, within a complex socio-religious framework.
In our next article Debapriya Chakrabarti makes Kolkata’s Kumartuli neighbourhood, famous for idol-crafting for Durga Puja, the center of her study. “Sustaining Spaces of Idol-crafting and Communities of Practice: Seasonality, Adaptability, and Cultural Identities in Kumartuli, Kolkata” is situated against the backdrop of the Hindu festival that has been nominated for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status. Iconic clay idols are prepared in Kumartuli for over six months, where festival preparations reach their peak in the monsoon and early autumn. While clay idol-making has been studied extensively as religious art/craft less attention has been paid within material religion to the creation and use of religious space as festival-making, and the type of spatial practices required. Constant negotiations and adaptations are required within cramped spaces to accommodate a large seasonal informal workforce and the multi-layered exchanges despite the failing infrastructure of the unorganized neighbourhood/slum of Kumartuli.
In “Bamboo Crafts Development Projects in Indonesia: Who to Develop? What is to be Developed?” Amira Rahardiani explores how the crafts development project model has played a crucial role in developing Indonesian socio-economic situations at the communal, regional and national levels. The top-down development project model adopted by the government has caused an overlap of development systems among agencies trying to reach the grassroots levels for the past three decades. Yet, the attempts to “develop” craft industries inevitably conflicts with preserving producers’ work and customs. This article unveils subject-object relations in a traditional bamboo cottage industry in Cikiray Hamlets, West Java, where the ecological factors around the hamlets shape the daily and seasonal routines of the craftspeople involved in commodifying their crafts. The unsettled situation of crafts development discourse presented in this article depicts the current struggle to preserve traditions and systems in crafts producers’ environment. The dialogue of craft thus involves deeper consideration and is not limited to only the development of economic factors.
The final piece in this issue is Lalita Waldia’s “Likhai: A Journey Through the Craft of Wood Carving” that unfolds the journey of likhai, a craft of wood carving in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand from a glorified past to a disappearing craft. Likhai, which was once an integral part of communities, is an amalgamation of diverse cultural influences and represents the land and its people. The article makes the case that it is vital to understand the whole system that revolves around the practice, providing details of the origin of the craft and how it represents the importance of likhai for the communities. A narrative is thus created that connects the changes in the region with changes that have impacted the craft and the craftspeople. Likhai is no longer part of modern Kumaoni houses but despite this still manages to be in the hearts of people.
References
Gowlland, Geoffrey. 2021. “Indigenous Craft is Political: Making and Remaking Colonizer-colonized Relations in Taiwan.” in Craft is Political (ed.) D. Wood. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 51:64
Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London and New York: Routledge.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ramaswamy, Vijaya. 2013. The Song of the Loom: Weaver Folk Traditions in South India. Delhi: Primus Books.
