Affective Somaesthetics: Reflections on Flowing and Feeling with Fire Dancers in Thailand

Looked at again and again half consciously by a mind thinking of something else, any object mixes itself so profoundly with the stuff of thought that it loses its actual form and recomposes itself a little differently in an ideal shape which haunts the brain when we least expect it. (Virginia Woolf 38) From briefcases to drugs, and from boxing rings to tower blocks, this issue of M/C Journal turns its attention to the diverse materialities that make up our social worlds. Across a variety of empirical contexts, the collected papers employ objects, structures, and spaces as lenses onto corporeality, extending and unsettling habitual understandings of what a body is and does. By exploring everyday encounters among bodies and other materialities, the contributors elucidate the material processes through which human corporeality is enacted and imagined, produced and unmade.That materialities “tell stories” of bodies is an implicit tenet of embodied existence. In biomedical practice, for example, the thermometer assigns a value to a disease process which might already be felt, whereas the blood pressure cuff sets in motion a story of illness that is otherwise hidden or existentially absent. In so doing, such objects recast corporeality, shaping not only experiences of embodied life, but also the very matter of embodiment.Whilst recognising that objects are “companion[s] in life experience” (Turkle 5), this issue seeks to go beyond a sole focus on embodied experience, and explore the co-constitutive entanglements of embodiment and materiality. The collected papers examine how bodies and the material worlds around them are dialectically forged and shaped. By engaging with a specific object, structure, or space, each paper reflects on embodiment in ways that take account of its myriad material dynamics. BodiesHow to conceptualise the body and attend to its complex relationships with sociality, identity, and agency has been a central question in many recent strands of thinking across the humanities and social sciences (see Blackman; Shilling). From discussions of embodiment and personhood to an engagement with the affective and material turns, these strands have challenged theoretical emphases on body/mind dualisms that have historically informed much thinking about bodies in Western thought, turning the analytic focus towards the felt experience of embodied being.Through these explorations of embodiment, the body, as Csordas writes, has emerged as “the existential ground of culture” (135). Inspired by phenomenology, and particularly by the writings of Merleau-Ponty, Csordas has theorised the body as always-already inter-subjective. In constant dynamic interaction with self, others, and the environment, the body is both creative and created, constituting culture while being constituted by it. As such, bodies continuously materialise through sensory experiences of oneself and others, spaces and objects, such that the embodied self is at once both material and social.The concept of embodiment—as inter-subjective, dynamic, and experientially focussed—is central to this collection of papers. In using the term corporeality, we build on the concept of embodiment in order to interrogate the material makings of bodies. We attend to the ways in which objects, structures, and spaces extend into, and emanate from, embodied experiences and bodily imaginings. Being inherently inter-subjective, bodies are therefore not individual, clearly bounded entities. Rather, the body is an "infinitely malleable and highly unstable culturally constructed product” (Shilling 78), produced, shaped, and negated by political and social processes. Studies of professional practice—for example, in medicine—have shown how the body is assembled through culturally specific, sometimes contingent, arrangements of knowledges and practices (Berg and Mol). Such arrangements serve to make the body inherently “multiple” (Mol) as well as mutable.A further challenge to entrenched notions of singularity and boundedness has been offered by the “affective turn” (Halley and Clough) in the humanities and social sciences (see also Gregg and Siegworth; Massumi; Stewart). Affect theory is concerned with the felt experiences that comprise and shape our being-in-the-world. It problematises the discursive boundaries among emotive and visceral, cognitive and sensory, experiences. In so doing, the affective turn has sought to theorise inter-subjectivity by engaging with the ways in which bodily capacities arise in relation to other materialities, contexts, and “force-relations” (Seigworth and Gregg 4). In attending to affect, emphasis is placed on the unfinishedness of both human and non-human bodies, showing these to be “perpetual[ly] becoming (always becoming otherwise)” (3, italics in original). Affect theory thereby elucidates that a body is “as much outside itself as in itself” and is “webbed in its relations” (3).ObjectsIn