Craft, Society and Value
Kathryn Lichti-Harriman
Craft “means little without its association to the individual maker and the organisations that give it life and value” (Olding, V&A 2012, unpaginated). This is a point also made by Lichti-Harriman (2010) in her discussion of the institutional positioning of craft – professional and non-professional – vis a vis art. Similarly, the community/al aspect of making is explored from an anthropological perspective by Kate Crehan through her ethnographic work exploring community art/craft practices.
Of particular use in understanding the place of craft in both contemporary and historical society are craft theorists such as Paul Greenhalgh (2002, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c; see also his work in Dormer, 1998), Peter Dormer et al (Dormer, 1998) and Bruce Metcalf all of whom outline the precarious and continuously evolving intellectual history of craft which has led, in turn, to impacts on the practice of craft by individuals and the way craft objects and practices are perceived by wider society in Europe and America.
As Metcalf so succinctly puts it:
“[Contemporary] craft is still an opposition, just as it was more than a century ago: Craft still stands against the anonymity of mass-production, and for the personalized object. Craft still stands against ugliness, and, on occasion, for beauty. Craft still stands against big-money capitalism, and for small-scale entrepeneurship. Craft stands against corporate labor, where most workers are replaceable parts in a bureaucracy, and for individual self-determination. Craft stands for the rich potential the human body at work, and against disembodiment in all its forms.” (1999, unpaginated)
Thus, it is within those oppositions that people are working – both to sustain and the destroy them.
“One of the central metaphors implicit in meticulous craft is of care, of compassion for the artist's private and social existence. This is in total opposition to notions of anomie, apathy, and social estrangement. The craftsman is engaged in his material, and by inference, in the surrounding culture. It's a positive attitude, one that disallows the gloom & doom prevalent in much "advanced" art. Careful workmanship insists on seeing value and beauty rather than corruption and destruction.” (Metcalf 1987, unpaginated)
The Concept of Community
“The idea of community pervades the history off studio craft. William Morris hoped to create a brotherhood of designers and makers who would all pursue the ideal of bringing beauty into ordinary life.” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated)
Metcalf continues:
“So, when Etsy's website supports forums, a chatroom, virtual and live classes, teams and a list of resources, the pattern is familiar even if the technology is new. The Etsy website is an online community based on communication, sharing and mutual support. Participation is quite active, and the range of topics is broad. It appears to be grassroots democracy in action.” (2008, unpaginated)
The joy of making: affective components of craft and their community implication
By what other avenues can we understand the nature of craft and its appeal? The act of making materially crafted objects underpins these divergent interests in crafting. The affective relationship – making, identity building, social capital, political intent, emotional context – all play a role in why people are drawn to a) make b) what they make and c) the context in which they make. Turney (2004), for example, explores the context of home-crafts and needlework in Britain through engagement with patterns and kits. She triangulates questions of value, habitus, cultural capital acquired through skill-learning and pride with questions of identity, aesthetics and the personal value forged through the material object. However, how are these individuating exercises connected to communities? Is it only through a mutual experience of shared solitary practice? Can we theorise a different making community?
Emotional engagements with craft are frequently cited as being a core component of the making process These motivations are taken for granted in these sorts of discussions, for example (Johnson and Wilson, 2005). Sign-posting works on geographies of emotion (Thien, 2005), the exploration of geographies of boredom and hope (Anderson, 2004, Anderson, 2006) or work on the spatial strategies of comfort (Bissell, 2008) as well as strategies for understanding the ontology of pain, useful potentially, in debates about craft and well-being (Bissell, 2009). But none of these refer to craft or creative practices a specific strategy or tool in everyday life through which affective relations are engaged. In the non-rep literature it is not likely to come across pre-determined discourses of practice (what crafting is, what it can offer) as a site of analysis. However, work that begins with the pre-cognitive aspects of making, and how it is mediated by those established discourses will help us understand better how craft operates.
How can theories of affect help us understand how relationships are forged between makers? Affective labour/emotional labour has provided a framework for collective activity in the face of adversity at work (to varying degrees of critical engagement: (Korczynski, 2003, Lazzarato, 1996, James, 1989)). This might be an important touchstone for the analyses of craft and community, notably the potential for theories of collective, affective engagement forged by group engagement with shared repetitive tasks. However, it will also counterpoint the binary domestic/workplace labour debate into which affective labour has been cast (coming as it does from the Marxist/autonomist schools) and offer a more nuanced account of creative practice.
Alternative Craft: DIY and Craftivism
Part of this realm of society and value is “alternative craft,” which is often oppositional to existing social norms and values whilst raising a sub-culture of specific norms and values that are often expressed aesthetically.
I have called it alternative craft, underlining its alternative status when compared to the craft mainstream of medium groups, craft galleries, craft museums and so on. There are several overlapping manifestations. One is DIY (do-it-yourself) the phenomenon of ordinary people (mostly young) taking up crafts to make useful and decorative objects. […] As I understand it, DIY craft is rooted in punk, indie music and street culture, but it has lately been appropriated as a hip thing to do.” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated)
“DIY shades rather quickly into new marketplaces of websites […] like Etsy.com.” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated)
In addition to DIY, there is “activist craft ("craftivism") which shares attributes with both DIY and the new marketplaces, but is primarily motivated by radical social and political critique” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated). Metcalf continues: “In general, craftivism is anti-globalist, anti-corporate, green, enthusiastic about any attempts to get off the grid, and deeply sympathetic to populations who feel marginalized from the mainstream” (2008, unpaginated).
“Craftivists, like local food advocates, think about shifting production back into the hands of ordinary people. They promote the same ideals of self-empowerment that motivated both Ruskin and Morris.” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated).
Contemporary ‘craftivist’ movements need to be situated within the social contexts from which they emerged, in order to unpack what elements of craft history have been engaged with, and to what end. Williams (2011) suggests crafitivist self-identify as “a social activism that explicitly links individual creativity and human-based mechanisms of production to broader sociopolitical cultural contexts in an attempt to influence the social world.” (p. 305). She positions the development of craftivism as being related to: 1. Third-wave feminism, 2. Environmentalism, 3. Anticapitalism and anti-sweatshop organizing, and 4. Antiwar politics.
Williams (2011) discusses whether or not third-wave feminisim and associated politics of craftivism do in fact provide alternatives. The argument suggests they could be seen as a re-entrenchment of gendered ideals, even where crafting practices that were once (potentially) oppressive are re-appropriate with a sense of play or irony (compare this Greer’s comments that there is a ‘post-modern’ detachment attached to crafting: “tinged with a hint of irony as well as a fond embracement.” Greer, in Williams 2011 p. 308, but also Chanksy (2010): “..women are returning to domestic arts such as knitting and quilting with a sense of strength, not servitude” reinforcing agency and choice as a key determinant in the decision to adopt craft).
This positions Craftivism with a context of a) pre-existing and b) more widely contested protest movements. It adopts contemporary political views that adopt/ignore previous political positions within craft to shape itself. It also does not monopolise (nor claim to) the DIY making-as-political act claim: the self-publishing zine movement of the 1980s onwards also privileges these values and shares many aspects of craftivist practices (Poletti, 2005) and the punk/DIY/Grrl movements of the same period (Chansky, 2010, Rosenberg and Garofalo, 1998). So it is important to understand craftivism as situated within a broader field of cultural practices, appropriation and not only dissent but also community building. Williams (2011) suggests that while problematic in its assertion as being unproblematically feminist or class-transcendent, “when interpreted as a contemporary iteration of a long-standing cultural phenomenon of utopian movements and their evolutionary development, craftivism also serves as a valuable model of broad-based countercultural activism.” (p. 319). Craftivism thus imagines a different future as much as it imagines a different history for itself as well.
Morality
“Craft, as a practice, has always had a moral component, and American craft in particular has been guided by an ethic of helping.” (Metcalf 2004, unpaginated).[1]
“What if an aesthetic theory embodied the moral virtues of sympathy, self-control, fairness, and duty? Instead of a legalistic structure to establish an aggressive hierarchy of exclusion, could there be an aesthetic of caring, a moral system of sympathy transposed into the realm of art?” Metcalf asks (2004, unpaginated). This is, partly, a rhetorical question to which the answer is “craft” – Craft is the aesthetic theory and the practice that embodies such components of human sociality, and the way that individualism impacts contemporary American and European society.
While Metcalf comes to this conclusion via and examination of the work of evolutionary biologists, Lichti-Harriman (2010) broaches the topic from a related, through less emotive, perspective – that of “modes of creativity” and “personhood” (see Leach 2004; Strathern 1990). These anthropological perspectives examine the way in which individuals interact as collectives either to strengthen the sense of connected sociality or a sense of indivisualism (in the case of personhood); and the way that human creative practices can either be distributed – drawing on and reinforcing a connected sociality – or appropriative – with the individual hoarding perceived resources from the collective in an effort to become more unique. When applied to contemporary British craft practices, such as those done by non-professionals, one sees the prevalence of a distributed creativity as well as moral discourses amongst makers that touch upon sympathy/empathy, self-control, fairness and duty (Lichti-Harriman 2010).
[1] Originally published in Objects and Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft, edited by M. Anna Farielo and Paula Owen. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004
Craft “means little without its association to the individual maker and the organisations that give it life and value” (Olding, V&A 2012, unpaginated). This is a point also made by Lichti-Harriman (2010) in her discussion of the institutional positioning of craft – professional and non-professional – vis a vis art. Similarly, the community/al aspect of making is explored from an anthropological perspective by Kate Crehan through her ethnographic work exploring community art/craft practices.
Of particular use in understanding the place of craft in both contemporary and historical society are craft theorists such as Paul Greenhalgh (2002, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c; see also his work in Dormer, 1998), Peter Dormer et al (Dormer, 1998) and Bruce Metcalf all of whom outline the precarious and continuously evolving intellectual history of craft which has led, in turn, to impacts on the practice of craft by individuals and the way craft objects and practices are perceived by wider society in Europe and America.
As Metcalf so succinctly puts it:
“[Contemporary] craft is still an opposition, just as it was more than a century ago: Craft still stands against the anonymity of mass-production, and for the personalized object. Craft still stands against ugliness, and, on occasion, for beauty. Craft still stands against big-money capitalism, and for small-scale entrepeneurship. Craft stands against corporate labor, where most workers are replaceable parts in a bureaucracy, and for individual self-determination. Craft stands for the rich potential the human body at work, and against disembodiment in all its forms.” (1999, unpaginated)
Thus, it is within those oppositions that people are working – both to sustain and the destroy them.
“One of the central metaphors implicit in meticulous craft is of care, of compassion for the artist's private and social existence. This is in total opposition to notions of anomie, apathy, and social estrangement. The craftsman is engaged in his material, and by inference, in the surrounding culture. It's a positive attitude, one that disallows the gloom & doom prevalent in much "advanced" art. Careful workmanship insists on seeing value and beauty rather than corruption and destruction.” (Metcalf 1987, unpaginated)
The Concept of Community
“The idea of community pervades the history off studio craft. William Morris hoped to create a brotherhood of designers and makers who would all pursue the ideal of bringing beauty into ordinary life.” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated)
Metcalf continues:
“So, when Etsy's website supports forums, a chatroom, virtual and live classes, teams and a list of resources, the pattern is familiar even if the technology is new. The Etsy website is an online community based on communication, sharing and mutual support. Participation is quite active, and the range of topics is broad. It appears to be grassroots democracy in action.” (2008, unpaginated)
The joy of making: affective components of craft and their community implication
By what other avenues can we understand the nature of craft and its appeal? The act of making materially crafted objects underpins these divergent interests in crafting. The affective relationship – making, identity building, social capital, political intent, emotional context – all play a role in why people are drawn to a) make b) what they make and c) the context in which they make. Turney (2004), for example, explores the context of home-crafts and needlework in Britain through engagement with patterns and kits. She triangulates questions of value, habitus, cultural capital acquired through skill-learning and pride with questions of identity, aesthetics and the personal value forged through the material object. However, how are these individuating exercises connected to communities? Is it only through a mutual experience of shared solitary practice? Can we theorise a different making community?
Emotional engagements with craft are frequently cited as being a core component of the making process These motivations are taken for granted in these sorts of discussions, for example (Johnson and Wilson, 2005). Sign-posting works on geographies of emotion (Thien, 2005), the exploration of geographies of boredom and hope (Anderson, 2004, Anderson, 2006) or work on the spatial strategies of comfort (Bissell, 2008) as well as strategies for understanding the ontology of pain, useful potentially, in debates about craft and well-being (Bissell, 2009). But none of these refer to craft or creative practices a specific strategy or tool in everyday life through which affective relations are engaged. In the non-rep literature it is not likely to come across pre-determined discourses of practice (what crafting is, what it can offer) as a site of analysis. However, work that begins with the pre-cognitive aspects of making, and how it is mediated by those established discourses will help us understand better how craft operates.
How can theories of affect help us understand how relationships are forged between makers? Affective labour/emotional labour has provided a framework for collective activity in the face of adversity at work (to varying degrees of critical engagement: (Korczynski, 2003, Lazzarato, 1996, James, 1989)). This might be an important touchstone for the analyses of craft and community, notably the potential for theories of collective, affective engagement forged by group engagement with shared repetitive tasks. However, it will also counterpoint the binary domestic/workplace labour debate into which affective labour has been cast (coming as it does from the Marxist/autonomist schools) and offer a more nuanced account of creative practice.
Alternative Craft: DIY and Craftivism
Part of this realm of society and value is “alternative craft,” which is often oppositional to existing social norms and values whilst raising a sub-culture of specific norms and values that are often expressed aesthetically.
I have called it alternative craft, underlining its alternative status when compared to the craft mainstream of medium groups, craft galleries, craft museums and so on. There are several overlapping manifestations. One is DIY (do-it-yourself) the phenomenon of ordinary people (mostly young) taking up crafts to make useful and decorative objects. […] As I understand it, DIY craft is rooted in punk, indie music and street culture, but it has lately been appropriated as a hip thing to do.” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated)
“DIY shades rather quickly into new marketplaces of websites […] like Etsy.com.” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated)
In addition to DIY, there is “activist craft ("craftivism") which shares attributes with both DIY and the new marketplaces, but is primarily motivated by radical social and political critique” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated). Metcalf continues: “In general, craftivism is anti-globalist, anti-corporate, green, enthusiastic about any attempts to get off the grid, and deeply sympathetic to populations who feel marginalized from the mainstream” (2008, unpaginated).
“Craftivists, like local food advocates, think about shifting production back into the hands of ordinary people. They promote the same ideals of self-empowerment that motivated both Ruskin and Morris.” (Metcalf 2008, unpaginated).
Contemporary ‘craftivist’ movements need to be situated within the social contexts from which they emerged, in order to unpack what elements of craft history have been engaged with, and to what end. Williams (2011) suggests crafitivist self-identify as “a social activism that explicitly links individual creativity and human-based mechanisms of production to broader sociopolitical cultural contexts in an attempt to influence the social world.” (p. 305). She positions the development of craftivism as being related to: 1. Third-wave feminism, 2. Environmentalism, 3. Anticapitalism and anti-sweatshop organizing, and 4. Antiwar politics.
Williams (2011) discusses whether or not third-wave feminisim and associated politics of craftivism do in fact provide alternatives. The argument suggests they could be seen as a re-entrenchment of gendered ideals, even where crafting practices that were once (potentially) oppressive are re-appropriate with a sense of play or irony (compare this Greer’s comments that there is a ‘post-modern’ detachment attached to crafting: “tinged with a hint of irony as well as a fond embracement.” Greer, in Williams 2011 p. 308, but also Chanksy (2010): “..women are returning to domestic arts such as knitting and quilting with a sense of strength, not servitude” reinforcing agency and choice as a key determinant in the decision to adopt craft).
This positions Craftivism with a context of a) pre-existing and b) more widely contested protest movements. It adopts contemporary political views that adopt/ignore previous political positions within craft to shape itself. It also does not monopolise (nor claim to) the DIY making-as-political act claim: the self-publishing zine movement of the 1980s onwards also privileges these values and shares many aspects of craftivist practices (Poletti, 2005) and the punk/DIY/Grrl movements of the same period (Chansky, 2010, Rosenberg and Garofalo, 1998). So it is important to understand craftivism as situated within a broader field of cultural practices, appropriation and not only dissent but also community building. Williams (2011) suggests that while problematic in its assertion as being unproblematically feminist or class-transcendent, “when interpreted as a contemporary iteration of a long-standing cultural phenomenon of utopian movements and their evolutionary development, craftivism also serves as a valuable model of broad-based countercultural activism.” (p. 319). Craftivism thus imagines a different future as much as it imagines a different history for itself as well.
Morality
“Craft, as a practice, has always had a moral component, and American craft in particular has been guided by an ethic of helping.” (Metcalf 2004, unpaginated).[1]
“What if an aesthetic theory embodied the moral virtues of sympathy, self-control, fairness, and duty? Instead of a legalistic structure to establish an aggressive hierarchy of exclusion, could there be an aesthetic of caring, a moral system of sympathy transposed into the realm of art?” Metcalf asks (2004, unpaginated). This is, partly, a rhetorical question to which the answer is “craft” – Craft is the aesthetic theory and the practice that embodies such components of human sociality, and the way that individualism impacts contemporary American and European society.
While Metcalf comes to this conclusion via and examination of the work of evolutionary biologists, Lichti-Harriman (2010) broaches the topic from a related, through less emotive, perspective – that of “modes of creativity” and “personhood” (see Leach 2004; Strathern 1990). These anthropological perspectives examine the way in which individuals interact as collectives either to strengthen the sense of connected sociality or a sense of indivisualism (in the case of personhood); and the way that human creative practices can either be distributed – drawing on and reinforcing a connected sociality – or appropriative – with the individual hoarding perceived resources from the collective in an effort to become more unique. When applied to contemporary British craft practices, such as those done by non-professionals, one sees the prevalence of a distributed creativity as well as moral discourses amongst makers that touch upon sympathy/empathy, self-control, fairness and duty (Lichti-Harriman 2010).
[1] Originally published in Objects and Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft, edited by M. Anna Farielo and Paula Owen. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004
