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

作为印度的日常家庭实践，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）认为编织对印度人来说从来都不是一种重要的工艺。该项目通过追踪殖民地和后殖民地印度的工艺介绍和演变，将其置于更广泛的社会文化纠葛中来挑战Rutt的主张。当今印度针织的定位与大英帝国以及随后建立的使命教育密切相关（Allender，2016）。虽然手工编织是学习和实践的所有性别（麦克米伦，2018年），代际技能是（和）一般通过非正式的学习渠道获得，在家庭空间。对于一个社会建构的实践定义为一个理想的家庭主妇的标志（沃尔什，2004年），并与最近的复苏针织作为一种爱好或作为独立的企业（Kedkar，2022年），有没有记录的历史风格或模式从印度由于技能的微不足道的代表性在公共场所，不像西方的采样器已被保存。采用跨学科的方法，结合档案研究和口述历史的方法，由物质文化，殖民地和殖民历史的主题为基础，研究询问的地方和意义，在北印度编织1850年至1980年。这是一个关键时期，西方做法的影响和适应越来越大，同时将后殖民印度定位为一个手工艺国家，强调传统/民间手工艺（McGowan，2009年），排除了国内手工艺。1980年后，随着印度经济的开放和1991年的自由化浪潮，针织业受到全球吸引力的影响，并持续到今天。

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.