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Craft is Political
 2020054513, 2020054514, 9781350122260, 9781350122277, 9781350122284

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Re-crafting an unsettled world
Craft and the Sustainment
Craft as change agent
Craft as care
Overview of sections
The essays: legacy, practice and world view
Notes
Part 1: Craft Legacy
Chapter 1: Politics of tea furniture: Invention of ryuˉrei style in late-nineteenth-century Japan
Introduction
Kyoto and tea culture in hard times
Ryūrei style at the Kyoto Exhibition
Aftermath: The way of tea as Japanese philosophy
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 2: (Dis)playing politics: Craft and the Caughnawaga Exhibition, 1883
Introduction
The politics of the Caughnawaga Exhibition
Kahnawà:ke land survey
Louise Kon8aseti Laronde’s silk patchwork quilt
Curating politics
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3: Indigenous craft is political: Making and remaking colonizer–colonized relations in Taiwan
Constructive ambiguities: ‘indigenous’ and ‘crafts’
Colonizing crafts in Taiwan: Japanese, nationalist and multiculturalist agendas
Craft articulations
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Coexistence of craft and design in Turkey as two separate epistemes
Craft and design: vernacular versus industrial
Turkey’s craft history
Craft and design in Turkey: product differentiation
A dialogical and expert-expert learning bond
An emotional bond
Notes
Chapter 5: Leisure and livelihood: A Socioeconomic reading of craft in Australia and Egypt
The smallness of craft
Sites of craft: the Tasmanian Craft Fair and Islamic Cairo
Craftworker identity
Craft socioeconomics: Australia
Craft socioeconomics: Egypt
NGOs and craft
Conclusion
Notes
Part 2: Craft Practice
Chapter 6: The politics of craft and working without skill: Reconsidering craftsmanship and the community of practice
Craftsmanship and the community of practice
Working without skill in Oaxaca
Notes
Chapter 7: From ‘making flowers’ to imagining futures: Rohingya refugee women innovate a heritage craft
Postcolonial contradictions and humanitarian work
Rohingya and their current cultural condition
Rohingya women: voiceless among the voiceless
‘Making flowers’: embroidery in Rohingya culture
The tapestries
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 8: Liminality: The work of Monica Mercedes Martinez, PJ Anderson and Habiba El-Sayed
Monica Mercedes Martinez
PJ Anderson
Habiba El-Sayed
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 9: Jewellery is political: Ethical jewellery practice
Political messages in jewellery
Jewellery materials
Jewellery and fashion
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 10: Networks of economic kinship in Aotearoa New Zealand craft markets
Introduction
Setting the scene for craft markets and kinship ties
Networks
Craft markets in Aotearoa New Zealand
Networks of encounter (spaces of production, distribution and consumption)
Economic kinship – online
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 11: It goes without saying: Craft talks politics
Clay
Glass
Metal
Wood
Textiles
Conclusion
Notes
Part 3: Craft World View
Chapter 12: Crafts as the political: Perspectives on crafts from design of the Global South
Crafts and Pachamama
Political crafts as chakana
Alternate context
EcoSophy and feel-think-design-do
Revisiting crafts before crafts came to be
Re-articulating worlds from the perspective of Andean philosophy
For the vindication of the praxis of crafts as politics
Notes
Chapter 13: Chilean arpilleras: Hand-stitched geographies and the politics of everyday life in Santiago’s poblaciones
Economic violence and grassroots organization
Arpilleras and the politics of social reproduction
The afterlives of arpilleras
Notes
Chapter 14: From essential skill to productive capital: Perspectives on policies and practices of craft education in Finland
Craft education in changing political climate
Crafts in Finland’s twenty-first century cultural policy
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 15: Sincerity not authenticity: Craft’s political path out of a modernist trap
Ruskin → Morris: authentic object, authentic life
Trilling: authenticity ⇄ sincerity
Authentic craft? Sincere craft!
The politics of it all
Notes
Chapter 16: Bellwether: Fingerprinting your woollies
Bellwether/belle weather/Lovely Weather
Knowledge is only a rumour until it lives in the muscle7
Three bags full
Making it visible
A line into the future long enough to walk on10
To spin a revolution
Fingerprint or footprint
Notes
Epilogue
Notes
Author biographies
Index

Citation preview

Craft is Political

ii

Craft is Political

Edited by D Wood

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 © Editorial content and introduction, D Wood, 2021 © Individual chapters, their authors, 2021 D Wood has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. x constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover designed and embroidered by D Wood All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of images and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in copyright acknowledgement and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wood, D (D. E. L.), editor. Title: Craft is political / edited by D Wood. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020054513 (print) | LCCN 2020054514 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350122260 (HB) | ISBN 9781350122277 (ePub) | ISBN 9781350122284 (ePDF) Subjects: LCSH: Handicraft–Political aspects. | Decorative arts–Political aspects. | Handicraft industries–Social aspects. | Material culture. | Artisans. Classification: LCC TT149 .C73165 2021 (print) | LCC TT149 (ebook) | DDC 745.5–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054513 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054514 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-2226-0 ePDF: 978-1-3501-2228-4 ePub: 978-1-3501-2227-7 Typeset by: Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters

