DEFINITIONS

It is useful to begin by giving definition and context to several terms: intangible cultural heritage, globalization, and cultural change. Cultural heritage as a concept enshrined in a set of protection philosophies, principles, and practices in international conventions and national policies has gradually broadened out from the built or material form to cultural spaces and landscapes to the more recent inclusion of cultural practices, traditions, and cultural knowledges. William Logan puts forth a working definition of cultural heritage as “those elements created by a society or community in the past which provide that society or community today with a sense of its own identity and worth,” which now also includes what are termed intangible heritages: “cultural and spiritual practices, indigenous cosmology, folklore and oral histories, artisan skills, music, song, dances and other traditions.”Footnote ¹ Defining exactly what is to be protected or preserved in this latter category, and how, has produced an interesting and ongoing dialogue among heritage practitioners and various contributing disciplines including intellectual property lawyers, anthropology, cultural studies, and the social sciences.Footnote ² Part of the discussion has been around the dynamic and shifting nature of culture itself and, at an international level, the problem of shaping a definition of intangible cultural heritage that would prove meaningful and inclusive to a world of diverse cultures and languages.Footnote ³ The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003 (the Convention) thus came to define the intangible as:

1. 1. The “intangible cultural heritage” means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts, and cultural spaces associated therewith—that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.

2. 2. The “intangible cultural heritage,” as defined in paragraph 1 above, is manifested inter alia in the following domains:

   1. (a) oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage;

   2. (b) performing arts;

   3. (c) social practices, rituals and festive events;

   4. (d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;

   5. (e) traditional craftsmanship.

(Article 2: Definitions)Footnote ⁴

Methods to protect and preserve, or to safeguard intangible heritage under this Convention mean those measures “aimed at ensuring the viability of the intangible cultural heritage, including the identification, documentation, research, preservation, protection, promotion, enhancement, transmission, particularly through formal and non-formal education, as well as the revitalisation of the various aspects of such heritage.”Footnote ⁵

Globalization is commonly thought of as a process that has an effect on societies, cultures, and nations.Footnote ⁶ Mary Hawkins writes that it is a process by which societies and cultures are increasingly interconnected and interdependent and brought into ever-closer contact with each other. Societies experience “ever increasing cross-border flows of people, goods, services, ideas, information, money, images, knowledge, and culture.”Footnote ⁷ Maintaining cultural forms and cultural identity amid the challenges of modernization and globalization has been a widely discussed subject within the social sciences and the cultural heritage field.Footnote ⁸ Within the cultural heritage field, one of the main concerns revolves around the reduction of cultural diversity, and the loss of cultural heritages in the world through the homogenization, or sometimes alternatively described as a “Westernization” of culture, through the influence of foreign cultural products via trade, entertainment, and mass media communications.Footnote ⁹ It is thought that this flow of foreign cultural forms, practices, and values threatens the transmission of traditional local cultures and values to youth. Not all agree, however, that there is a homogenization or globalization of culture going on.Footnote ¹⁰ Instead there is discussion around the “hybridization” of cultural forms,Footnote ¹¹ or the strengthening of a distinct local culture in the face of global influences, often termed “localization.”Footnote ¹²

In light of this, it is very interesting to note the inclusion of popular cultural forms in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) “Definition of Culture and Cultural Heritage” from the Declaration on Cultural Heritage, Bangkok, Thailand, 2000: “popular cultural heritage: popular creativity in mass cultures (i.e., industrial or commercial cultures), popular forms of expression of outstanding aesthetic, anthropological and sociological values, including the music, dance, graphic arts, fashion, games and sports, industrial design, cinema, television, music video, video arts and cyber art in technologically-oriented urbanized communities.”Footnote ¹³ By comparison the UNESCO Convention seems somewhat limited by definition, and caught up in documenting the “authentic,” perhaps to the detriment of new ideas, innovations, and hybrid forms. There has also been ongoing critique of the UNESCO emphasis on inventorying and documentation as a means to safeguard intangible heritage. While admitting that there are daunting complexities for policymakers in attempting a comprehensive management of cultural productions, Brown takes an ecological perspective to the nature of information flows, arguing that policy initiatives on intangible heritage that take an “Information Society” approach—inventorying, documenting, administering, researching—actually work against the unpredictable quality of information flows and against the essential qualities of the intangible heritages being protected.Footnote ¹⁴ “Bureaucratic logic and a compulsion to rationalise,” coupled with legal creativity, might result in “a cultural diversity preserved on digital recording devices, while the people who gave rise to this artistry and knowledge have disappeared.”Footnote ¹⁵ In that case the efforts to protect the intangible heritage would be judged a failure.Footnote ¹⁶ Even so, Brown contends with Richard Kurin from the Smithsonian Institution that the UNESCO Convention propounds the importance of traditional cultural practices, and puts the status of local knowledge on the world's agenda as an issue worthy of attention.Footnote ¹⁷

