“The thread making was done in the snow, and the cloth woven in the snow, washed in the snow, and bleached in the snow. Everything from the first making of the thread to the last finishing touches was done in the snow” (138).
This description by Japanese author, Yasunari Kawabata, evokes one of the most extreme and poetic examples of process and textile creation documented and analyzed in Material Choices: Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific. The articles compiled within this fascinating collection represent a range of how some of the commonest plants such as hemp or nettle and the rarest, the leaf stems of the lotus, a water plant, are transformed into pliant strands of fiber and woven into ordinary and extraordinary fabrics. This is a book about the complexities of process and the essence of materiality. The topic is global but the editors have wisely restricted their focus in terms of fabric construction to the genre of loom-woven textiles, and regarding geographic distribution to case studies from Micronesia, the Philippines, and East and Southeast Asia, excluding China.
Cotton will be the most familiar cloth to readers and is ultimately obtained from a seed, while “bast” derives from processing the “complex tissue layer located under the bark” (25). Bast is composed of the vascular bundles of a plant, which convey the necessary fluids and nutrients for survival. Through removal processes such as scraping or steaming, the bast fiber emerges as “ribbon-like layers that can be split into varying degrees of fineness according to the texture desired for the woven fabric” (25).
Although this topic may appear to be quite specialized and limited to a very specific audience of textile aficionados, the authors regard bast and leaf fibers as cultural forms. The themes of each chapter encompass some of the most salient concerns of folklore and anthropology scholarship today. Different chapters examine notions of cultural and personal identity (eclectic identities), authenticity vis-à-vis revitalization initiatives and the marketplace (local and global), hybridity and creolization, symbolic legacies generated by the trajectories of tradition and change, gender and power differentials, vestiges of colonialism and nation-states, etc. The theoretical “cast” of these various discussions and case studies is conditioned by issues of marginality, border zones, globalization, occupational multiplicity, and informal economies at local grassroots levels traceable to the critical writings of Anna Tsing and the classical concepts of identity and the nation-state of Richard Handler and Benedict Anderson.
In the introductory section, the editors, Lynne Milgram and Roy Hamilton, offer an important prelude to the content of subsequent chapters relative to an examination of theoretical issues and context, and an explication of the emphasis on process and creative action in relation to material culture studies, stressing the evolution and fluidity of artistic, cultural, and economic domains. Chapter 1 is comprised of an illustrated list of various sources for bast and leaf fibers discussed by the authors in this book and statements about processes employed cross-culturally. This chapter culminates in a brief mention of textural and aesthetic qualities of the processed and woven fibers. In this chapter and throughout the text, most illustrations are excellent in terms of visual and ethnographic information. One exception is the second chapter on the Hmong in Vietnam where the images are important to the thesis of the article but are uneven in terms of quality of reproduction. The inclusion of maps in every chapter is especially helpful.
It is notable that the editors chose several scholar-writers from the cultures about which they are writing and critiquing. Chapter 2 on the Vietnamese Hmong practices of hemp processing and weaving is one example of a Vietnamese anthropologist and museum specialist writing ethnographically about the Hmong culture and folklore embodied in textile traditions. This is the most ethnographic contribution in the book and includes artists’ quotes from fieldwork interviews, linking cloth embellishment, iconography, and use to ritual practices and belief systems. It concludes with a description of economic development projects (government and NGOs), tourism, and future goals. Other contributors who write from a “native point of view” are from Korea, Burma, Yap State in Micronesia, and Guam.
Another important theme throughout Material Choices pertains to women’s “multiply rooted activities” which span domestic, economic, and artistic spheres, particularly in terms of market and household inter-dynamics. The classic dichotomies counterbalancing women’s work of weaving and dyeing with men’s farming and fighting activities are now scrambled where women are cultivators, processors, artists, innovators, and entrepreneurs. The old prevailing attitude in Indonesia where weaving symbolized “women’s warpath” as paired with men’s headhunting battles (loom and spear) is now superseded by the reality and extent of women’s multiple successes in commerce, finance, and creative areas of responsibility.
Material Choices: Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific is another fine contribution to the proliferating field of material culture studies. It is an ideal textual model of how theoretical issues are enriched when they organically arise from creative action, the meaning and behavior around tangible objects, and global socio-political contexts.
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[Review length: 837 words • Review posted on September 24, 2008]