SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT
Mayurbhunj district, Orissa
As a tenured professor at Pforzheim University in Germany, I was granted a second sabbatical leave.
I was astonished to discover that the Dokra in Orissa, East India, practise exactly the same closed-cycle casting technique as the Ashanti in West Africa, on the other side of the globe. This technique is unique to them and hitherto not found anywhere else in the world.
I travelled to Orissa and was privileged and grateful to be welcomed by two Dokra families, sharing their lives, eating their food and working alongside them. Here, as with the Ashanti in Ghana, I carefully evaluated the issues of gender, privilege, skills and values in a second book. It is entitled “same same, but different” and likewise a comparative study.
