Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“Let Me Show You”: A Caring Ethnography of Embodied Knowledge in Weaving and Engineering

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
A Feminist Companion to the Posthumanities

Abstract

This chapter seeks to comprehend and problematize the metaphor of knowledge as weaving as an entrance to critically understand: mediations, inequalities and differences both within technoscientific knowledge production and in its encounters and dialogues with other knowledges. The starting point of the analysis is derived from the ethnographic component of an interdisciplinary project oriented towards the design of a computer interface inspired by calado, a Colombian embroidery craft; which, given the way in which it is performed, can be understood as a form of weaving. The meeting between the knowhow of craft embroiderers, a knowledge situated in their hands, feminized and precarious, and engineering knowledge, with its codified and legitimate expertise, simultaneously entangles and unravels the practices that sustain epistemic and gendered hierarchies and binaries, embedded as they are in particular geopolitical settings, but also enables possibilities for creativity, reparation and the reinvention of these embodied orders, their temporalities and daily concreteness.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    These encounters were the main purpose of a research project entitled “Embroidering self-knowledge: systematization of experiences and participatory design of weaving as a caring practice in Cartago, Valle.” Project participants consisted of: a community association of caladoras in Cartago, Valle; a group of five engineers; and two ethnographers (including me). The knowledge encounters took place in both Cartago and Bogotá. Some of them implied the learning of the craft by non-embroiderers (that is engineers and ethnographers) from the caladoras’ hands, others the collective exploration of electronic embroidery materialities (conductive threads and fabrics, lilly-pads, sewable lights and sensors). These encounters and the social and domestic reality of caladaoras were the central focus of the ethnography, in which all members of the research team, not just the ethnographers, participated in different ways.

  2. 2.

    When referring to become with and becoming, I am thinking with Donna Haraway’s (2008, 2013) reflections about relationalities that exist in the making. That is that are dependent of the act of touching the other human-non-human, and so are world-making practices. Following Vicky Singleton’s (2011) input on this discussion I think of this processes of becoming with, becoming worldly as mundane practices of responsibility. More recently Martha Kenney (2015) has elaborated on this idea of responsibility in relation to research as matters of care.

  3. 3.

    Tangible user interfaces are designed to generate tangible interactions with the digital world through personal tangible objects (Reitsma, Smith, and van den Hoven 2013), in this case, for example, through threads that can be embroidered.

  4. 4.

    This goal of not automatizing the craft was inspired by Suchman (1999, 2002) and her interpretation of automation as a practice that comprises the objectification of knowledge in new material forms. These practices are usually constructed as marginal and disposable, and so are their practitioners. However, as we will see, such forms and practices of knowledge and their material dimensions are central to complex ecologies of knowledge production, and paramount to the maintenance and continuation of life. To view other examples of TUIs inspired by weaving, see (Reitsma et al. 2013; Rosner and Ryokai 2008).

  5. 5.

    For this, see Cortés-Rico, Márquez-Gutiérrez, and Pérez-Bustos (2015), Cortés-Rico (2015) and Pérez-Bustos, Cortés-Rico, and Márquez-Gutiérrez (2015).

  6. 6.

    As I have stated calado entails practices of carefully destroying and mending fabrics. These practices are time consuming and very little recognized economically speaking, but also in social terms in relation with younger generations. A caladora can embroider a piece in about a week and only receive for this labor 8-10 US dollars. In this context caladoras livelihoods poorly depend on this labor and this explains why their children, mainly their daughters, are not interested on learning the craft. The marginal status of mending practices and labor has been discussed also by König (2013) in the UK midland Europe and North America.

  7. 7.

    In this paper, when I refer to caladoras I am not distinguishing between laborers and masters.

  8. 8.

    The Baby Jesus is the local representation of Santa Claus in Colombia.

  9. 9.

    To explore further discussions on slow knowledge production and its implications in the neoliberal context of contemporary universities, see Mountz et al. (2015).

References

  • Ahmed, Fauzia Erfan. 2004. The rise of the Bangladesh garment industry: Globalization, women workers, and voice. NWSA Journal 16(2): 34–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borgeaud-Garciandía, Natacha. 2009. Dominación laboral y vida privada de las obreras de maquilas textiles en Nicaragua. Trace 55: 76–89.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cortés-Rico, Laura Juliana. 2015. ApTUI Framework para el Diseño Participativo de Interacciones Tangibles. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. At http://pegasus.javeriana.edu.co/~PI133-03-ApTUI/docs/MemoriasApTUI_LauraCort%C3%A9s.pdf. Accessed 30 November 2015.

