Weaving and the Value of Carpets: Female Invisible Labour and Male Marketing in Southern Morocco
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Weaving and the value of carpets: female invisible labour and male marketing in southern Morocco Myriem N. Naji Department of Anthropology University College London Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 UMI Number: U591772 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U591772 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT Whilst there have been important publications on material culture studies in recent years, this literature tends to accept the prior experience of objects as given material facts. This thesis aims at providing a contribution to the conception of materiality through an ethnography of production grounded in long-term fieldwork. The research took place in the Sirwa Mountain, to the South East of Marrakech, Morocco, where the best selling carpets in Morocco are exclusively produced by women, and marketed by men. This thesis develops an ethnography of weaving framed within the francophone anthropology of techniques (Technologic culturelle). Particularly, I use the emphasis of the Matiere a Penser group on the role of the moving body mediated by material culture to examine how particular embodied relationships to specific materialities shape particular gendered subjectivities. Grounded in participant observation, I put myself voluntarily in the situation of a learner, as well as observed the motor and sensory actions of weavers. This allows me to explore how women construct their female moral self, partially through the disciplinary techniques of immobility and confinement, involved in the process of making beautiful carpets. In producing objects that are exchanged by men, weavers contribute to shaping male agency. This thesis aims at exploring the specificity of making and the social meaning of carpets for those who produce them and their communities. I thus locate the Sirwa weavers value in an aesthetic and ethic of doing, in which the physical enjoyment and the mastery of matter, is the place of both the construction of a stable and fulfilled self and the production of others. Contents LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 10 NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION 11 INTRODUCTION 12 Thesis outline 12 How the research was carried out 15 On being a ‘halfy’ and the difficulty in finding a female assistant. 17 On coming to terms with my position of power and other issues. 19 Methodology and other issues 22 Thesis’s contributions 26 Carpet trade and contemporary production 26 Ethnography of the region 29 Rural female production, between art and economy 30 Symbolism, rituals and beliefs 30 Limits 32 CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: THE PRODUCTION OF MATERIAL CULTURE AND THE MATERIALITY OF PRODUCTION 35 Production and Technology 36 Technologie culturelle 37 The specificity of weaving 38 The absent subject 39 Matiere a Penser 40 Incorporation 42 Techniques of the self: the shaping of mind and body 43 Cognitive science and the anthropology of knowledge 44 Practice and knowledge 44 Imitation and creativity 46 The shaping of a gendered body through practice or performance 47 Performance 47 Body transformation 48 Moral value and agency 50 Politics of production: Female producers and male transactors 53 Space, the circulation of objects, bodies and thoughts 53 3 CHAPTER 2 HOW THE MARKET SHAPED MOROCCAN CARPETS 56 The assumption of the commercial and art literature 56 Commodification of carpets during the colonial time 59 The colonial classification 62 The shaping of both Western and Moroccan taste 63 Regimes of value: Moroccan versus Western 65 The provision of raw material: the shaping of a perishable materiality 67 Dyes 68 Wool yarns and cotton thread 69 How to make old out of new 70 When quality of material means increased women's labour 71 Material quality loss versus loss of technical know ledge 73 CHAPTER 3 CARPET TRADE IN THE SOUTH OF MOROCCO 76 Capital closure 78 Kin and client closure 82 Carpet hierarchy: closure of producers 86 Gender closure 88 CHAPTER 4 SIRWA: THE PLACE, PEOPLE AND THE HISTORY OF CARPET PRODUCTION 91 Place and people 91 The mountainous areas 91 Taznakht 95 History' o f carpet production in the Sirwa 98 From colonial times to the 1990s 98 New ty pes of outlets in the region 103 Migration et Development (M&D) association in Taliouine 104 Stanzer and the ‘Amassine project' 105 Susan Davis in N'Kob 107 Association Espace Taznakht 109 The akhnif carpet 111 The original akhnif 11 2 A kh n if carpets 1 1 7 A kh n