BHUTAN AS A CASE STUDY OF CULTURAL CHANGE IN RESPONSE TO PROCESSES OF GLOBALIZATION

Bhutan has only very recently opened its doors to the international community and to processes of modernization and globalization. Before 1959 Bhutan had remained relatively removed from outside cultural influence, due in part to the impregnable mountainous terrain, but also due to a deliberate foreign policy of isolation.Footnote ¹⁸ Up until the 1960s Bhutan had no telephones, schools, hospitals, postal service, tourists, or television. It was not until the potential threat to Bhutan's own national security in 1959, after the Chinese suppression of the Tibetan revolt, that efforts were made to engage with the international community and to engage with processes of modernization.Footnote ¹⁹ Tourism was not introduced until the 1970s and remains regulated, including expensive daily tariffs brought in after witnessing the impact of tourism on Nepal. This has meant that the cultural heritage—the traditional arts, religious ceremonies, festivals, social conduct, and structures—have remained to a large degree unaltered from the way they had been practiced hundreds of years ago and likewise continue to hold daily significance for the people and for the community.Footnote ²⁰ A distinct cultural identity has evolved from this long history of uninterrupted nation building, teamed with a “well defined set of values drawn from the ethic and moral cosmology of Mahayana Buddhism.”Footnote ²¹ However, in recent years there have been rapid transformations within all areas of Bhutanese society—increased urbanization and changes in education, infrastructure, media and communications, work opportunities, and political life—and this has posed significant challenges to Bhutan's traditional Buddhist culture and values. Bhutanese researchers and the government have begun to discuss the effects of these rapid changes on society and culture, particularly with respect to new media forms, urbanization, education, and development policy.Footnote ²² In a broader sense, the pressures Bhutan continues to face include, as Diana K. Myers points out, “the struggle to balance the need for national unity against the realities of ethnic and linguistic diversity, and the desire for national integrity and sovereignty against the pressures of immigration, tourism, economic development, and foreign investment.”Footnote ²³ While there has not been wide discussion of the effect of modernization and globalization processes on the cultural traditions and practices of weaving, handicrafts overall are discussed with respect to their contribution to rural small enterprise, poverty reduction opportunities for women, and cultural tourism.Footnote ²⁴

In 2008 Bhutan established a parliamentary democracy, instigated by the Fourth King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. This was a momentous occasion for a country ruled by hereditary monarchy since 1907, and previous to that by a long succession of Buddhist religious rulers. It is a timely and pivotal moment in Bhutanese history in which to reflect on the challenges posed to traditional cultural values and practices. Where previously it could be said there had been benevolent direction from the monarchy toward the preservation of cultural traditions and a national cultural identity, future decision making will effectively be in the hands of the Bhutanese people. In the lead-up to the writing of the Constitution and the change to parliamentary democracy, there was concern over the impact such dramatic change would have on Bhutanese culture and tradition. The crown prince (who went on to become king in 2008) reiterated in village talks that the Constitution provides for the overall structure for the preservation of culture—the power to decide how and what cultural heritage should be protected will be conferred to the people of Bhutan, and this would be expected to change with successive generations.Footnote ²⁵ The draft Constitution declared that the state “shall recognize culture as an evolving dynamic force and shall endeavor to strengthen and facilitate the continued evolution of traditional values and institutions that are sustainable as a progressive society.”Footnote ²⁶

BACKGROUND HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT TO WEAVING PRACTICES AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN BHUTAN