parallel to the “affective turn,” a “material turn” across the social sciences has attended to “corporeality as a practical and efficacious series of emergent capacities” which “reveals both the materiality of agency and agentic properties inherent in nature itself” (Coole and Frost 20). This renewed attention to the “stuff” (Miller) of human and non-human environments and bodies has complemented, but also challenged, constructivist theorisations of social life that tend to privilege discourse over materiality. Engaging with the “evocative objects” (Turkle) of everyday life has thereby challenged any assumed distinction between material and social processes. The material turn has, instead, sought to take account of “active processes of materialization of which embodied humans are an integral part, rather than the monotonous repetitions of dead matter from which human subjects are apart” (Coole and Frost 8).Key to this material turn has been a recognition that matter is not lumpen or inert; rather, it is processual, emergent, and always relational. From Bergson, through Deleuze and Guattari, to Bennett and Barad, a focus on the “vitality” of matter has drawn questions about the agency of the animate and inanimate to the fore. Engaging with the agentic capacities of the objects that surround us, the “material turn” recognises human agency as always embedded in networks of human and non-human actors, all of whom shape and reshape each other. This is an idea influentially articulated in Actor-Network-Theory (Latour).In an exposition of Actor-Network-Theory, Latour writes: “Scallops make the fisherman do things just as nets placed in the ocean lure the scallops into attaching themselves to the nets and just as data collectors bring together fishermen and scallops in oceanography” (107, italics in original). Humans, non-human animals, objects, and spaces are thus always already entangled, their capacities realised and their movements motivated, directed, and moulded by one another in generative processes of responsive action.Embodied Objects: The IssueAt the intersections of a constructivist and materialist analysis, Alison Bartlett’s paper draws our attention to the ways in which “retro masculinity is materialised and embodied as both a set of values and a set of objects” in Nancy Meyers’s film The Intern. Bartlett engages with the business suit, the briefcase, and the handkerchief that adorn Ben the intern, played by Robert De Niro. Arguing that his “senior white male body” is framed by the depoliticised fetishisation of these objects, Bartlett elucidates how they construct, reinforce, or interrupt the gaze of others. The dynamics of the gaze are also the focus of Anita Howarth’s analysis of food banks in the UK. Howarth suggests that the material spaces of food banks, with their queues of people in dire need, make hunger visible. In so doing, food banks draw hunger from the hidden depths of biological intimacy into public view. Howarth thus calls attention to the ways in which individual bodies may be caught up in circulating cultural and political discursive regimes, in this case ones that define poverty and deservingness. Discursive entanglements also echo through Alexandra Littaye’s paper. Like Bartlett, Littaye focusses on the construction and performance of gender. Autoethnographically reflecting on her experiences as a boxer, Littaye challenges the cultural gendering of boxing in discourse and regulation. To unsettle this gendering, Littaye explores how being punched in the face by male opponents evolved into an experience of camaraderie and respect. She contends that the boxing ring is a unique space in which violence can break down definitions of gendered embodiment.Through the changing meaning of such encounters between another’s hand and the mutable surfaces of her face, Littaye charts how her “body boundaries were profoundly reconfigured” within the space of the boxing ring. This analysis highlights material transformations that bodies undergo—agentially or unagentially—in moments of encounter with other materialities, which is a key theme of the issue. Such material transformation is brought into sharp relief by Fay Dennis’s exploration of drug use, where ways of being emerge through the embodied entanglements of personhood and diamorphine, as the drug both offers and reconfigures bodily boundaries. Dennis draws on an interview with Mya, who has lived experience of drug use, and addiction treatment, in London, UK. Her analysis parses Mya’s discursive construction of “becoming normal” through the everyday use of drugs, highlighting how drugs are implicated in creating Mya’s construction of a “normal” embodied self as a less vulnerable, more productive, being-in-the-world.Moments of material transformation, however, can also incite experiences of embodied extremes. This is elucidated by the issue’s feature paper, in which Roy Brockington and Nela Cicmil offer an autoethnographic study of architectural objects. Focussing on two Brutalist

