Crafting Tradition: The Making and Marketing of Oaxacan Wood Carvings (review)

"Traditional Zapotec wood carvings ward off evil spirits and protect the household." This is just one example of the things said on the Internet about Oaxacan wood carvings. Michael Chibnik's book takes these popular conceptions apart in his lively analysis of the local, regional, and international economics of these pieces from southern Mexico. To begin with, they are not traditional; people have been carving wood for millennia, but these carvings sprang up in the last few decades. In style, they are fantastic and dynamic. The role of "tradition" is strictly a marketing concept to reach global customers in search of an elusive authenticity. Neither are most of the carvers Zapotec or indigenous (Zapotec is a language family of at least ten separate languages, and not an ethnic group per se). The carvings also are not used to ward off evil spirits, unless starvation is an evil spirit: Wood carvings put food on the table, a local adaptation to global economic conditions. Chibnik shows that wood carving is an invented tradition and that people take it up because it appears to them to be a better option than construction work, migration, or subsistence agriculture. In most cases, wood carving is one of a number of household strategies, and in some cases it is the main strategy. I know of no cases in which it is the only strategy.

Within the wood carving strategy, there are multiple and dynamic paths to financial success, strategies for production (fewer big pieces vs. many small pieces), labor organization (household or waged), and marketing (local, regional, international). Chibnik's case studies, based on ethnographic fieldwork and on interviews in Oaxaca and the United States, shed light both on the wood carving business and on the variation in strategies and histories.

In writing about the effects of the Internet and coffee table books such as Barbash and Ragan (1993) on production, styles, and sales, Chibnik concludes that although publicity has increased the craft's legitimacy, especially in the eyes of the Mexican government, popular writing on wood carvings has not increased sales much, though styles have been somewhat affected by popular writing on the craft, as some producers and buyers pick pieces, catalog-style, from published pictures.

Chibnik contrasts theoretical perspectives, concluding that a combination of theories provides the best explanation: The campesinista (or peasantist) school says that unwaged production permits households to compete with capitalist (waged) firms and that unwaged family production should dominate in the wood carving industry. The proletarista (proletarian or Marxian) school predicts that market production will create wage labor. Which is true of the wood carving industry? Chibnik finds that the two explanations are intertwined: some households compete with only unwaged labor, and others hire workers.

Chibnik also contrasts gender and other theories about women's work. He finds that women's labor (principally in painting) accounts for about half the price of a piece. The value added by women's labor is generally not recognized; for example, most pieces are signed by the man. Chibnik asserts that the main reason that pottery (almost all done by women) is cheaper than wood carvings (in which most pieces are produced by men and women working together) is that pottery is fragile and breaks in shipping.

The theory of product life cycles predicts that wood carving sales will gradually decrease, with fewer producers over time, though ecological succession theory predicts more diversity in styles and products at maturity. Chibnik concludes that producers are not firms and do not operate with the logic of firms. He finds that artisans are opportunistic in the early stages and specialize later; in fact, carvers create more niches as old ones dry up.

Chibnik's overall theory is that people take what they know and innovate and adapt...