Oral history traces the introduction of weaving and dyeing in Bhutan to the seventh-century Chinese Princess Lhachick Kongjo, or Ashi Gyasa, as she is popularly known in Bhutan, the bride of the Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo (627–649).Footnote ²⁷ Legends, folklore, and patterns of trade over centuries indicate influences from northeast India, particularly the bordering states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, and also Tibet and China.Footnote ²⁸ Many designs and techniques also show similarities to those of Laos, Thailand, and Burma. In Dzongkha—Bhutan's national language—the word for cloth—zong—is related to the word for trade, tshong.Footnote ²⁹ As a form of currency and barter, cloth has been used for trade transactions, and up until the 1950s taxes to the government were still being paid in bolts of cloth.Footnote ³⁰ Specially crafted pieces became invaluable family heirlooms or phamaishuy, invested with history and genealogical sentiments and passed on through generations.Footnote ³¹ This cloth wealth has enriched both family households as well as the royal treasuries. As the production of woven cloth, including the skills of fiber preparation, spinning, and dyeing, was such an economically viable and necessary activity in the remote subsistence communities scattered across Bhutan, thagla beyla or “work related to weaving and wool work” were traditionally considered highly desirable attributes men looked for when choosing a wife.Footnote ³² As commissioners and patrons to the production of woven cloth, the royal palaces of central and western Bhutan once employed many weavers with exceptional skills in the large weaving and dyeing workshops. Esteem and prestige continue to be gained by those who become masters of the craft and for many women cloth weaving still exists as the sole means toward generating a form of income.

The large royal government–supported workshops have been replaced with smaller commercial enterprises and workshops in the main centers across Bhutan, predominantly serving the Bhutanese but also the growing tourist market. In subsistence rural communities, weaving production is typically at its height during the winter months, after the agricultural season has finished and during the school holidays. Trade in cloth takes place during the spring in time for the major festival and tourist months in Thimphu (the capital) and Paro, the urban and tourist centers of Bhutan. It often forms a supplementary income in addition to agricultural life; although if income generation is high from weaving, then women may be exempt from also engaging in agricultural work, and in some regions girls will leave or be taken out of school.Footnote ³³

In religious life, woven cloth continues to play an important role as traditional costume in religious performances; special gifts marking significant occasions; and as part of the competitive changing fashions worn by attendees at annual major religious festivals, such as tsechus.Footnote ³⁴ At such events some of the country's finest and most intricate pieces come out for show, and there is reverence for the older woven pieces that still get used due to a sense of “divinity.”Footnote ³⁵ Wealthy Bhutanese and royalty will commission and purchase many fine pieces each year to wear to tsechus, important government functions, religious occasions. and parties.

On an everyday level, by order of a royal decree of 1986, traditional Bhutanese attire must be worn at school and in public during office business hours or at formal occasions. Visits to any of the royal Bhutanese government ministries or Dzongs (a fortress-monastery where civil and religious authorities are housed) must be accompanied by the official forms of this national dress. The royal decree was a response to the growing tendency towards Westernized forms of dress, and it was a way to further enforce a distinctive Bhutanese cultural identity.Footnote ³⁶Kira is the Bhutanese term for the national dress for women, and gho is the dress for men.

Given these strict parameters in which to express one's individuality through what one wears, woven cloth in Bhutan is an ever-evolving art form intimately linked to changing tastes in fashion and style. This is particularly so with the women's kira. Individual creativity and flair have shaped the reinterpretation of traditional design and coloring into more contemporary combinations called pesar, particularly the changes of width, order, and color intensity of stripes.Footnote ³⁷ The small design motifs are drawn from nature (the butterfly, sun rays, and thunderbolt) or from Buddhist practice (the lucky knot and the eternal knot). Through wide circulation, these pesar designs influence and inspire further design adaptations. This openness to change is what sets weaving apart from the other 13 traditional arts and crafts forms, known as the Zorig Chusum. In these other forms, thangka painting, for example, there is strict adherence to the traditional designs and relatively little individual creative reinterpretation.