This article explores the gender politics of heterosexual masculinity by detailing the practices of masculinity and heterosexuality among a group of Thai men working in the tourism industry in Thailand's south. The research is based on ethnographic data obtained during a number of field visits between October 2000 and January 2007 to Pha-ngan Island in southern Thailand. It is positioned within the geography literature on masculinities and heterosexuality, extending the current literature on cross-cultural negotiations of masculinity by exploring negotiations of heterosexual masculinity in a context where differing cultural notions of hegemonic masculinity come into dialogue. Specifically, I detail the articulation of heterosexual masculinity by Thai bar workers through their encounters with three key ‘Others’: Thai transgendered people; tourist women; and tourist men. These encounters provide a context through which the complexity and instability of both hegemonic and subordinated masculinity can be explored. In particular, I argue that the delineation of these masculinities is both contextually and culturally specific. The encounters also provide an opportunity to investigate the importance of spatiality to the performance of heterosexual identities.

Artistic journey of Surakarta dance, in its growth coloured by many various dynamic event, for example incidence of confl ict. For example, event which enough the legend and have various dimension mean that is hard deduction of tradition society to show of dance Samgita Pancasona masterpiece of Sardono W. Kusumo in RRI Surakarta in the year 1970s. That ocurance generate hard collision among/between of tradition and modern movement. Afterwards, then is opened by the new fi rmanent which open various possibility door to develop various concept and idea creation of dance, including use of modern dance motion material and technique. The interesting problems is Yayasan Seni Budaya Indonesia (YASBI) attitude which openly perform a deduction to movement renewal of Pusat Kebudayaan Jawa Tengah (PKJT) supporting modern movement. From that case there are two important matter which is properly noted is, First, is YASBI attitude assuming taboo show of contemporary dance of Sardono W. Kusumo and assumed to endanger. Second, is historical side, specially related to effort to know renewal growth dance in Surakarta. On the basis of that importance, hence this research was designed to know how occurrence of tadition – modern confl ict in artistic society of show of Surakarta which is in the form of deduction to contemporary dance Samgita Pancasona masterpiece of Sardono in the year 1970 in RRI Surakarta. So that is reaching critical refl ection of reasearch will be come near with Theory of Confl ict of Ralp Dahrendorf which ever look into society always stay in change process, marked by continuous oposition among its elements. Result of research to show of that all modern dance exponent in Surakarta, have surprised tradition society. On the other hand YASBI following movement of tfradition feel annoyed. In turn happened tradition-modern confl ict causing at throwing of buthuk egg tos how of contemporary dance Samgita Pancasona. That occurrence as symbol that tradition society refuse attendance of modern dance infl uence which destroy of the social order of the dance Surakarta. Its top is enragement of YABI head, Moedhakir Wiroguno then to attack PKJT, modern movement center by riding Jeep car climb Pendopo of Sasanamulya tha is as bravery symbol to defeat foreign infl uence which destroy tradition values. That occurrence in the end open new awareness of tradition dance can be made by items for the basic of contemporary dance. That event, is short lived even if, undeniably have very long infl uence to life Surakarta dance later on day. The infl uence for example, opening various possibility door, both for concerning idea, artistic creation, and also study to dance art, including also reinforcemnet of tradition, in consequence in Surakarta growth dance proportional contemporary dance and tradition. Thereby result of the reasearch in harmony with assumption which have been raised. Keywords: tradition and modernity confl ict

Cet essai examine l’histoire des politiques et des interventions du gouvernement canadien dans l’utilisation de film cinématographiques pour vendre le Canada comme un lieu de vacances aux touristes américains entre 1934 et 1948. Le gouvernement reconnut alors que l’activité commerciale s’adressant aux touristes était un facteur clé dans la santé de l’économie nationale. Le secteur public adopta le cinéma comme le média le plus efficace et le plus moderne pour annoncer le Canada aux touristes potentiels outrefrontière. Les “films de touristes” qui sont sortis à la fois dans les salles et via d’autres réseaux de distribution ont présenté le Canada comme une destination touristique désirable en faisant un portrait antimoderniste des paysages canadiens en même temps que, paradoxalement, ils présentaient le Canada comme un état moderne.

