From Craft to Industry: The Ethnography of Proto-Industrial Cloth Production

by Esther N. Goody (Editor)

Overview

The essays in this volume focus on two themes: the centrality of the production of and trade in cloth in the emergence of market activity; and the nature of the industrialization process. The core of the book is formed by four detailed ethnographic studies of the development and current organization of cloth production for the market, in different parts of the world: tailoring in Kano City, northern Nigeria (Pokrant); dyeing and weaving in Daboya, northern Ghana (Goody); 'fashion'- shirt production in Bombay, India (Swallow); and the manufacture of 'handmade' Harris tweed in the Hebrides (Ennew). Each study examines access to raw materials and to the market, relations of production, the investment of capital and the reproduction of the system. Individually, they raise such questions as the role of fashion, the effects of national economic policies and legislation, and factors related to the modification of traditional technologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521104982
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/19/2009
Series:	Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology , #10
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.51(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction Esther N. Goody; 2. On commoditization Keith Hart; 3. Daboya weavers: relations of production, dependence and reciprocity Esther N. Goody; 4. The tailors of Kano City R. J. Pokrant; 5. Production and control in the Indian garment export industry D. A. Swallow; 6. Harris Tweed: construction, retention and representation of a cottage industry Judith Ennew.