Panel:
- Karin Gustavsson, Folklivsarkivet/ Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper, Lund University
- Anneli Palmsköld, Professor in conservation specialized in craft science, University of Gothenburg
- Johanna Rosenqvist, Docent, stitutionen för musik och bild, Linnéuniversitetet
Building a Soft Cultural Heritage: reproducing gender, ethnicity and class
The article discusses how gender, ethnicity and class is being produced and reproduced in an archival material gathered and organized by the handicraft entrepreneur Lilli Zickerman (1858-1949). It consists of an inventory called Swedish Folk Textile Art, that was conducted during several decades in the first half of the 20th century. The archival material is huge; it consists of about 24 000 photographs depicting traditional Swedish textiles. Up to the present day, her findings are disseminated by the handicraft societies in Sweden and the archival material is crucial when talking about Swedish textile heritage.
The point of departure is that gender has played a key role in playing down the importance of female heritage actors, and Zickerman is an example of this. A further argument holds that without properly addressing gender aspects, but also ethnicity and class, heritage making processes will be incomplete. When following Zickerman’s footprints, it seems that as a woman with connections to key contributors to the cultural field, she made use of her position in her efforts to create the archive. Her position (single woman and entrepreneur) made agency possible in this specific place in time.
The article analyzes how the handicraft associations have performed governmentality regarding the use of Zickerman’s archive. Who has been able to contribute to or build upon the knowledge of it, placing it in a post-colonial setting, where ethnicity and even whiteness are critical perspectives.
Although the archive that Zickerman created is huge, there is an evident lack – her own personal archive, which seems to be lost. This will lead to methodological discussions on archival silences as defined by Moss & Thomas 2021 and discussions about the gender aspect in personal archives, also treated by Grahn & Wilson 2018.