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International Conference organized by the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC), McGill University, Montreal, Canada2-4 November 2012Co-Organisers: Gwyn Campbell (IOWC, McGill University), Sarah Fee (Royal Ontario Museum),and Pedro Machado (Indiana University)This multi-disciplinary international conference aims to bring together scholars fromacross the humanities and social sciences to share findings, methodologies andtheoretical perspectives on cloth's critical role in driving exchanges in the IndianOcean World from early times to the present day.Oceans have emerged as promising intellectual frameworks for reinterpreting past andpresent spatial and temporal constructs. The Indian Ocean World (IOW) in particular hasrecently attracted academic attention as a space of movement and inter-relation that transcends conventional paradigms centring on the nationstate, regional studies, and European empires. Stretching from East Africa through theMiddle East, South and Southeast Asia to China, the IOW forms a unique macro-region wherethe monsoon regime of winds and currents largely moulded production and exchange. Indeed,the IOW emerged during the first millennium CE as arguably the first "global" economy,defined as a sophisticated and durable system of long-distance exchange. There is furtherdebate as to the impact on the IOW trading structure of Europeans from the sixteenthcentury, the international economy of the nineteenth century, European colonialism andits aftermath, and modern globalisation.Central to these debates is the role of textiles. For centuries, cloths of variousorigins, fibres, colours and patterns have been carried along coasts and across vastdistances to communities that demanded certain types in accordance with their specificcultural, social and political universes. Rather than take a particular fibre, 'country'or European company as the unit of study, this conference aims to explore the broadercross-currents of textile flows in the IOW. It seeks to explore, in particular,structures of trade, distribution, demand, marketing and consumption - in all of whichfinance and credit played vital roles. It also strives to understand local consumerdemand as a vital force in shaping the economic, political, social, and artistic historyin both producer and consumer communities. Emerging from the wider scholarship ofculturally inflected material histories of the movement and exchange of commodities, thestudy of textile consumption and the logics of consumer tastes, as socially andculturally embedded processes, can offer compelling insight into how societies,communities and people create and maintain identities through strategies ofself-fashioning, and thereby shape the world around them. Moreover, it is when studiedwithin the same analytical frame as the production, distribution and marketing oftextiles that consumption can contribute most profoundly to an understanding of thedynamics of the worlds of the Indian Ocean stretching from Africa to East Asia.This multi-disciplinary international conference invites paper proposals that examine anyaspect of the trade, exchange and consumption of textiles in the Indian Ocean world fromearly times to the present day. We particularly welcome papers that explore networks andstructures of:- local finance and credit- distribution and marketing- demand and consumptionand within these the significance of (i) gender and age; and (ii) religious practice andideology  (including the ritual, political and social uses and meanings attached toimported cloth)Dates and Registration:*  Deadline for submission of abstracts (title; 1-2 paragraphs): 21 October 2011.* The review process will be completed by 1st November 2001.*  Papers selected for the conference must be submitted no later than 1st September 2012.*  The registration fee is $175 US ($75 US for students) payable by 1st September 2012.*  The late registration fee (after 1st September 2012) is $200 US and $100 US forstudentsKindly contact Sarah Fee &#60;sarahf@rom.on.ca&#62; or Pedro Machado &#60;pmachado@indiana.edu&#62; withproposals (or with any queries).http://indianoceanworldcentre.com/