Ladies’ lace‐making and Imprisonment¹

This paper was originally given at the Conference of the International Visual Sociological Association, Boston, 1997.

This research is part of a larger project that examines the working lives of South African women prisoners. The data gathered represent one of the occupational sectors inside a women's prison in the Western Capearea where lace‐making and embroidery represent key working activity for the day. Lace‐making is a symbolic link between European and colonial heritage and is associated with hegemonic relations. Women who are involved in lace‐making must bring eye, hand and mind into creative dialogue. The sociologist as photographer attempts to draw the observer in, through the eyes of the worker and to indicate the intricacy of physical involvement and sense of necessary patience that must take place with work of this detail. (The wrong placing or direction of fine thread can raise moral, psychological and pedagogical questions to the working whole.) Lace making may be interpreted as an ‘engaging’ pedagogical vehicle and/or as a futile, oppressive vestige of colonialism.

Notes

This paper was originally given at the Conference of the International Visual Sociological Association, Boston, 1997.