New paper — “Ambivalent threads of repair: transmitting, translating and transforming Yao embroidery at an ethnic boarding school in China”
My colleagues at Guangzhou University and I have a short new article out in the Cultural Geographies in Practice section of cultural geographies.
Led by my fantastic colleague Lei Wei, it draws on research that Lei has been leading into ethnic minority folk and craft practices in China. It draws on a particular thread of this fieldwork that took place in a primary school where traditional craft practices are being revived and reinvented in the classroom.
We argue that the school is not simply preserving these practices but also reshaping them – imparting new relations and functions, including commodification and codification into state-led institutions concerned with cultivating ideal citizen-subjects. Without appealing to celebratory narratives or idealised repair, we reflect in this article on the transmission of craft practices at the intersection of loss and transformation.
My colleagues at Guangzhou University and I have a short new article out in the Cultural Geographies in Practice section of cultural geographies.
Led by my fantastic colleague Lei Wei, it draws on research that Lei has been leading into ethnic minority folk and craft practices in China. It draws on a particular thread of this fieldwork that took place in a primary school where traditional craft practices are being revived and reinvented in the classroom.
We argue that the school is not simply preserving these practices but also reshaping them – imparting new relations and functions, including commodification and codification into state-led institutions concerned with cultivating ideal citizen-subjects. Without appealing to celebratory narratives or idealised repair, we reflect in this article on the transmission of craft practices at the intersection of loss and transformation.
02/2026
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Photographs by Teng Zhou.
Citation: Wei, L., Zhang, V., Zhou, T., & Zhu, H. (2026). Ambivalent threads of repair: transmitting, translating and transforming Yao embroidery at an ethnic boarding school in China. cultural geographies, 14744740261418698. doi:10.1177/14744740261418698
Photographs by Teng Zhou.
Citation: Wei, L., Zhang, V., Zhou, T., & Zhu, H. (2026). Ambivalent threads of repair: transmitting, translating and transforming Yao embroidery at an ethnic boarding school in China. cultural geographies, 14744740261418698. doi:10.1177/14744740261418698