CARPET WEAVERS AND WEAVING IN THE ... - Cornell University

are nuclear households because there are fewer women in each household and thus
women may not be available to work outside of the home (Berik 1995, 116-117).
Workshop weaving is most likely in places with distinct agricultural and non-
agricultural seasons or where there are enough family members involved in
reproduction of the household that some women are free to earn cash outside of the
home. Under these conditions women can leave the house, and thus weave
uninterrupted for extended periods of time uninterrupted (Berik 1986). Workshop
weaving is more likely in extended-family households where girls can be sent out of
the house as labor (Berik 1995, 116). Workshop production is most common in areas
with mechanized grain-based agriculture (with a high level of landlessness and more
need for non-agricultural incomes) where women don’t have to work the land and thus
are more likely to work year-round in a workshop. Merchants prefer the workshop
method because it increases output (Incirlioglu 1991, 258). Pay is low per piece
because most of this work is done for low-quality domestic market – weaving for
export gets a better price (Berik 1986, 129).
Some workshops are cooperatives, organized by weavers, by the government,
or by outsiders (as in the case of the DOBAG cooperatives). Government-operated
Sumerhali (formerly Sumerbank) cooperatives offer health and pension benefits, but
wages are very low because the carpets are sold below market prices (women work or
sell their rugs elsewhere if they are able to) (Landreau 1996, 171-172).
None of the three modes of production changes in cases where women interact
with people outside of their kin or village. Location, however, changes a woman’s
control over “labour power” (Berik 1995, 116). According to Berik, a Turkish
economist, women who weave in the home do so in “spare time” and thus have more
control over when they weave. Women who weave in workshops “are perceived as
‘cash-generators’” and, with a separation between home and workplace, they are
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