This thesis examines the contesting narratives of Icelandicness in popular music in contemporary Iceland. These narratives are informed by local historical and contemporary contexts, international notions of ‘the North’, and stereotypes of Icelanders. The thesis problematises a simplified narrative of Icelandic popular music that has often focused on the connection between music and nature. It provides a local context, grounded in historical understanding of the place, which is often missing in existing scholarship. By addressing and exploring these contesting narratives, and critically re-examining the relationship between the music and place, a deeper and more complex understanding of the situation has emerged that reflects a wider spectrum of perspectives than are currently available. The methodology used in this research emerges from the field of popular music studies and is firmly rooted in scholarship on music and place. A qualitative research strategy was adopted, relying on mixed methods of textual analysis and ethnography, in order to gather an extensive outlook with multiple perspectives on Icelandic music and the music scene in Reykjavik. I collected various textual material, music documentaries, and other audio-visual material which contained discussion about the music scene. The ethnography was informed by, but also complemented, the textual data, as I gathered information directly from members of the music scene between 2012-2016 through participation and participant-observation. The primary sources of ethnographic data originate from the 35 interviews I conducted with musicians and music industry members. Output from thematic analysis provided a focus for the thesis chapters and their various subsections. My data shows the internal struggles musicians have with their connection to nature. They strengthen these connections through their artistic processes, but they also actively try to work against them. The image of Icelandic nature and landscape is a powerful marketing tool frequently used by the music and tourism industries. Musicians find the image limiting, as it impacts both reception of the music and influences artistic decisions. At the same time, musicians actively participate in advancing the borealistic representations of themselves and the othering of other people in Iceland through their musical outputs. The contesting narratives also emerge from within the local context where musicians strive to position themselves as relevant in society, both in terms of politics and the economy. My participants regarded the ‘smallness’ as a key characteristic of the music scene and explained the different ways in which that manifested. This thesis shows how contesting narratives of both international perspectives and local experiences contribute to the image and identity of contemporary popular music in Iceland. I argue that sensitivity to the historical context is a key to unpacking the various contesting narratives. Through this I offer a nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between music and place in Iceland.

The spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all facets of the global tourism sector, particularly in Thailand, one of the world’s leading travel destinations. At the height of the epidemic, many countries imposed a nationwide lockdown, prohibiting all citizens from leaving the country and all foreign tourists from entering. This led to a global shutdown that significantly affected the daily lives of billions of people and seriously impacted the travel and tourism industry. After a two-year hiatus due to the epidemic, the situation eased and the lockdown restrictions were lifted. An interesting question is how visitors’ attitudes and preferences changed when compared to the time before the outbreak. This study attempts to answer this question by focusing on Malaysian visitors’ attitudes and perceptions toward destinations in southern Thailand. The study examines the perceptions of Malaysian Twitter (now X) users from three areas in Malaysia; Kedah, Perlis, and Kuala Lumpur, by employing Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques such as sentiment analysis and topic modeling. Then, tweet data before and after the lockdowns were gathered, analyzed, and compared. For sentiment analysis, it was found that, when neutral tweets were disregarded, results both before and after the COVID-19 lockdowns revealed that the attitudes conveyed by Malaysian tourists were overall positive especially a territory and a state that are more far away from Thailand, i.e., Kuala Lumpur and Kedah. The results from the topic modeling analysis showed a meaningful distinction between before and after the COVID-19 lockdowns. Practical suggestions are offered for tourism policymakers to identify and address both the strengths and weaknesses of tourism development in Southern Thailand.

Developing loyalty among tourists who visit secondary cities of provinces in Southern Thailand represents a way to support entrepreneurs in the areas of tourist attractions and businesses that are part of the networks of tourist service provision. However, the promotion of tourist loyalty is crucial problem in Southern Thailand. Despite the significant growth of tourism industry in Thailand, still the tourist loyalty is needed to promote to achieve higher performance in tourism industry. To address this challenge, this study examined the role of tourist attraction potential, government policies, service innovation and travel intention on tourist loyalty. To achieve this purpose, this study considered mixed method approach and data collection is performed through questionnaire survey and interviews in Southern part of Thailand. Statistical tool is used to examine the relationship between variables. Results of the study investigated that; tourist attraction potential, government policies, service innovation and travel intention have vital contribution to promote tourist loyalty in Southern part of Thailand. This study recommended that the tourism management companies should promote tourist loyalty by promoting tourist attraction potential, government policies, service innovation and travel intention.

Developing loyalty among tourists who visit secondary cities of provinces in Southern Thailand represents a way to support entrepreneurs in the areas of tourist attractions and businesses that are part of the networks of tourist service provision. However, the promotion of tourist loyalty is crucial problem in Southern Thailand. Despite the significant growth of tourism industry in Thailand, still the tourist loyalty is needed to promote to achieve higher performance in tourism industry. To address this challenge, this study examined the role of tourist attraction potential, government policies, service innovation and travel intention on tourist loyalty. To achieve this purpose, this study considered mixed method approach and data collection is performed through questionnaire survey and interviews in Southern part of Thailand. Statistical tool is used to examine the relationship between variables. Results of the study investigated that; tourist attraction potential, government policies, service innovation and travel intention have vital contribution to promote tourist loyalty in Southern part of Thailand. This study recommended that the tourism management companies should promote tourist loyalty by promoting tourist attraction potential, government policies, service innovation and travel intention.