if carpet variants 1 18 An ambivalence towards weaving 124 Variety of relationship to weaving 126 Emergence of new gender relations and identities 128 Farida : a case of open subversion of the norm 129 Competition between women 130 Money and material possessions 130 Marriage • 31 4 Beauty 133 Confinement and weaving 134 Sexuality 134 The spatial movements of women 136 Hierarchy of female activities: the dynamics of division of labour within same sex 142 Techniques of power and the control of weav ing labour 144 Allocation of female labour depends on age and status 146 Daily rhy thm of work and rota sy stems 147 Malika, a female carpet dealer 153 CHAPTER 6 TECHNIQUES OF GENDERING : FEMALE SUBJECTIVATION THROUGH WEAVING 156 Terminology 157 Practice, space and agency 157 The gendered space of astta 159 A constraining materiality 160 Immobility and fixity 160 Loom place and body position 160 Immobilisation and other constraints 166 The dy namics of astta 169 Modalities of incorporation 177 Pain and the shaping of a stronger body 177 Routine 183 Temporal dimension 185 Patience 185 Permanence 189 Embodied knowledge 190 Imitation 190 Design in making 193 The moral aspects of skilled practice: Care, excellence and intelligence 196 Purity 199 Pleasure 200 Mathematics, measures and problem solv ing 202 CHAPTER 7 NEGATIVE DIMENSION OF WEAVING AND THE EFFECT OF DEVALUED MATERIALITY ON THE SELF 208 Weavers' contribution to family income 208 Intensification of work, degradation of material culture and weavers' self perception 209 Female values versus market values 2 10 Gender relations 212 Degradation of materiality, degradation of the self (body and mind) 217 5 CHAPTER 8 THE DISCIPLINE OF MOBILITY, SECRECY AND THE PRODUCTION OF MEN 223 Sirwa men and the market sphere 223 Social mobility and self realisation 223 Consumption and management of money 225 Embodied subordination: the material discipline of mobility 227 Physical constraints of transport 228 The discipline of waiting 230 Status of middlemen, between the rural and urban spaces 232 Mobility as a space for secrecy 232 Marketing: making visible and hiding 235 Subordination and loss of morality 237 CHAPTER 9 THE PRODUCTIVE ROLE OF WOMEN AND THE VALUE OF LABOUR 244 The Value of men's world 244 Fear of men’s world: the result of an embodied stasis 244 Men’s w ork: the sacrificial dimension of trav el 246 What is the value of the work of the wool ? 248 Self-exclusion from the market sphere and the crafting of men 251 Production versus exchange 254 CHAPTER 10 INSIDE OUT: THE DOMESTICATION OF THE MARKET BY WEAVERS. 258 The myth of secrecy and isolation from market influences 258 Imitation as the source of creativ ity 267 Transformation and appropriation 269 Representation and practice 270 The search for market information 272 Male kin and mobility by proxy 273 Networking skills 276 Within the community or v illage 276 Bey ond the v illage 279 Creativity as a source of monetary value 282 Some features of the art of weavers 283 GLOSSARY 301 6 APPENDIX 1: TECHNICAL OPERATION BEFORE WEAVING PROPER 308 APPENDIX 2 : NEGATIVE ECONOMIC SONGS ON WEAVING AND CARPETS 312 APPENDIX 2.1 317 APPENDIX 2.2 320 BIBLIOGRAPHY 322 7 List of illustrations Figure I Map of Morocco (source: Tale of the eye 1996: 6) ________ 33 Figure 2 Sinva ethnic groups (source Amard 199~:217) ____________________________________________ 33 Figure 3 Regional map (source: modified maps from Rogerson 2000) _______________________________ 34 Figure 4 North Ayt Wawzgit loom (source Barthelemy 1990, drawings by Capitain Dorinet 1934). ____ 94 Figure 5 South Ayt Wawzgit loom (Barthelemy 1990 drawings by Capitain Dorinet 1934). __________ 94 Figure 6 : The akhnif cloak. (Source: Westermarck 1904: 220, fig. 38). ___________________________ 112 Figure " After the hood (1) has been woven, the wings (2. 3) are added. _____________ 113 Figure 8 Final stage, before the cloak is removed from the loom. Showing ________________________ 114 Figure 9 : Detail o f the iklan n-ukhnif technique (on a carpet), showing the beginning o f a motif made after the first layer o f dark wefts (two thread lines) has been passed.______________________________ 115 Figure 10 : Next stage, where more coloured independent threads have been added to the white ones. The first weft thread (which will secure them) has not yet been beaten in. ______________________________ /16 Figure It Taydalt_________________________________ 120 Figure 12 Ordinary akhnif carpet_________________________________________________________ 121 Figure 13 Luxury akhnif carpet ______________________________________________________________