BHUTAN'S MEASURES TO PROTECT CULTURAL IDENTITY

The 1999 report, “Bhutan 2020: A Vision for Peace, Prosperity and Happiness,” is a significant government strategic planning document outlining the path Bhutan intends to take on social, cultural, economic, and ecological fronts considering the many pressures and challenges that modernizing will bring. It is apparent throughout the document that culture is perceived as playing an important role in meeting “spiritual and emotional needs, in maintaining a distinctive identity, and in cushioning Bhutan from some of the negative impacts of modernization.”Footnote ³⁸ The emphasis on the formation and maintenance of a distinct national identity is traced back 350 years and continues to be seen as essential in protecting Bhutan's sovereignty as a small nation located between India and China. This distinctive identity, reinforced as it is by a long history of Mahayana Buddhism, will in turn shape a strong cultural, ecological, and spiritual imperative within a “holistic understanding and approach” to development policies and planning.Footnote ³⁹ The unique development concept that is described is the “maximisation of Gross National Happiness.” This concept sees development as “having many more dimensions than those associated with Gross Domestic Product,” and should be understood as “a process that seeks to maximise happiness rather than economic growth.”Footnote ⁴⁰ While economic growth is recognized as a precondition for the many other development goals, it is not seen as the sole prime motivator, and in fact must have an interdependent relationship with these other social and environmental realities.Footnote ⁴¹ As the “2020 Bhutan” states:

This social and cultural imperative within the modernization and globalization process predates many other international approaches working to achieve similar goals: The UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions 2005, the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003, the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Human Development Report and Index system, the UNDP Millennium Development Goals, the World Commission on Culture and Development (WCCD) 1993 initiated by the UNESCO and the United Nations, and “Our Creative Diversity” report.

There has been a growing body of discussion within Bhutan and at an international level around the concept of GNH, and the form it might take within policy.Footnote ⁴³ Bhutan, like many other smaller countries, struggles with the pressures of economic development, foreign investment, growing tourism, immigration, national security concerns, and the influx of foreign cultural media and communications.Footnote ⁴⁴ Policy pertaining to the GNH concept in Bhutan is an attempt to turn GNH from utopian vision to concrete reality in order to deal holistically with these challenges. It is a way to begin measuring the unquantifiable—because “what doesn't get measured, doesn't get managed.”Footnote ⁴⁵ This is translated into each of the national five-year development plans.

Four key pillars are being undertaken at present in the creation of an enabling environment for GNH: (1) promotion of equitable and sustainable socioeconomic development, or economic self-reliance; (2) preservation and promotion of cultural values; (3) conservation of the natural environment; and (4) good governance.Footnote ⁴⁶ As the government of Bhutan has decided that the main overall development goal for the Tenth Plan will be poverty reduction, each of the districts will formulate programs and projects that target the poor, the vulnerable, and the unreachedFootnote ⁴⁷ in line with the four key pillars outlined above. This complements the international commitment Bhutan has undertaken to the UNDP Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2015.Footnote ⁴⁸ Handicrafts have been highlighted as performing a key role in promoting economic growth in rural districts.

A NATIONAL CULTURAL IDENTITY?

The “2020 Bhutan” report is a real positive enforcement of Bhutanese cultural values and aspirations, and the concept of GNH is recognized worldwide as an inspirational development concept for the twenty-first century. There should be some caution, however, towards a government policy document tailored to present a particular viewpoint. Various authors have discussed the ways in which culture has been utilized to articulate a strong national identity, often overriding the interests of minority groups and cultural diversity within a nation-state.Footnote ⁴⁹ Anderson spoke of the nation being an “imagined community,” with the development of a national print language pivotal in drawing a dispersed population into one that can “imagine' itself as a whole.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Davison discusses the way new nation-states of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began to speak of a “national heritage” as that “body of folkways and political ideas on which new regimes founded their sense of pride and legitimacy”Footnote ⁵¹; and Hawkins writes that national cultures are “particular creations; stories a people tell themselves about themselves”—national cultures are a selective interpretation, always interpreted and reinterpreted in response to past outcomes and future aspirations.Footnote ⁵²

Bhutan has adopted a national written language, Dzongkha; a national history of the formation of modern Bhutan; and a national form of dress. These forms of national cultural identity are forms traditionally belonging to the central and west Bhutanese, but are not traditional forms of culture from the indigenous peoples of north, east and south of Bhutan—including the Layaps of Laya, the nomadic Brokpa of Merak and Sakteng, and the Lhops of Samtse district. Nor do they allow for the culturally diverse ethnic populations within Bhutan to express their own culture. Amnesty International has reported of the “100,000 Nepalese refugees of ethnic Nepalese origin from southern Bhutan who have been living in camps in southeast Nepal for more than a dozen years after they were arbitrarily stripped of their nationality and forced to flee Bhutan in the early 1990s.”Footnote ⁵³ One of the development difficulties for Bhutan will be aligning the emphasis on protecting national cultural unity amid change with these regional ethnic and cultural differences.Footnote ⁵⁴

CHANGE AND ADAPTATION

Right across Asia throughout the history of textile production there has always been an element of ingenuity and adaptability to differing circumstances and needs, as well as to materials available and traded in the more remote regions. Techniques, designs, ideas, innovations, materials, knowledge, and craftspeople have moved fluidly across borders, traveling alongside the merchants and religious pilgrims of Central and South Asia in what is described as some of the first instances of globalization.

