Artisans and Advocacy in the Global Market

Walking the Heart Path

Edited by Jeanne Simonelli, Katherine O’Donnell, and June Nash

The collaborations, cooperatives, and conundrums described in this collection reaffirm ancient traditions even as artisan production and the preservation of cultural identity interact to create a sustainable future that entails new kinds of producer-consumer relations and partnerships. Contributors to this book explore how crafts—pottery, weaving, basketmaking, storytelling—in Middle America and beyond are a means of making an intangible cultural heritage visible, material, and enduring. Each contribution shows how social science research can evolve into advocacy, collaboration, and friendship—activist work that exemplifies the continuing concerns of applied and practicing social scientists in an anthropology increasingly cognizant of both its past and its potential impact on power and equity.

2015. 304 pp., 16 color plates, 3 color illustrations, 1 drawing, 15 halftones, 3 maps, 6 x 9

Contributors: Karen Charley, Vicki Cruz, Rosalinda Santiz Diaz, Betty J. Duggan, Duncan MacLean Earle, Christine E. Eber, Lea S. McChesney, Lupita McClanahan, June Nash, Katherine O’Donnell, Jeanne Simonelli

“Not just a monumental contribution to the canon of activist anthropology, Artisans and Advocacy in the Global Market demonstrates quite clearly the significance of long-term ethnographic research. The editors along with the other contributors provide a concrete, powerful, and beautifully written volume that illustrates the very best of how to do politically engaged ethnography that is built on collaborative partnerships between anthropologists and community members. Such rich descriptions of indigenous artisans’ creative processes to develop products true to their cultural values and their struggles to engage global capitalism on their terms provide a clear example of best ethnographic practices.”
—Walter E. Little, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology; Director, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies; President, Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

List of Figures and Plates
Foreword by Brenda Rosenbaum
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Artisan Production in the World Market
Katherine O’Donnell and Jeanne Simonelli
Mayan Artisan Production: Creation of the World and the Re-Creation of Another World
Authenticity and the Value of Long-Term Market Exchanges
June Nash
From a Potter’s Perspective: Hopi Pottery and the World Market
Creating and Sustaining a Solidarity Network
Lea S. McChesney and Karen Kahe Charley
Weaving Cooperatives and the Resistance Movement in Highland Chiapas, Mexico: Pass Well Over the Earth
Creating and Sustaining a Solidarity Network
Christine Eber
Can You Do More than Take Photos? Solidarity, Efficacy, and Marketing with Jolom Mayaetik, Mayan Women’s Weaving Cooperative, Chiapas, Mexico
Tips for Working with an Indigenous Cooperative
Katherine O’Donnell
Interview: Crafts in the World Market
Rosalinda Santiz Diaz
Recrafting in a Global Marketplace
Working with Artisans Under Difficult Circumstances
Duncan Earle
Eastern Cherokee and Other Native American Indian Collective Enterprises: Seeking, Selling, Saving Crafts
Getting Your Message Out in Multiple Ways to Multiple Audiences
Betty J. Duggan with Vicki Cruz
Interpreting Canyon de Chelly: Sacred Sites and Human Rights
Cooperative and Family Ventures: Planning and Marketing
Jeanne Simonelli and Lupita McClanahan
Afterword: Walking in Beauty on the Heart Path
Jeanne Simonelli and Katherine O’Donnell

Glossary of Non-English and Culture-Specific Terms

There are no working papers for this book at the present time.