Title: "Short review of collective research in French Southeast Asia Center & personal research underway on Laotian and Thai textile collections and genetically modified silkworms in Japan"
Speaker: Annabel VALLARD, CSEAS Visiting Project Researcher
Date: June 30th（Thurs.), 2011, 12:00 - 13:30
Place: Room No. 107 on the 1st floor of East building, CSEAS, Kyoto University
Short self-introduction: Annabel VALLARD is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Southeast Asia Center (CNRS / EHESS, Paris, France). She obtained her Phd in social anthropology at the university of Paris 10 Nanterre in February 2009. Her thesis focused on textile industry in Vientiane area. Based on a two years ethnography, the thesis followed the thread at all stages of its transformation, distribution and consumption with a special interest on the Morning Market and some private international workshops. Her last paper titled “Laotian textiles in between markets and the politics of culture” had been recently published in JSEAS (June 2011).
Webpage:
http://case.vjf.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article382
http://ehess.academia.edu/AnnabelVallard/About
Abstract:
This presentation will be organized in two parts. The first part will be dedicated to the presentation of the French Southeast Asia Center (CNRS / EHESS) and some collective research that are underway at the center. The second part will be dedicated to Annabel’s research on textiles and her plan in Japan. As you may know, in Southeast Asia, weaving and its products are linked to a long history of practices and representations that have recently undergone considerable transformation. These changes are related to globalization and the increasingly integrated flows of capitals, human beings and goods at an international scale. From fibers to garments, a number of Southeast-Asian countries have been deeply involved since the 1980’s into the world of textile and apparel industry which nowadays plays a key role in their economies. The postdoctoral project aims to explore two facets of Southeast Asian textiles globalized networks through a focus on: 1/ innovative fibers production and use, in particular bio-textile issued from genetic engineering; 2/ collections of ancient fabrics that populate private galleries and public museums. The purpose is to question, at every stage of these networks, the ways in which humans make these materials and textiles collections exist by giving them a presence in the physical world as well as in the symbolic sphere.
This ethnographically based project is focused on two mainland Southeast Asian countries: the Lao PDR and Thailand. The comparison is important at least for two reasons: 1/ The Lao PDR and Thailand are not only large producers, consumers and exporters of handcrafted textiles, but this craft widely models the social images and imaginations of individual as well as collective; 2/ The Lao PDR and Thailand share a common cultural ground, the dominant political population being Tai ethnic groups. However, during the 20th century they experienced contrasted political and socioeconomic developments, resulting in one being a constitutional monarchy, the other being a socialist republic.
Japan is a particularly interesting interface to develop this project notably because Japanese collectors and biotechnologists are deeply involved in the Laotian and Thai textiles production, collection and commercialization creating in this way polymorphous innovative textiles networks connecting Japan with Thailand and Laos – and more generally Southeast-Asia – that I shall explore from an anthropological perspective.