Relation between continuation of a handicraft industry and occupational multiplicitization in Iran: The Zilu weaving industry in the Meybod region, Yazd province

Abstract

This article focuses on the process of the decline of the zilu (cotton carpet) hand-weaving industry datting from the 1980s in Meybod, Yazd province, Iran. This study is based primarily on a survey of 32 weavers in the Meybod region and on archival research at the Meybod zilu producers' cooperative. The zilu weaving industry was one of the succes s stories in Iranian community-based industry after World War II. At the peak, zilu workshops extended all over the Meybod region and approximately 1, 500 or 2, 000 weavers were weaving zilu at the beginning of the 1970s. But zilu production steadily decreased from the 1970s as a result of competition from machine-made carpets at cheaper prices than zilu. The Meybod zilu producers' cooperative, which was established by zilu weavers and merchants in 1972, became very active after the Islamic revolution and in recent years almost all weavers have worked for their own cooperative. As a result of analysis of stock books and another resourc es of the zilu cooperative, the number of zilu weavers was more than 150 at the beginning of the 1990s, but today it is about 50-60. Interviews with weavers show that now full-time zilu weavers are rare. The majority of zilu weavers have multiple occupations whose primary occupation is day laborer in the construction sector and low-wage employment in the service sector. The changing economic situation has thus created new types of employment, but it has transformed zilu weaving into a casualized, low-wage job. In part this has been due to the instability of the zilu industry and the expansion of casualized employment like day laborers in the construction sector, but in part it has been made possible by the presence of the zilu cooperative which is a buffer to adjust the difference between demand and supply and buys weavers' products even though there are few.