Today modern production processes and materials are being taken up rapidly across Asia. For example, polyester fibers and commercial chemical dyes are popular with weavers due to accessibility, cost effectiveness, and consistency of color. Imported from India into Bhutan, they have replaced in many instances the more traditional use of cotton, wild silk, nettle, wool, and yak hair, and the more time-consuming natural dyeing methods that incorporated the use of various leaves, seeds, shells, pods, resins, and barks of the forest. It should also be noted, however, that where demand has proven strong from both Bhutanese and international tourists for softer colors, stronger colorfast qualities, and environmental sustainability of natural dyes, the weaving industry has responded with a resurgence.

Another change with huge impact has been the import of cheap polyester cloth by neighboring Indian manufacturers. Since the 1990s or perhaps earlier, imported commercially printed fabrics from India depicting traditional Bhutanese woven designs have been sold in Bhutan. This has completely transformed the Bhutanese plain woven cloth industry of everyday wear. The printed Indian fabric satisfies the cultural necessity to retain traditional national dress code and has been quickly adopted due to its cheap cost, its functionality when working in the fields, and its ability to be washed and dried overnight (which is more difficult to achieve with woven cotton cloth). Across Bhutan the majority of school students and workers now wear imported printed cloth, where previously the cloth would have been woven by local Bhutanese women. While the issue of the protection of cultural and intellectual property or knowledge from misappropriation is an important point of discussion, it is not within the scope of this article.

Tyler Cowen's book Creative Destruction observes the impact, both through gain and loss, of global trade, technology, and cross-cultural exchange on cultural forms and cultural diversity. He points out that while the global exchange of new materials, goods, and technologies can have a detrimental impact on indigenous creative environments, which many view as a negative change in global cultural diversity,Footnote ⁵⁵ there are examples that illustrate the significant benefits brought to cultural forms. The Indian handweaving industry, for example, gained much from mechanization and new imported yarns, and “by lowering the price of cloth, it caused the absolute size of the market to expand greatly, which has supported more handweaving. The aesthetic craft of handweaving benefited from machine technologies, even though the incomes of many handweavers fell.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Technology improved the efficiency of the menial processes, leaving time for the time-consuming intricate decorative work. Will we also see this in Bhutan? In 2003 a Joint Weaving Workshop was hosted by the Textile Museum with weavers from India, to exchange ideas about large horizontal frame looms. The improved efficiency of the large frame loom demonstrated the production of the intricately patterned kira or gho cloth in one piece, compared to the usual method of weaving three separate pieces on a back-strap loom, which are then sewn together.Footnote ⁵⁷ Large frame looms, possibly even industrialized, could potentially be used to produce the everyday plain cloth for garments, reducing the amount of cheap imported cloth to Bhutan. However, it is doubtful the technology will replace the traditional back-strap loom in the remote rural areas—due to issues of mobility, cost, and space.Footnote ⁵⁸ Gains could certainly be made from other technologies to improve working conditions: For example, ergonomic improvements to the back-strap loom could prevent back problems, and improvements in electricity supply for proper lighting could prevent the onset of blindness, a legacy of close detailed work under semidark conditions.

In other areas we can see change in the modes of transmission of weaving knowledge and a shift in life ambition by younger Bhutanese women. The special family and communal relationships that underpinned traditional modes of knowledge transmission between generations are undergoing rapid change across Bhutan. Traditionally, techniques and designs have been an inherited knowledge passed orally between mother, sister or extended family member, and daughter. The various stages of production—fiber preparation, spinning, dyeing, weaving, finishing—involved the majority of female members of the community. In Khoma of the Lhuentse district, for example, the kushuthara designs are woven by “women in groups of six to ten, set up with their backstrap looms in rows in the harvested paddy fields, sheltered by bamboo canopies from three sides with their backs exposed to the sun. Some households will have about three to four women weaving the kushuthara.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Younger females will begin learning at very early ages, seven or eight years, practicing and mimicking the older women on a smaller play loom set up alongside. Gradually they will progress to more difficult designs. Specially guarded secrets of hingthag or “heart woven cloth,” as opposed to tsongthag, “cloths for sale,” are revealed slowly over time by the elderly weavers to the younger weavers.Footnote ⁶⁰

