Podcasts
B. Lynne Milgram Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
This podcast is intended for educational use only.
Women's current engagement in artisanal production in the Philippines offers a useful lens for the analysis of gender, technology and socio-economic change with globalization as women's workforce participation throughout the Philippines is among the highest and most varied in countries of the Global South. Female artisans working in the piña (pineapple) textile industry, distinctive to Aklan province central Philippines, for example, simultaneously specialize in particular tasks and use their varied skills to work across production processes both within cooperative and household-based enterprises. Yet, much of the recent scholarship on globalization, neoliberalism and work argues that commodity production has become increasingly fragmented such that women, in particular, often lose control over their labour.
In this paper, I suggest that Philippine piña artisans and entrepreneurs reconfigure the organization of work, space, power and social relations to craft multifaceted technologies that dissolve essentialist categories such as "holistic" and "prescriptive" practice (Franklin 1999). Although piña artisans work within a system of task specialization (prescriptive), they share knowledge of processes, exercise options in work schedules and have negotiated varied benefits from employers. Through their advocacy, artisans refashion the nature of, and obtain some control over, piña's prescriptive methods. Regarding technology as transformatory practice – as encompassing social and economic organization, procedures and relations – enables analyses of contemporary piña production to reach beyond simple binary spheres. Piña artisans and entrepreneurs innovatively establish livelihoods in this competitive textile sector to consolidate cultural identities and community commitments even as they produce differences in material well-being.
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La participation des Philippiennes dans les manufactures de type artisanal est la plus élévée des pays de l'hémisphère sud. L'auteure décrit la participation de ces femmes dans l'industrie du textile "Pi ñ a" (ananas). Malgré la specialization des tâches à l'intérieur de cette industrie, les artisans on néammoins gardé le contrôle des methods de production et des conditions de travail.