Branding Authenticity: Cambodian Ikat in Transnational Artisan Partnerships (TAPs)/ Susan Falls and Jessica Smith

This article is based on research of Cambodian silk woven ikat textiles produced at the behest of what we are calling Transnational Artisan Partnerships (TAPs). We analyse the role TAPs play in the production of value, particularly with regard to aesthetics, marketing, notions of authenticity and green consumerism. First-World TAP participants often support a continued asymmetrical reliance on the developed world. While this dynamic is apparent in more obvious commercialized approaches that provide Westernized trend and market research to weavers, cottage-industry style TAPs, although more subtle in their colonizing impulses, continue to foster the construction of an exotic Other through (often inadvertent) promotion of invented traditions. We consider the extent to which TAP organizations function as arbiters of Cambodian design choice within their own localized heritage.