Paper bead[ing] as agency: shaping women’s subjectivities and the practice of jewelry-making in Uganda

Abstract

In this study I interrogated the premise that paper bead[ing] is a site of agency that women beaders use to [re]constitute their subjectivities in ways that informed a jewelry enterprise as both knowledge production and art/design-making. In response to the premise, I carried out a qualitative study which explored paper bead[ing] as a complex practice rooted in histories, laced within colonial hierarchical tropes, engrained in gendered power and [re]produced through geopolitical institutions to shape agency. This exploration was enriched by the connections paper bead[ing] shares with beads, beadwork, media, art and pop culture as research. I adopted a multi-disciplinary theoretical framework of critical, feminist and social art theories that were underpinned by the theories of Jewelry making to provide insights of agency. In this, I examined how the circulation of paper bead[ing] has shaped a countervailing voice for the Ugandan women beaders to express themselves. I demonstrated how the circulation of paper bead[ing] has shaped experiences of Ugandan women beaders‘ countervailing voice. In such a voice, these women have confronted their precarious existence to articulate their subjectivities around their production, mobility and reproduction as they participate in the private and public domains. I analyzed the subjective experiences of women as references of new knowledge of creative relevance to invite innovations as knowledge production in Jewelry making. Findings of this study are in three folds. First, the relegation of bead[ing] through hierarchical legacies placed beads on the margins of critical discourse; however this did not prevent an alternative discourse of agency from emerging. Secondly the findings reflect that paper beads agency within Ugandan women beaders‘ lives has transformed into varied metaphoric forms of expression to allow these women move from spaces of limited voice, choice and power. Thirdly, these women have mobilized new narratives that reimagined their production, mobility and reproduction for new research directions to expand the scope of Jewelry making in Visual art/design practice. In this study, paper beads, beads, jewelry making attained a presence as knowledge platforms that facilitate socially inclusive, collaborative dimensions to critical research that are relevant to the articulation of issues in Visual Art/ Design, Gender, and Culture.