Session Name: World-making in the Gem Trade at Local, Transnational, and Global Scales
3 - A Tale of Two Gem Cutters: Artisanship, Technology Flows, and Regional Histories
Thursday, August 1, 2024
11:15 – 13:00 (GMT+7)
Presentation Abstract This presentation places the socio-political history of South-Central Asia (Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan) in conversation with the anthropology of artisanship by unravelling the processes through which skill, knowledge and technology of gem production move, replicate, and reinvent themselves across space. The ethnographic focus is on the gem cutters of Karachi’s Saddar Bazaar, who are connected to Jaipur’s Ramganj Bazaar and Peshawar’s Namak Mandi through mercantile and artisanal networks. In this way, I set up contrasting spatial frameworks to understand gem artisanship. On the one, more traditional hand, we have an idea of artisanship and markets that is bound by nation-states and localities. On the other, are the connections between cities and communities that transgress these precise boundaries. Techniques and technologies involving gem cutting are produced and reproduced, and changed over time, as they move from one practitioner to another. In the absence or lack of access to institutions for vocational training, informal apprenticeship constitutes the primary means of transmission of skills and knowledge. Drawing on the embodied and social production of knowledge, and on personal histories and narratives, the paper explores the skillful work of gem cutting across South Asia more broadly, as well as the embodied and regional production of knowledge by a class of artisans.
Presenter(s)
PL
Ping Hsiu A. Lin
Weatherhad Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, United States