Cristian Terry

Weaving Handicraft and Cultural Identity
in Peruvian Highlands within the Modern Tourism Market

The research project focuses on weaving handicraft made by local weavers in Peruvian highlands within the current tourist context. The project will take the case of Cusco region because its close relationship between weaving handicraft and tourism. The main goal of this project is to investigate to what extent local weavers use their textile production through tourism market to (re)create or consolidate cultural identity in national and international arena.

​By doing that, the research will also pretend show:

• Cultural components mobilized on textile production (technics,iconography and patterns, etc.)
• Changes and dynamic of traditional textile production throughout the history (adopting an historical point of view on weaving production from pre-Columbian period to the present)
• Imbrication between "tradition" and "modernity" through tourism market (new objects, new trends, new combinations of colors using ancient technics)
• Different actors (NGOs, National and Regional Government, International Institution, etc.) who promotes the insertion of weaving production in the tourism market, collaborating thus to the imbrication "tradition"/"modernity"
• Artistic innovation mobilized by each weaver (adopting a focus on individual production that distinguishes collective production from individual creation)

Sub project B
Cultural heritage, art and visual performances in non-western societies