Threading the Needle: Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa

For over a century, French colonial and Moroccan postcolonial state-building efforts have tethered cultural identity to the preservation and "modernization" of artisanal craftwork. Twenty-first-century heritage development initiatives aim to turn the "traditional" know-how of skilled textile producers into "modern" knowledge, reeducating, reorganizing, and reorienting artisans with new markets in mind. But media and development discourses often obscure artisans' own perspectives on their labor, reducing makers and the iconic embroidered and woven textiles they create to romantic stereotypes about "traditional craft."

Threading the Needle seeks to correct these clichés. Drawing on analysis of policy documents and archives, media and heritage representations of craft, and nearly two years of fieldwork, this historically grounded ethnography brings readers into the everyday lives of Moroccan textile artisans and other craft experts. Author Claire B. Nicholas foregrounds the diversity of artisans' voices and experiences as they practice patience (sabr) in learning their trades, managing their lives, and navigating state-led efforts to promote craft heritage. Even as artisans participate in training programs and cooperative forms that resemble those of the colonial era, they accomplish parallel objectives that sustain personal and community values. The result is the continuance of local categories of belonging, authority, and sociality, alongside the extension of state influence over the future of craft.

With close attention to the practices and possibilities of living heritage in postcolonial Morocco, Threading the Needle reveals the interwoven relationships between tradition, culture, craft, and political authority.