Today it is common for young women to attend modern education facilities located far from the village, spending lengthy periods of time away from the village and from family and communal life. Women who take up weaving might learn their weaving techniques from friends or from others in the weaving community, or from the weaving training offered in an education institution or training center.Footnote ⁶¹ While learning in this manner does transfer the actual skills and techniques required for cloth production, some argue that what is missing is the simultaneous transfer of a wider set of traditional values relating to social and ecological interdependence that has been vital in shaping survival in rural subsistence communities. The purpose of weaving may shift from including the special hingthag “heart woven cloth,” to that of cloth woven for commercial purpose only.Footnote ⁶²

The increase in rural to urban migration for education or for work, and the links that are opening up within the urban environment to various outside cultural influences, are having an effect on every part of Bhutanese society. Changes that affect the attitudes, values, expectations, perceptions of the people are also manifested in the choice and use of cloth.Footnote ⁶³ Other materials are rapidly replacing the traditional use of cloth in utilitarian items. Dress styles are changing. A contemporary adaptation of the national dress has come to be worn, the half kira: a shorter kira cloth worn more as a long wrap-around skirt with similar appearance to the full kira, but which is deemed to be much more practical. Changing fashions and attitudes are being influenced by foreign content in the media, and the shift in values towards modern efficiency and productivity have meant that often the “time consuming methods that produced the exquisite patterning, and the careful combinations of colours in the traditional cloths, are today dismissed as not being ‘cost nor time effective’.”Footnote ⁶⁴

SPECIFIC MEASURES TO ENABLE THE CONTINUATION OF THE CULTURAL PRACTICES OF WEAVING

Bhutanese weaving practitioners and the broader handloom industry benefit from a number of measures and activities aimed at providing a supportive enabling environment in which creativity and cultural practices might flourish. Many of these are reflected in the UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage—for example, formal and informal education, awareness-raising, capacity building, and community participation. Other measures combine education with weaving and textile arts as part of the cultural and creative industries, which are increasingly seen internationally as a tool for economic development, poverty reduction, and revitalization of the community. Initiatives set up by a number of international development organizations are honing the practitioners' ability to read and respond to global markets, while retaining links to the traditional. These initiatives show promise if they are able to straddle the fine line between retaining cultural identity and creating market-driven product diversity. If successful, practitioners can utilize the very same global consumption mechanisms that are viewed as currently threatening cultural practices. The international market can be educated to appreciate the value in the work of the contemporary craftsperson, artist, or designer; this in turn may reduce the demand for illicitly acquired antique objects from the same country; and it may strengthen the global market for environmentally sustainable, handmade, locally produced traditional craft, albeit “traditional” craft with a contemporary twist.

Staff from the National Women's Association of Bhutan and core weavers from East Bhutan, for example, have participated in interregional exchanges with weaving communities in Northern Thailand funded by UNDP and Japan Women in Development Fund (JWIDF), to look at the Thai experience of product diversification, quality improvements, display, packaging, and product branding.Footnote ⁶⁵ The Thai weaving industry is seen to have made a successful transition from primary domestic activity to commercial orientated business. The Thai OTOP (One Tamboan [District] One Product) program, whereby regions in Thailand are encouraged to produce one type of quality product to be marketed, was presented as an example that perhaps Bhutan could emulate as Bhutan also has regionally distinct weaving styles. Bhutan has also engaged with the ASEAN Handicrafts Promotion and Development Association, and the Award of Excellence for Handicrafts (formally known as the Seal of Excellence, UNESCO Bangkok). The Award of Excellence for Handicrafts has several objectives, including:

• • developing networks of handicraft producers and buyers

• • encouraging participation at trade fairs and exhibitions

• • ensuring rigorous quality control standards so products are high-quality and culturally authentic, and manufactured in a socially-responsible manner with respect for the environment

• • encouraging product innovation in order to ensure that handicrafts remain relevant, valuable, and marketable in modern life

