 Okay, welcome. After lunch. I'm Lynn Milgram, I'm from OCAD University. And the paper that I'm going to present today is part of my long-term research in the northern Philippines in the Cordillera since about 1995 when I did work on research on women's so-called informal sector work. So for my doctoral work I did the commodification of women's handicrafts looking at weaving, wood carving, and basketry. And this conference has really allowed me to go back and look at different ways that the situation has changed today. So I've taken it as a very unique opportunity to follow up more formally on this earlier research. Since then I've also done a lot of work on women's again sort of irregular or informal sector work as street vendors, public market vendors, and the international trade in secondhand clothing. But today I'm going to look particularly at material culture production. And originally I wanted to look across media but with the wealth of material that I found I've decided that sticking to textiles I can make the point that I would like to make. Okay. Okay. I think everyone's familiar with the area that we're talking about and I'm working particularly in the province of Ifigao for this talk today. I'm going to name particular craftspeople that I've worked with but I'm using pseudonyms. Some of you may know the people I'm talking about and that's I have their permission to use their names but I'm just using pseudonyms for today. So I want to introduce first of all Carol Tyatt. And since the early 1990s she's a weaver entrepreneur and she's been working with about 30 weavers in Benawi to develop high quality ecot resist dyed cotton textiles such as scarves, shawls, and placemats that meet changing needs in design. By formally registering her organization with SEC Security Commission she developed a non-profit organization, the Lab TyDye Weavers Association, and so she can work with the Department of Trade and Industry to access skills development with workshops, packaging advice, marketing expertise, and financial assistance to participate in provincial, national, and international trade affairs. I worked with Caroline during my 1995 doctoral research in which we explored the issues that I've mentioned and I've kept in touch with her. I continue to keep in touch with her as well as other artisans including hosting Caroline in Toronto, Canada in 2016 when she displayed her group's weavings at the Canadian National Exhibition. You can see that in the lower frame. So drawing on earlier so-called traditional weaving practices but flexing to contemporary consumer tastes, Caroline's organization, the Lab TyDye Weavers, have seen the market for their finely woven products steadily increased. The result in textiles thus materialized a consumer artisan co-production yet a cloth that we immediately identify as Ithigao. Mark developments in the multi-platform character of contemporary Cordillera textiles generally and of Ithigao textiles particularly have been ongoing since the late 1990s when the Philippine government through their countryside development program promoted different locally specific livelihood initiatives and this was to increase the household income of rural fishing and farming families. These early initiatives have been supported by the Philippine Indigenous Peoples Rights Act IPRA of 1997 and the current NCIP revised omnibus rules of 2010 both of which promote communities to document and revitalize local cultural practices and Ithigao has done extensive work with this through the Cordillera Museum. Individual entrepreneurs and NGO leaders with expertise in craft production were encouraged by the government to establish new businesses that could take advantage of the rising global demand for local artisanal goods. Social entrepreneurs such as Caroline who I just mentioned have successfully activated this government initiative evidenced in the variety of innovative textile producers currently being showcased or products currently being showcased by different organizations and you can see some of these here Easter weaving school that I recently visited in Baguio in the lower frame the Benawi Weavers Association in Benawi and you can see the continuation with this earlier natural dye ecot textile that I collected during my first field work. So these commodity flows however these initiatives are not monolithic entities rather they continually evolve depending on other local to global flows and on the priorities of different market players so depending on local context. So in the paper today very briefly I argue that to understand the nuanced dynamics of contemporary Cordillera and specifically Ithigao textile production means investigating the extent to which artisans and entrepreneurs can operationalize work opportunities and negotiate marketing constraints at each network node of changing global forces that preclude singularly directive flows. Such production networks do not operate in isolation but rather are cross-cut by other local to global commodity flows market demand the resilience of local identity and what that means for different people and changing consumer tastes. So for example I could not ignore the effect on textile production of overlapping articulations with global fashion trends colorways local supplies of raw materials mostly cotton and what were the power relations between producers and entrepreneurs. So I want to suggest that such a combination of forces means that any interpretation of a textiles authenticity in quotation marks emerges as a dynamic cross-cultural co-production of meaning grounded in the dialogic interaction among makers and consumers and always contingent upon local context and this again is a point that Ike made in her very first opening key lecture. While Ithigao artisans continue to weave traditionally designed cloth for ritual events mortuary or marriage rights market led artisans who may actually be the same weavers face different challenges and I find that weavers produce different types of cloth for different situations they're not scheduled into one particular stream. Weavers such as those in the lab tie-dye weavers association that I mentioned negotiate how to conflate designs and technology from across sources past practice and global fashion trends to produce cloths that simultaneously speak of modernity and terroir the indigenous cultural roots that encapsulate these textiles actual cachet. So after this brief introduction I would like to just very also briefly outline some of the theory that that I've worked with and again in a longer version of the paper there's more of this but this is just a tidbit so what I'm doing