Cultural heritage as rural economic development: Batik production amongst China's Miao population

Cultural heritage has become a development resource for many rural areas in China driven by developmentalism and capitalism. This article takes handcrafts revival as a case study to demonstrate that how cultural heritage as rural economic development involves various power entanglements and interactions. In this process of development, we see how Miao people use their agency to enact different strategies to react to a multiplicity of circumstances. This research uses Rocheleau's rooted networks framework as a tool but expands the concept based on critical discussion and ambivalent experiences in Danzhai county, Guizhou Province, China. Collecting data from participatory observation, and a series of unstructured and semi-structured interviews in Danzhai, we explore the entangled web of network relations in the process of batik production, and examine how Miao artisans employ their agency to negotiate with different stakeholders and develop a regional batik market. Research demonstrates that making batik weaves Miao people's economic demand, social relations and cultural meaning to form a new social integration mechanism. This mechanism is networked by various relationships in Miao villages including production, distribution, exchange and cooperation. We find that the networks framework allows us to see how powers multiply, but could not explicitly explain some cases and concepts within local knowledge and social contexts. We find that it is necessary to modify Rocheleau's framework in order to incorporate non-western indigenous concepts in China. •Rural China is as living, uneven, plural and variegated as its geography, development and transformation.•Cultural heritage has become a development resource for many rural areas in China driven by developmentalism and capitalism.•The “rooted networks” framework provides new concepts to analyze multiple actors and networked landscapes.•Batik production webs Miao people's specific ontology, lifestyle, social relation and cooperation.•Making batik reflects the multiple ontology and related beings, which are dynamically structured by rooted networks.