Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization, and Capitalism

Description

From Oaxacan wood carvings to dessert kitchens in provincial France, Critical Craft presents thirteen ethnographies which examine what defines and makes ‘craft’ in a wide variety of practices from around the world. Challenging the conventional understanding of craft as a survival, a revival, or something that resists capitalism, the book turns instead to the designers, DIY enthusiasts, traditional artisans, and technical programmers who consider their labor to be craft, in order to comprehend how they make sense of it. The authors’ ethnographic studies focus on the individuals and communities who claim a practice as their own, bypassing the question of craft survival to ask how and why activities termed craft are mobilized and reproduced. Moving beyond regional studies of heritage artisanship, the authors suggest that ideas of craft are by definition part of a larger cosmopolitan dialogue of power and identity. By paying careful attention to these sometimes conflicting voices, this collection shows that there is great flexibility in terms of which activities are labelled ‘craft’. In fact, there are many related ideas of craft and these shape distinct engagements with materials, people, and the economy. Case studies from countries including Mexico, Nigeria, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, and France draw together evidence based on linguistics, microsociology, and participant observation to explore the shifting terrain on which those engaged in craft are operating. What emerges is a fascinating picture which shows how claims about craft are an integral part of contemporary global change. FC Half title Title Copyright Contents List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: Taking Stock of Craft in Anthropology Alicia Ory DeNicola and Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber PART ONE Contentions 2 Who Authors Crafts? Producing Woodcarvings and Authorship in Oaxaca, Mexico  Alanna Cant 3 Forging Source: Considering the Craft of Computer Programming  Lane DeNicola 4 American Beauty: The Middle Class Arts and Crafts Revival in the United States  Frances E. Mascia-Lees 5 Designs on Craft: Negotiating Artisanal Knowledge and Identity in India Alicia Ory DeNicola and Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber 6 Nomadic Artisans in Central America: Building Plurilocal Communities through Craft Millaray Villalobos PART TWO Conundrums 7 Number in Craft: Situated Numbering Practices in Do-It-Yourself Sensor Systems  Dawn Nafus and Richard Beckwith 8 Visions of Excess: Crafting Good Chocolate in France and the United States  Susan Terrio 9 Creativity and Tradition: Keeping Craft Alive among Moroccan Carpet Weavers and French Organic Farmers Myriem Naji 10 Refashioning a Global Craft Commodity Flow from Aklan, Central Philippines  B. Lynne Milgram PART THREE Conflicts 11 Conflicting Ideologies of the Digital Hand: Locating the Material in a Digital Age  Daniela Rosner 12 Materials, the Nation and the Self: Division of Labor in a Taiwanese Craft  Geoffrey Gowlland 13 Craft, Memory, and Loss: Babban riga robes, politics, and the quest for “bigness” in Zaria City, Nigeria Elisha P. Renne 14 Crafting Muslim Artisans: Agency and Exclusion in India’s Urban Crafts Communities  Mira Mohsini Notes References Index