here is I'm building on commodity chain literature and a system of provision approach to analyze how artisans middle people and entrepreneurs use their social capital relations as well as economic resources to successfully navigate across levels of operation meaning and identity and commodity chain studies have repeatedly questioned whether any one site drives the flow of a finished product through the phases of production distribution and consumption. Looking at a system of provision approach that I use in tandem and this was introduced by Fine in Leopold later revised by Fine in 2005 they this approach investigates how differently empowered actors assign meaning to goods and how they control network configurations at each node along the chain within the broader context of external state policies and international trade regulations. So in order to understand how artisans or artists are making goods for a global market I need to consider both the vertical and horizontal dimension of commodity flows. The vertical analysis very straightforward follows the meaning of a good from its production each step through consumption a horizontal analysis explores how trade in one vertical flow affects trade in another vertical flow. So by highlighting the spatial and temporal paths of products it reveals the leakiness of commodity chains and how multi stranded interactions can generate new effects not traceable to any one system of provisioning. Looking at the issue of authenticity the idea of identity that that we've repeatedly come back to today in the papers contemporary scholarship on material culture generally challenges us to rethink the changing global circumstances of an object's production distribution and consumption and relates this to questions of modernity tradition and authenticity nationalism and ethnicity gender class and identity. So I'm exploring the question of authenticity through the lens of anthropologist Edward Bruner who sees this concept as quote a dynamic cross-cultural and co-production of meaning emerging from dialogic interaction among makers and interpreters and consumers end of quote and Bruner argues that culture is emergent always alive and in process again a topic and issue that we've come back to many times here and thus any authenticity of an object needs to be understood within shifting these shifting context not in an intellectual approach based on any so-called objective criteria that resides outside social relations attitudes histories and any experiences okay the emphasis on co-production and performativity what Cone and Cone in 2012 call hot authenticity remind us that the interactions and processes around which such authenticity is dictated are not without political and economic tensions prone to confusion and always embedded in power relations and here in this compilation of images you can see two images of how Ifigao weavers in Benawi reproduce contemporary ECOT clause that were contemporary in 1995 on your left and then compare that with one that I just saw this summer visiting a workshop in Keyongan that I'll talk about you can look at the the different motifs and see the similarities in how over 20 years people are still working with how to trace their identity and speak of Ifigao in that changing circumstance and again what I want to emphasize is throughout this textile research weavers make what they need for a particular situation so if they need a textile for a particular ceremony secondary burial at the top a harvest ceremony on the right which I documented in 95 or a parade then they'll make the textile their way to serve the purpose whether it's sacred or ceremonial it'll serve different purposes because it will move in and out of different contexts okay so let me give you some examples then from my recent research Philippine women are the main textile artisans and entrepreneurs building upon their historic roles as household financial managers and the country's foremost public market traders in what emerges as a putting out system today for this commercial production social opera entrepreneurs function as the lynchpin like carol in this local to global flow due to local cotton factories closing in the late 1990s and the subsequent requirement that if you buy cotton you have to buy large bulk orders usually 50 kilos artisans access to good quality cotton is currently limited so in the commodity chain model entrepreneurs most often then advance raw materials to artisans it's a horizontal flow of goods affecting textiles vertical movement entrepreneurs also identify the designs that weavers will execute and usually depending on the orders supervise the weaving quality pay producers for their labor and what I found in my recent research is that the textiles that are made for sale even if they're going to be subsequently used in a sacred context are still offered in the streets of Benawi in much the same way in 2018 that I found in 1995 so the entrepreneurs for the contemporary commercial production will according to the order instruct the artisan what's designed to make within this trade structure however I suggest that entrepreneurs rather than being able to exploit artisans labor in fact the art the entrepreneurs often squeezed from two sides on the one hand entrepreneurs must continually negotiate trade-offs with producers to ensure that they receive the quantity and quality of the products they order on the other hand in response to shifting fashion trends entrepreneurs must work with transnational buyers to continually develop new goods that can satisfy consumers changing tastes while still maintaining the terroir or identity of place of local Philippine production so while most of the artisans are women men with the success of this commercial production have started to weave but on floor looms they're not weaving on backstrap looms something we might discuss later artisans weave part-time combining this work with farming and other periodic labor and although their weaving income is very small it significantly contributes to an overall household earnings when artisans need additional income they may work overtime to produce yardage in the most popular pattern then they try to sell it to the entrepreneur what does the entrepreneur do in order to keep the allegiance of their artisans they'll buy the extra goods even though this may constrain the artisans of the entrepreneur's capital on hand at the same time however when household costs rise artisans may exercise what kirk levitt calls everyday politics of resistance they may sell their products for a higher price to an entrepreneur who's offered that price but not from whom they