This paper explores the entanglement of gender with class and national identities by investigating the politics of intra-national migration in Thailand. Focusing on the experiences of a group of young Thai men who have migrated from the Thai mainland to the island of Koh Pha-ngan in Southern Thailand, this research outlines the ways in which these young men are able to resist wider Thai discourses that seek to position them as marginal national subjects through their work in the tourism industry. I argue that the economic importance of the tourism industry opens up possibilities for the performance of masculine subjectivities which would otherwise be subject to surveillance and censure. This greater freedom enables experimentation with new gendered identities as well as access to sexual encounters with women that the men would not ordinarily meet: comparatively wealthy, educated, middle-class tourist women. Such encounters can open up possibilities which enable the men to re-negotiate their positioning in wider Thai society, and thereby challenge the marginalised identity labels that are ascribed to them.

This article analyses the transformation of a South Indian choreographic tradition practiced until the 1930s by a community of professional temple and court artists commonly known as devadāsī, rājadāsī and naṯṯuvaṉār. Such a tradition has been radically changed in the first decades of the last century into a form of choreographic hybridization known today as Bharatanatyam. This transformation mirrors the deep fractures produced in the artistic heritage of South India by the choices made by a few members of the Indian urban elite imbibed by Christian models of morality and nationalistm ideologies. The article demonstrates how the socio-political context and agenda of both Western and Indian reformists, in the colonial and post-colonial periods, re-constructed anew the artistic landscape of South India by forging its presumed origin and history. In order to achieve this change, the reformers “re-casted” the previous dance and music practicians, the audience, and the patrons of those arts. Meanwhile, the entire system of transmission of the artistic savoir-faire and the traditional repertoire of songs and dances were “sanitized” as well. Consequently, the now much claimed millenary antiquity and authenticity of the present Bharatanatyam dance, as it is taught and performed today in India and abroad, is actually the product of the close interactions between Indian and Western artistic patterns, which occurred during the first half of the 20th century.

People living with rarer forms of dementia tend to have progressive cognitive symptoms affecting skills other than memory and/or onset before the age of 65 years. They are often misdiagnosed and due to symptom profile or age of onset, do not usually fit well with care pathways designed for older people with typical Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia. Although the arts have been increasingly used as interventions to support people with dementia, there is very little attention given to rarer dementia forms in arts and health research or practice. The objective of the present international study seeks to systematically explore four diverse forms of poetry writing within this population through virtual and in-person small and large group formats. Our approach includes investigating poetic processes as methodology through the lens of an arts-based methodological approach in order to explore how poems construct knowledge and a felt experience. We will also use more traditional qualitative approaches to understand the experience of writing, reading and listening to poetry as an intervention that can be used with different rarer forms of dementia. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first study to explore poetry using multiple research protocols. The results will have implications for methodology development, co-constructed poetic inquiry and multiple opportunities for involving poetry in supporting people with dementia and family members.

Intricate paper cutting of Southern Thailand is a traditional folk art, which is passed down from one generation to another. However, there are no detailed studies or records of the historical backgrounds, beliefs, and cultural animation of Thai-Buddhist culture in Southern Thailand concerning this folk art. This study, therefore, aims to examine this art form in Songkhla and Nakhon Sri Thammarat provinces, which have their own cultural identities. The goal is to register this art form as a part of cultural heritage. The compilation of vital data includes (1) paper characteristics, (2) paper engraving methods, (3) colours, (4) instruments, (5) pattern designing, (6) purposes of the arts, (7) origins and history, and (8) knowledge of transferring methods. The findings reveal the origins of the beliefs and Buddhist faith of the community. The intricate paper cutting techniques are still maintained in the form of decorations found at auspicious events, festivals, and cultural ceremonies in every region of Thailand. The techniques of this art form are in decline but its use still prevails in community life, remaining favourites at auspicious festivities and cultural events for the sake of conserving distinct identities.

