Tortoise Knees and Giraffe Tears: Patterns, Production, and Resistance in a Women's Basketry Cooperative in Botswana

Traditionally, baskets in Botswana were woven for everyday use and carried messages reflective of Tswana beliefs and values. As globalization has shifted the market in tourism‐dependent Botswana, women who are responsible for the production of baskets have entered a new and expanded market economy where locally made baskets carry Tswana symbols and meanings into international contexts and construct and contest the idea of sustainability and gender ideology. In this poster session, two baskets (see image below), one closed or lidded and one open or flat, are considered in terms of how their patterns, messages and meanings are crafted, interpreted and understood across those contexts. The “traditional” Tswana patterns, tears of the giraffe and knees of the tortoise, have long been used by women to convey particular messages about ethnic group affiliation, meaningful cultural origin stories and cautionary morality tales. Today, these same patterns have come to take on additional meanings as a result of local interpretation of global impact on Tswana communities. For example, interviewing women in Maun, Etsa 6 and Shorobe, (three of the largest basket production areas in the country) it is clear that women are utilizing the opportunity for their products to circulate as commodities on a global market as a means to express gendered perspectives on the environment, politics, the impact of tourism and women's autonomy in a more contemporary era. Women speak of how the “tears” of the giraffe are no longer simply about the sacrifice for the hunt, but rather, they offer a new commentary about sustainable hunting and the potential role of local populations in environmentally sound tourism. This project began as a result of the exploration of women's basketry in northern Botswana as a means through which women's economic self‐reliance could be understood. Initially, this work was part of a larger ethnographic investigation of the effects of out‐migration by men upon women's lives financial livelihoods but it shifted as the meanings of particular patterns and the production of particular baskets came to symbolize the significance of sustainable, gendered work in a new global economy. Women's work built upon traditional patterns has shifted to become a vehicle for expressions of cultural significance, resistance and cultural commentary. These objects and cultural artifacts are both insight into Tswana culture as well as a new means through which women produce, tell and re‐tell narratives of cultural and global, financial success and resistance.