receive their advanced order and raw materials in such situations the entrepreneur has to gauge whether to build goodwill with artisans forgive the loss hopefully you know get this back in the future or risk alienating makers and then jeopardizing future delivery so then this is the balance between artisans and the artists that i'm mentioning okay so to highlight in detail two case studies very briefly actually i'm going to look at one operation in baguio city and one in keongan ifigal anyone visiting baguio and the baguio city public market will recall the market stores filled floor to ceiling with cordillera textiles you can see in the lower frame in may this year while interviewing a market store owner who came from benawi a weaver entrepreneur arrived to deliver 150 yard roll of woven fabric which was destined to be sewn into a variety of functional decor goods and you can see agnes sitting here the goods that would be produced would be placemats table runners bags garments this is agnes 57 years old who moved from benawi ifigal to baguio in the early 1990s to earn income agnes first world popular baguio blankets on a floor loom when the shift in consumer taste change she switched to weaving yardage 14 to 18 inches wide to fulfill her buyer's new orders with increasing tourism as well at this time as well as a demand for appropriately traditional textiles for festive events agnes started to subcontract her orders to women weavers in her community and taught other women how to weave here she is in her storage room just before she delivers the yardage that her and her weavers have woven agnes currently acts as an entrepreneur for 10 weavers in her community in baguio city as well as five in neighboring mountain province and she supplies most of the shops in baguio in the market in mines view and outside sm baguio city although those shops are just currently closed for renovation agnes obtains the orders from yardage from the shops she prepares the warps which are orchestrated for specific design and then she gives the warps to the weavers who complete the 150-yard length of fabric artisans weave in their homes four to six hours a day depending upon their domestic responsibilities as i noted a few husbands or partners a male have learned to weave and they assist their wives in production when they're not doing other work agnes has continuous orders and she delivers a new warp to her weavers to be woven upon picking up the finished order and here you can see her inner community in baguio city just we're going around the different houses to visit the weavers as they're at work she has as an entrepreneur she has her particular constraint while some buyers will pay in cash most pay in installments some give 30-day post-dated checks so all of this means that agnes has to balance her her cash flow she has to ensure timely payments from her buyers given that most weavers request in advance and this would be i think familiar to many of you who might have worked with small producers so that means that agnes has to go to the baguio market every day to make collections from her buyers the personalized aspect of this trade can then constrain the entrepreneur's business if for example a buyer doesn't pay if the weaver as i mentioned sells the yardage to another entrepreneur okay or if some weavers then attempt to start their own business which is what agnes has experienced a weaver thought she could go on on her own took some of agnes producers with her but didn't succeed in the end so each of these are constraints that entrepreneurs have to manage as market-driven as this production seems weavers and entrepreneurs still strongly identified the pieces they make with provincial cordillera origins as we visited weavers homes this summer agnes identified textiles on the different looms as being from this one's from ifigal this one's from mountain province this one's from abra for example when asked about the fabric she is weaving agnes responded quote through my weaving skills i am promoting our culture this is especially true when i see my clothes being worn in festivals i see my textiles performing and people smiling bringing my production to life okay in the second example i want to look at a very innovative NGO that some of you may be familiar with the save the rice terraces movement in qiangan who sustainable environment focused activities also include promoting local livelihood initiatives specifically ifigal textile production and also conducting indigenous culture education for students teachers and the broader community regarding textile production in this particular NGO the director who i'll call michael states that part of his organization's mandate supports older weavers transferring their knowledge to younger weavers as a way to keep this particular practice going and you can see one of the younger weavers in the upper frame as with agnes's operation in order to ensure that artisans have the materials they need the NGO director michael supplies high quality cotton to the 15 regular household based weavers when i visited the um the workshop there was a couple of weavers weaving who you saw in the previous frame but most of the weavers they can weave in the workshop a few of them can weave in the workshop but most weave at home and again interspersed with domestic activities weavers produce for specific orders again that the entrepreneur michael gives them but as one weaver explains quote even if the buyer wants different colors or patterns we do it the ifigal way our textiles are personalized as i pay a part pay play a part in creating even a pre-ordered pattern end of quote and then marie pointing to these two blouses that you see here she goes on to say quote the challenge is to modernize if you go attire to appeal to younger consumers while ensuring our pieces still suggest if you go we are very particular about our identity end of quote another weaver virginia adds quote we have to be flexible in these modern times so people do not say we are too traditional if you say this newly woven blouses not authentic i say that authentic women's upper body covering was no blouse at all end of quote as the director michael confirms and i quote we need to maintain customary colors and patterns but we also need to diversify so i michael am always looking for new designs end of quote michael explains that he looks to parts of indonesia for design inspiration for example as these two countries share geometric motifs that he feels he can adapt but it can still speak of ifigal roots so at the same time that michael is looking to other countries other sources for new designs he's concerned about