Needlework

Abstract

Exploring needlework as a mode of feminist ethnographic knowledge-making, this reflexive and reflective piece focuses on the ways in which making Vodou flags serves to expand my own practice. In particular, how does needlework compel ways of thinking and feeling that exist beyond language? How do durational investments of time and work allow an expansion of ethnographic knowing?More than mere ethnographic artifacts, Vodou flags strike me as stitched-together assertions about life, about survival, about beauty, about work. Their history, like the history of Haitians and Haiti itself, bears the scars of colonization, enslavement, and the determination that resulted in the revolution. Such determination is still needed by the vast majority of Haitians today. Like any of

Sisterly intimacies: Islam, gift‐giving, and women's relations of care in Russia

“…Feeling the dense texture of the purse under my fingertips and discerning the peculiar smell of the atelier in its knots, I ask myself about the affective labor of crafting and artistry in spiritual kincraft (Thomas, 2021). Knitting is a particular form of needlework people across the globe undertake to “stitch together assertions about life, survival, beauty and work” (Chin, 2020; see also Parker, 2010). In the process of knitting physical objects, they also “thread and quilt knowledge,” creating relationships with neighbors, spirits, and distant others (Chin, 2020; Malkki, 2015).…”

“…Knitting is a particular form of needlework people across the globe undertake to “stitch together assertions about life, survival, beauty and work” (Chin, 2020; see also Parker, 2010). In the process of knitting physical objects, they also “thread and quilt knowledge,” creating relationships with neighbors, spirits, and distant others (Chin, 2020; Malkki, 2015). In a similar way—stitch by stitch—Madinat and her daughters knitted intimacies with their Muslim sisters.…”

The Unbearable Whiteness of Citational Practice in US Medical Anthropology

“…Kathryn Mariner's (2022) recent discussion of citation demonstrates the limits and possibilities of form. What if thinking takes the form of needlework, crochet, or quilting (Chin, 2020; Hughes‐Strange, 2021; Sehdev, 2020)? Without experimenting with form, citation as a technology of reproduction limits the opportunity to be citationally munificent.…”

Shifting Worlds, Shaping Fieldwork

“…These snippets represent her first forays into the practice of making art the method and outcome of her research, with exhibition serving as a mode of publication. Her later undertakings of a similar kind draw attention to the inseparability of making as art and making as knowledge (Chin 2020), in a transdisciplinary practice that goes beyond the university and the art world.…”