  • Cortés-Rico, Laura Juliana, Sara Márquez-Gutiérrez, and Tania Pérez-Bustos. 2015. Materialidades que se bordan. Diseño de una interfaz tangible de usuario inspirada en el bordado de cartago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cunha, Tania Batista da, and Sarita Brazao Vieira. 2009. Entre o bordado e a renda: condições de trabalho e saúde das labirinteiras de Juarez Távora/Paraíba. Psicologia: Ciência E Profissão 29(2):258–275.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fischer, Berenice, and Joan Tronto. 1990. Toward a feminist theory of caring. In Circles of care: Work and identity in women’s lives, eds. Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson, 35–62. New York: State University of New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, Donna. 2008. When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, Donna. 2013. Sowing worlds: A seed bag for terraforming with earth others. In Beyond the cyborg: Adventures with Haraway, eds. Margret Grebowicz and Helen Merrick, 137–146. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hughes, Thomas P. 1986. The seamless web: Technology, science, etcetera, etcetera. Social Studies of Science 16(2): 281–292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ingold, Tim. 2007. Lines: A brief history. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kenney, M. 2015. Counting, accounting, and accountability: Helen Verran’s relational empiricism. Social Studies of Science 45(5): 749–771.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • König, Anna. 2013. A stitch in time: Changing cultural constructions of craft and mending. Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research 5: 569–585.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mountz, Alison, Anne Bonds, Becky Mansfield, Jenna Loyd, Jennifer Hyndman, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ranu Basu, et al. (2015). For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university. ACME, International E-Journal for Critical Geographies. At http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alison_Mountz/publication/275100129_For_Slow_Scholarship_A_Feminist_Politics_of_Resistance_through_Collective_Action_in_the_Neoliberal_University/links/5532d2a20cf27acb0deda012.pdf. Accessed 30 November 2015.

  • Pérez-Bustos, Tania. 2014. Feminización y pedagogías feministas: Museos interactivos, ferias de ciencia y comunidades de software libre en el sur global. Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Javeriana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pérez-Bustos, T., Cortés-Rico, L., and Márquez-Gutiérrez, S. 2015. Giving life to a TUI through inspiration from Colombian calado embroidery and its materialities. In Paper presented at the 4S annual meeting). Denver, 1–12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pérez-Bustos, Tania, and Manuel Franco-Avellaneda. 2014. Embroidering Self-knowledge. In Proceedings of the 13th participatory design conference on short papers, industry cases, workshop descriptions, doctoral consortium papers, and keynote abstracts – PDC ’14, volume 2. 99–102. New York: ACM Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portisch, Anna Odland. 2010. The craft of skilful learning: Kazakh women’s everyday craft practices in western Mongolia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: S62–S79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. 2010. Ethical doings in naturecultures. Ethics, Place and Environment 13(2): 151–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. 2011. Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social Studies of Science 41(1): 85–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. 2012. “Nothing comes without its world”: Thinking with Care. The Sociological Review 60(2): 197–216.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. 2015. Making time for soil: Technoscientific futurity and the pace of care. Social Studies of Science 1–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reitsma, Lizette, Andrew Smith, and Elise van den Hoven. 2013. StoryBeads: Preserving indigenous knowledge through tangible interaction design. In 2013 International conference on culture and computing, 79–85. IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosner, Daniela, and Kimiko Ryokai. 2008. Spyn: Augmenting Knitting to Support Storytelling and Reflection. In 10th International conference on Ubiquitous computing, 340–349.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singleton, Vicky. 2011. When contexts meet: Feminism and accountability in UK cattle farming. Science, Technology and Human Values 37(4): 404–433.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Suchman, Lucy. 1999. Working relations of technology and use. In The social shaping of technology, eds. Donald Mackenzie and Judy Wajcman, 258–265. Buckingham: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suchman, Lucy. 2002. Located accountabilities in technology production. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 14(2): 91–105.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tedlock, Barbara, and Dennis Tedlock. 1985. Text and textile: Language and technology in the arts of the Quiché Maya. Journal of Anthropological Research 41(2): 121–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Verran, Helene. 2001. Science and an African logic. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watson, Matthew C. 2014. Listening in the Pakal controversy: A matter of care in ancient maya studies. Social Studies of Science 44(6): 930–954.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Gender Studies, National University of Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia

    Tania Pérez-Bustos

Authors
  1. Tania Pérez-Bustos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tania Pérez-Bustos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tema; Gender Studies (Tema Genus), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Cecilia Åsberg

  2. Centre for Humanities, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Rosi Braidotti

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Pérez-Bustos, T. (2018). “Let Me Show You”: A Caring Ethnography of Embodied Knowledge in Weaving and Engineering. In: Åsberg, C., Braidotti, R. (eds) A Feminist Companion to the Posthumanities. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62140-1_15

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation