There are few words in our contemporary economic vocabulary that contain the complexity of the word âcraft.â A word normally associated with handmade objects , it has historically been used to celebrate the mastery of handmade goods while simultaneously used to render them quaint, often diminishing their social and economic value . It is a word that evokes continuity with the historical past while restoring human qualities to modern technologies . It is a word that situates objects and the embodied knowledge required for their creation within a self-aware framework that references pre-industrial social formations ; this includes the emphasis on apprenticeship as a form of preserving community identity in relation to evolving economic realities and new social relations . Craft is a word that is both devoted to the old and invested with meaning through its tension with the new. Therefore, as an economic concept it resists the ability to neatly categorize, which makes the craft economy difficult to enumerate and prioritize. So then, what is craftâand, by extension, who are âcraftsmen ââand how is it part of the larger discussion on the global creative and cultural economy ? In what follows we define and describe the craft economy as both a philosophical problem and a feature of the global political economy . To achieve this, we explore the concept of craft as a non-linear hermeneutic question and situate this in relation to institutional descriptions of craft economy .
Why Is Craft a Hermeneutic Problem?
Craft is a very complex word , grounded in modernity , but also defined in opposition to the modern. Craft has origins in the Germanic word kraft , which translates into âskill.â Later the word would evolve into Dutch , Swedish, and Old English renderings that meant skill , strength, or both.1 By the late seventeenth century the wordâs singular form represented the act of apprenticeship and the noun itself was also used to represent a vessel , likely to convey the skill and risk associated with building something used to navigate the seas.2 As a modifier, the contemporary phrasing describes food or drink made in either a nonconventional manner, or that is reproduced by hand or non-mechanized (or minimally mechanized ) means. Its conflation with the unconventional reveals the tension the word contains. As an antonym, the word craft responds to a word like âclichĂ© ,â a nineteenth-century French word to describe the sound a printing press made when it processed documents.3 Similarly, the idea of craft has been used in storytelling to reveal the authentic, human dimension of work. Much like the mythical John Henry in African-American folklore, who is described as a âcrafty and steady soul,â the âsteel-drivinâ manâ became a folk-hero narrative about the value of labor as it competed with mechanical tools. This description implies the exploitation of human labor , including the legacy of slavery (Nelson 2006). Craft expresses the battle between human and machine , not merely as a description of what is produced, but also the environment that shaped its production (Benjamin 1968). It is a word that emanated from the same time and place as the Western concept of the nation-state and it corresponds with the era of transcontinental commerce , debates about a secularized society, and the expansion of European and later US imperialism .
This brief genealogy speaks to the paradox represented by the contemporary notion of craft : the category itself is a historic product of capitalist modernity , one that critiqued and aspired to provide an alternative to the industrial manufacture that was the hallmark of modernity itself. For many Western societies , craft represented an antidote to what sociologist Max Weber (1976) described as the progressive âdisenchantment of the worldââthe replacement of a pre-modern social order, with its mythical orientation to the world, by a bureaucratized, secular modernity.4 Nevertheless, while craft may be premised on ideas about pre- or non-industrial modes of production , the forms it takes vary across time, geographic space, and social configurations. This is why we pose craft as a hermeneutic problem .
A hermeneutic approach to craftâand its attendant terms such as authenticity, heritage , and tradition âtakes as its starting point that the concept of craft itself has no fixed referent. Such an analysis entails moving beyond craft as a specific category of object or practice in order to understand it as a concept emerging out of specific socioeconomic relationships. Critical to defining craft is identifying how ideas about past modes of production are mobilized in the present moment to specific economic or political ends. A hermeneutics of craft therefore allows us to examine how the term is being operationalized in todayâs global economy . As contributions to this volume demonstrate, both public institutions and private enterprises are investing in localized cultural products. How is craft imbued with meaning and value in this post-nationalist age , characterized by digital technologies , emerging legal frameworks for intellectual and cultural property , and a consumer market simultaneously driven by novelty and nostalgia ?
In this vein, we would stress that craft does not look the same from all vantage points. It may seem obvious that the conditions that defined craft in nineteenth-century Germany are different from those that presently circumscribe craft production in Mexico; however, the distinctions are not simply a function of historical period and national territory. Within these time-spaces, we must also consider who has the power to define, or, better yet, claim craft: the maker , the consumer , or some other intermediary, such as the World Crafts Council discussed below. Furthermore, the power dimension must not be overlooked. Craft exists in a world that continues to operate along the resilient axes of class, racial/ethnic, and gender formations. A craft cheese maker in France , for instance, arguably has a different relationship to global markets and consumers than an indigenous womenâs textile cooperative in Guatemala . To point: we rarely question the economic or symbolic value of goods like an exquisite Abbaye du Mont des Cats cheese, handcrafted by monks in a French monastery. Meanwhile, a Mayan weaver may struggle to convince her audience that the cloth painstakingly woven on a backstrap loom warrants a price that translates to a livable wa...