Social Strategies and Material Fixes in Agotime Weaving

Clifford Collard, Niamh Jane

Abstract

This chapter explores what problem solving meant for a community of Ghanaian craftsmen. Drawing on fieldwork carried out with weavers in a community workshop in Kpetoe Agotime, a small town in southeastern Ghana close to the border with Togo. Located on the outskirts of Kpetoe Agotime, the weaving workshop housed the looms of nearly 30 kente weavers. Kente cloth is a distinctive Ghanaian craft, and that produced in Agotime is renowned for its quality and style. Intense sociality underpinned the ways that workshop members managed the challenges of making a living. But, as craftsmen, they were also constantly engaged in a search for solutions to the tangible problems that cropped up while weaving a cloth. The process of making a cloth in the workshop was a collaborative effort that involved various kinds of social ties. Weavers who worked together also tended to socialise and share food with one another.

Citation

Clifford Collard, N. J. (2016). Social Strategies and Material Fixes in Agotime Weaving. In T. H. Marchand (Ed.), Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making (153-168). Ashgate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315562803-9

• Acceptance Date: Oct 5, 2015
• Publication Date: Jan 8, 2016
• Deposit Date: Feb 18, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 18, 2021
• Pages: 153-168
• Series Title: Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception
• Book Title: Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making
• ISBN: 9781472442925
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315562803-9