Skilled immigrants in the textile and fashion industries: stories from a globe-spanning history

Uittreksel

"Explores the involvement of immigrant communities in the textile and apparel industries, from the early modern to post-modern periods in Asia and the Islamic World, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Essays focus on the role of migration and immigrant labor's relation to trade, politics, and socio-religious circumstances prompting relocation. By analyzing material, mythical, and technical aspects of textile and apparel production, contributors create a new narrative about textile- and apparel-making as a collective endeavor, requiring diversity of skill and methodology to thrive"-- Provided by publisher.

Inhoud

Part One. Introduction -- 1. A brief history of textile production and trade / Nazanin Hedayat Munroe -- Part Two. Imported myths, imported moths: silk production across Asia -- 2. Histories of silken skills: immigrant sericulturalists in early modern South Asia / Sylvia Houghteling -- 3. Prophets and caterpillars: the story of Job and the social mobility of silk workers and weavers in the early modern Islamic world / Nader Sayadi -- Part Three. Imported skills: weaving specialists go global -- 4. Master craftsmen in migration: Safavid silk weavers in Mughal India / Nazanin Hedayat Munroe -- 5. Weaving Andean textiles on Islamic looms: the importation of skilled weavers in the colonial Andes / Maria Madison Smith -- Part Four. Imported labor: enslaved and immigrant workers in America -- 6. Clothing the Black body in slavery: stolen lives and imported labor / Wanett Clyde -- 7. How the other half works: perceptions and realities of immigrant labor in the New York apparel industry / Nazanin Hedayat Munroe -- Part Five. Imported culture: textile as tradition in the diaspora -- 8. Silk weaving in the Cambodian refugee crisis and diaspora: displaced practice and identities in the post-Khmer Rouge era / Magali An Berthon -- 9. The evolution of an identity: tracing the trajectory of Sindhi ajrak across the India-Pakistan border / Pragya Sharma -- Conclusion / Nazanin Hedayat Munroe -- Glossary of textile terms.