the identity how the textile speaks generally so he's a very much aware of straying too far from one's textile design roots one of his key designers who i actually worked with in 1995 in my doctoral work still still weaving and now working closely with this ngo one of the one of the weavers that he works with or the designers used ecot technology to weave blankets displaying crocodile crocodile and dragon designs that you see there on the left michael however refused to offer these pieces for sale explaining that although they were very well woven and fabulous pieces quote we have no crocodiles or dragons in if a gal as heritage weavers we try to promote if a gal is spirit but we do try to apply it to today at the same time michael designed a textile that when woven and that's on your right he said this textile didn't feel if a gal enough so to remedy this situation he had if a gal pattern edge bands woven and sewn to two sides of the piece and you can see the edge band at the bottom in order to speak more clearly of its indigenous identity it's if a gown is so michael knows all the symbolic meanings of each if a gal motif which he outlined to me in detail and he knows the ritual use of each cloth yet he states that quote we have to be open to personalizing these patterns such that the textiles continue to provide a livelihood as well as nurture local practice end of quote like agnes michael's ngo enterprise expansion is constrained by his weavers part time production and weaving technology limitations imposed partly by the long rainy season as well as fact that he needs more producers as michael continues quote i say to buyers you have to realize this is an artisanal product you want it because it's artisanal but you want a commercial production schedule and this is fernand who another weaver who he in this case outsourced some weaving to for a big order for the shangra la hotel and this happens to be someone i also worked with in the past okay in conclusion the growing demand generally for higher quality cordillera textiles raises a number of issues regarding entrepreneurial practice and the resultant authenticity or traditional nature of production the locational constraint and high cost of obtaining good quality cotton yarn and the uncertainty of maker's production capacity along with fluctuating consumer demands mean that entrepreneurs must practice a give and take relationship with artisans to ensure again they receive the orders they request and the quality they require consequently although entrepreneurs may be better positioned to benefit from this textile trade their social enterprise mandate plus the commodity flow constraints they must continually negotiate keep these artisans and entrepreneurs in a largely reciprocal and interdependent relationship in addition part of the challenge of engaging the global market for indigenous artisanal goods lies in the need for ongoing product innovation and again the opportunity to go back and revisit because i'm always involved in textile production in some way uh revisit this topic was quite exciting and um gratifying so here on your left is um a naturally dyed ifigal ecot fabric used for this chair um that i photographed in 1995 and then in michael's NGO and kiongun a very similarly produced using natural dyes textile with some you know overlapping patterns produced just this summer okay so in addition part of the challenge is that they have to you know keep up with changing consumer taste to maintain a competitive um edge textile entrepreneurs like carolin agnes and michael continually negotiate complex and culturally mediated design processes across borders to develop products that simultaneously speak of contemporary design as well as locality as artisans and entrepreneurs transform local materials into middle and high end household goods they reassess redraw and at times overturn past practice in this way cordillera and particularly ifigal products metamorph metamorphosize via horizontal and vertical intersections with other influences to problematize any identification of such goods as traditional or authentic the diverse driving forces fashioning the systems ongoing reshaping and perseverance thus expose the messiness of provisioning systems the futility of thinking in terms of orderly sequences and similar and singular directional flows by resituating a place-based production and trade within wider negotiations of meaning and agency textile entrepreneurs and artisans here navigate a range of constraints to recraft global commodity networks more on their own terms and as michael one of the things he said to me in our final chat is that he has had his qiangan NGO weavers meticulously reproduce older ifigal claws but each time he tries to verify and show his grandmother that here is a traditional cloth that my weavers have really worked on is is this what you remember she can continually insist that it's not quite accurate enough thank you you you've seen the stuff at nardis right yes yeah so what do you think of you know nardis really contemporizing and i think the reason why is there a lot of customers don't want to buy a so obviously ethnic thing that would look like they were in a costume so they have an ethnic-ish looking thing right not really so is that going to an artist in a locale is that going to mess up this if there's more commercial value to a modern type weed than to the traditional yeah no i'm familiar with nardis and i think she's really done a fabulous service she you know she popularized the textile textiles so if you go to nardis in baguio city i bought a number of her pieces um that she has a huge that her workshop is still very viable and still going um close to atok i visited it um it's providing a livelihood and interesting she's producing a commercial line but when you go to nardis and visit in baguio she's also she's also producing you know um textiles that are reproducing older patterns but you know contemporary weavers are doing it these would be textiles that if they would be required in particular festivals where you had to have a design they could still be used so i think that it's part of um you know letting artisans use their skill in different ways so i i and and sometimes to you know to keep an art form going you might have to swing to an extreme do something totally different develop a market then once you've got your market you can start then you've got the flexibility to do a lot more things and maybe you're going to be a bit more local in your production using local designs but you need to develop a market first so i i admire what she did in the timing that she did it yeah yeah oh okay