• • providing capacity building and training workshops, and development of craft producers markets, and protection of craft workers' intellectual property rights.Footnote ⁶⁶

The negative outcome of engaging with international markets might be the tailoring of cultural practices towards products suited for a totally different cultural taste, utilitarian use, and expectation. The inherent danger for the practitioner and the handloom industry overall is finding they are constantly keeping pace with potentially fickle international market trends, and no longer being the driver of their weaving culture, but rather always in a position of responding. Many countries with rich weaving traditions, for example, wider Asia and South America, have extensive experience with these concerns. In areas where weaving is almost solely for the tourist market, there seems to be the consensus that it is better that there is a continuation of the skills, and that craft workers operate under improved circumstances that development NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and other Fair Trade–type organizations often provide, in contrast to the alternative of not weaving at all.

With regards to market expansion, Bhutan faces several practical problems:

• • The traditional gho and kira, one of the main woven items in Bhutan, sized at about 1.5 × 2.8 m, is expensive for the international tourist to purchase, and it does not present an immediate utilitarian use apart from wall hanging or furniture covering.

• • The private sector requires a legal and regulatory framework to be implemented to enable private business to function successfully in the national and international market place.Footnote ⁶⁷ This has the potential to cause conflict in some policy areas and with traditional and GNH values.Footnote ⁶⁸

• • A pilot e-business and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) project was tested in rural eastern Bhutan,Footnote ⁶⁹ with the idea that ICT could be an infrastructural marketing mechanism enabling rural villagers to overcome difficult geographical terrain in both national and international markets, thus reducing the rural to urban shift by younger weavers. Instead it was found that the implementation in Bhutan was premature considering that a legal and regulatory framework for both e-business and business in general would need to be developed; there was a lack of existing strong markets and market actors, especially ones that respected the needs of the rural woman first and foremost; and it was somewhat unrealistic to push for an adoption of computer technology which does not fit with rural life and the mountainous conditions.Footnote ⁷⁰

THE BROADER ENABLING ENVIRONMENT

Social practices and the communication of cultural values in a society have an enormous indirect yet significant impact on the continuation of cultural practices. Two key institutions in Bhutan, the education sector and the media, together constitute a formidable challenge to the continuation of traditional Bhutanese cultural values and practices. Modern education policy and programs and the media have from the outset been dominated by high foreign content of both western and Indian influence, which has started to create divisions in society between young and old, urban and rural, literate and illiterate, and the media and technological haves and have-nots. There is great potential for a unique Bhutanese curriculum to be developed, drawing upon Buddhist enlightenment values and education, as well as western and Indian influences. The Bhutan Broadcasting Service (radio and television service) is in the process of improving its supply of Bhutanese content into the difficult terrain of the remote east, an area long saturated with unregulated Indian cable television.

The government's “Media Impact Study” of 2003 called for legislation, including content legislation, to be introduced so as to provide national cultural alternatives and media regulation.Footnote ⁷⁷ In July 2006 the Bhutan Information, Communications and Media Act 2006 was passed to cover all forms of information and communication systems in Bhutan—from newspapers to broadcast, Internet, ICT, films, drama, and electronic governance.Footnote ⁷⁸ The act broadens the mandate of the Ministry of Information and Communications to cover emerging activities in the information, communication and media industries, including information dissemination, content development, collection and publication of information, privatization, and competition regulation. The mandate also provides for in-depth research to be undertaken in assessing the impact on society of various forms of ICT and media and the development and implementation of standards for appropriate content in information and media.

Regulating the media and education curricula is a carefully considered strategy aimed at facilitating a sociocultural and political environment that respects the Bhutanese cultural heritage and way of life. Policies and laws that regulate outside cultural influences through media, particularly those that exempt culture from free trade agreements have grown, led by the French. Countries such as Spain, South Korea, and Brazil now all place binding domestic content requirements on their cinemas or television channels.Footnote ⁷⁹ It leverages some control over the cultural influences that shape a nation's values, desires, dreams, and aspirations. If youth are the future policy drivers and custodians of culture, then it is essential to provide the necessary inspiration from which these choices and paths can be made. In terms of inspiration from media sources, one Bhutanese movie that enjoyed high international exposure and also had positive local impact was Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche's Travellers and Magicians. This was shot in Bhutan in 2002 with a mixed local and Hollywood crew, with traditional weaving scenes an important narrative element.Footnote ⁸⁰