Cultures of Hand-knitting in North India: Provenance, Domesticity and Gendered Learning, c.1850-1980

在印度，作为一种日常的国内实践，来自次大陆的手工编织在现有的以欧洲为中心的学术研究中仍然很少(Black，2012；Compton，2010；Gillow&Sentance，1999；Nargi，2011)，除了Rutt(1987)，他认为编织对印度人来说从来都不是一项重要的工艺。这个项目挑战了Rutt的主张，通过追踪这项工艺在殖民和后殖民时期印度的引入和发展，将其置于更广泛的社会文化纠葛中。编织在印度的今天定位与大英帝国和随后的传教教育的建立密切相关(Allender，2016)。尽管所有性别都学习和练习手工编织(MacMillan，2018)，但代际技能通常是在家庭空间内通过非正式的学习渠道获得的(现在也是)。对于一种被定义为理想家庭主妇的标志的社会构建的实践(Walsh，2004)，以及最近针织作为一种爱好或作为独立企业的复兴(Kedkar，2022)，印度没有历史风格或图案的记录，因为这项技能在公共场所的表现可以忽略不计，不像西方，那里的取样器被保存下来。研究采用跨学科的方法，结合档案研究和口述历史的方法，以物质文化、家庭生活和殖民史为主题，质疑1850年至1980年编织在北印度的地位和意义。这是一个关键时期，西方做法的影响和适应日益增加，同时后殖民时代的印度被定位为一个手工艺国家，强调传统/民间手工艺(McGowan，2009)，而不是国内手工艺。1980年后，随着印度经济的开放和1991年的自由化浪潮，针织景观受到了全球吸引力的影响，并一直延续到今天。

As an everyday domestic practice in India, hand-knitting from the subcontinent has remained little studied within the existing scholarship which is predominantly Euro-centric (Black, 2012; Compton, 2010; Gillow & Sentance, 1999; Nargi, 2011) with the exception of Rutt (1987) who argues that knitting was never an important craft to Indians. This project challenges Rutt's assertion by tracing the introduction and evolution of the craft in colonial and post-colonial India, situating it within the wider socio-cultural entanglements.The present-day positioning of knitting in India is closely intertwined with the British Empire and the subsequent establishment of mission education (Allender, 2016). Although hand-knitting was learned and practised by all genders (MacMillan, 2018), the intergenerational skill was (and is) generally acquired through informal channels of learning, within the domestic spaces. For a socially constructed practice defined as a hallmark of an ideal housewife (Walsh, 2004) and with the recent resurgence of knitting as a hobby or as independent businesses (Kedkar, 2022), there is no record of historic styles or patterns from India due to the skill's negligible representation in public spaces, unlike the West where samplers have been preserved. Adopting an interdisciplinary methodology that combines archival study and oral history methods, underpinned by the themes of material culture, domesticity and colonial history, the research interrogates the place and significance of knitting in North India from 1850 to 1980. This was a critical period which saw an increasing influence and adaptation of Western practices with the simultaneous positioning of post-colonial India as a crafts nation that drew emphasis on the traditional/folk crafts (McGowan, 2009) with the exclusion of the domestic crafts. After 1980, with the opening of India's economy and the liberalization wave of 1991, the knitting landscape was influenced by global appeal and continues to the present day.