This thesis uses ideas of the male gaze, as defined in the feminist film theory of Laura Mulvey, and dance theory to explore the representation of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. The male gaze theory was coined by Mulvey in her 1975 essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in which she focused on the various situations where females are asymmetrically and unequally portrayed in film. Erin Brannigan’s dance theory, as used here, focuses on the communicative, emotional, physical and artistic aspects of the medium of dance in film as a forum for human interaction and expression within specific oeuvres. The interrelationship of film and dance theories is paramount to this study as these theories help to identify and understand the representation of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. This thesis argues that the correlation between the male gaze theory and dance theories provides a significant strategy for highlighting the portrayal of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. This thesis consists of a written and a practice component. The first acts as a guide to the latter. The written component maps the historical background of Kuwaiti cinema in relation to the representation of women and their dances. It also offers an outline of the feminist film and dance theories of Mulvey and Brannigan that I have used with the aim of investigating how women are represented and how dance by women functions in Kuwaiti cinema. The practical component is a documentary film about dance in Kuwaiti cinema. The film comprises archives, commentary and interviews that state the point of view of the interviewees as they discuss the reality of female representation and dance in Kuwaiti cinema. Furthermore, the documentary also establishes how Kuwaiti film censorship policy affects these elements. The argument discussed in this thesis is that the Kuwaiti films analysed here deploy the male gaze, as defined by Laura Mulvey and other feminist film theorists, but, because of the strict film censorship policy in Kuwait and the country’s traditional and religious outlook, this male gaze has been adjusted to historically specific parameters so as to ensure that the representation of women and dance in Kuwaiti cinema is appropriate to Islamic culture and the customs and traditions of Kuwaiti society.

The hotel industry is an industry highly dependent on tourism. The pandemic outbreak has had a huge impact on the global economy, and the tourism industry has also been affected. As the largest tourist area in southern Thailand, Phuket, Thailand has made outstanding contributions to Thailand's GDP and employment rate. Due to the pandemic, many hotels in Phuket closed due to a lack of income resulting from the lack of tourists over the past three years, and there has also been a shift in consumer behavior from offline to online activities. This has resulted in a surge in the number of Internet users, many of whom accessed the Internet using smartphones. In addition to using social media to share life and meet friends, more and more people are using search engines to obtain information, and they account for more than half of Internet traffic. Digital marketing is crucial in the hospitality industry, as it leverages technology to enhance brand strength, attract new users, analyze loyal customers and foster relationships with potential customers. More and more consumers use digital channels for researching products and making purchasing decisions. In Thailand's tourism industry, the government also saw the potential of digital media. In order to help the tourism industry recover, it proposed digital tourism and collaborated with businesses. This paper uses quantitative research methods and questionnaires to investigate the impact of social media, search engines, and online travel agencies on hotel booking intentions in Phuket. Results show that these factors have a significant impact, and recommendations are made for Phuket hotels to focus on high-quality and efficient social media marketing strategies to attract more users.

This thesis provides an exploration and critique of the Horniman Museum’s Romanian collection of folk art through an investigation of the front stage and back stage of the collection. Firstly, the museum’s holdings are unpacked through archival study of the events that led to their collection, including the cultural exchanges of the 1950s and the myriad institutional and personal encounters that informed their collection and original display. Investigation of the historical context of the objects’ arrival in London reveals the importance of their performance on the Cold War cultural stage, where acts of exhibiting and giving away folk art across the Iron Curtain became a pretext for building diplomatic relations and creating particular representations of the state. A second form of backstage is explored through a series of ethnographic encounters that generate insights into the afterlives of the art forms represented in the Horniman Museum collection by bringing these objects into dialogue with contemporary craft makers in Romania. Whilst in the context of the museum, the folk art collection appears as a homogenous set of traditional things, in the context of contemporary Romania, different art forms have undergone very divergent histories and hold very different social and economic value and significance. Focusing on the contemporary flourishing of pottery-making and neglect of textile production in Romania today sheds light on the various ways idioms of tradition and modernity, work and heritage are understood in the local context as well as lending insights into transformations in material environments, techniques of making, life histories, and the spaces in which crafts are situated. An exploration of the past lives and afterlives of craft objects held in the Horniman museum offers a window onto the diversity of modes of production and meaning-making that co-exist in Romania and the embedded historical relations and specific social, economic and political milieus in which different art forms have developed and become valorised. This combination of archival and ethnographic research provides a means of locating the Horniman collection in time and space whilst at the same time recognising the dynamic and ever-changing nature of craft production in Romania. The thesis highlights both the limitations of folk art and heritage discourses within the museum and their contemporary relevance and reinvention beyond the museum.