Contents List of figures  viii Acknowledgements x

Introduction: Re-crafting an unsettled world  D Wood 1

PART 1  Craft Legacy  19 1 Politics of tea furniture: Invention of ryu ˉrei style in

late-nineteenth-century Japan  Yasuko Suga 21 2 (Dis)playing politics: Craft and the Caughnawaga

Exhibition, 1883  Lisa Binkley 34 3 Indigenous craft is political: Making and remaking

colonizer–colonized relations in Taiwan  Geoffrey Gowlland 51 4 Coexistence of craft and design in Turkey as two separate

epistemes Çiğdem Kaya 65 5 Leisure and livelihood: A Socioeconomic reading of

craft in Australia and Egypt  Anne-Marie Willis 79

CONTENTS

vi

PART 2  Craft Practice  95 6 The politics of craft and working without skill: Reconsidering

craftsmanship and the community of practice  Alanna Cant 97 7 From ‘making flowers’ to imagining futures: Rohingya

refugee women innovate a heritage craft  Lurdes Macedo, David Palazón, Shahirah Majumdar and Verity Marques 109 8 Liminality: The work of Monica Mercedes Martinez,

PJ Anderson and Habiba El-Sayed  Heidi McKenzie 123 9 Jewellery is political: Ethical jewellery practice 

Elizabeth Shaw 136 10 Networks of economic kinship in Aotearoa New Zealand

craft markets  Fiona P. McDonald 148 11 It goes without saying: Craft talks politics  D Wood 165

PART 3  Craft World View  179 12 Crafts as the political: Perspectives on crafts from design

of the Global South  Fernando A. Álvarez R. 181 13 Chilean arpilleras: Hand-stitched geographies and the

politics of everyday life in Santiago’s poblaciones  Nathalia Santos Ocasio 198 14 From essential skill to productive capital: Perspectives

on policies and practices of craft education in Finland  Anna Kouhia 212

CONTENTS

15 Sincerity not authenticity: Craft’s political path out of a

modernist trap  Leopold Kowolik 225 16 Bellwether: Fingerprinting your woollies  Seema Goel 237

Epilogue  D Wood 250 Author biographies 253 Index 258

vii

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2

5.1 5.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 8.2 8.3 10.1 10.2 10.3 13.1 13.2

Tea items made by Gengensai: bamboo flower container and raku tea bowl  24 Gengensai’s sketch of the ryūrei style  26 Ryūrei style furniture  27 Tea ceremony at Miyako Odori by Geishas  28 W. S. Tanner, St. Regis (Akwesasne) Indian Show Company, 1894  37 George Barker, Tuscarora Squaws, Luna Island, Niagara Falls, c. 1870  38 Indian European Team, 1883 at Scarborough, 28 July, Scarborough, England  43 Ceramic pot made by Paiwan artist Masegseg Ruladen, on the model of those revived by Sakuliu Pavavalung  59 Members of the Kavalan Indigenous group (Hsin-she village) demonstrating the preparation of fibres from the banana plant at a cultural centre in Hualien City, Taiwan  60 Tasmanian Craft Fair: Glass Manifesto and Tasmanian Glassblowers, and Crick Hollow Pottery  82 Fayoum Pottery School: Platter or wall plaque; Bowl by Mahmoud Elsherif  90 Camp Life, 2020  116 Under My Skin: Self-Portrait by SA, 2020  118 Friendship: R by SA, 2020  119 Return Atacama, 2016, Monica Mercedes Martinez  128 Glorification #3, 2019, PJ Anderson  130 Would I Have Called You Teta?, 2017, Habiba El-Sayed  132 Hayley Lowe Designs, 2011  152 Devonport Craft Market and Coatesville Craft Market, 2011  155 ‘I TOOK THE HANDMADE PLEDGE’, Devonport, 2011  157 Arpillera #17  205 Arpillera #17 reverse  207

FIGURES

16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4   E.1

Wool spinning on a spindle  241 Irish GDP in US$ billions  242 Irish CO2 production in parts per million  243 Correlation between Irish CO2 and GDP  243 Kurshida. Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh  251

ix

Acknowledgements My sincere thanks to: The authors who responded to my request for essays and trusted my ability to oversee their work and this project; the reviewers, pre- and post-manuscript, who gave the project a thumbs up; Libby Davies, for seeing the project through on behalf of Bloomsbury; Frances Whitehead, who said, ‘do what you know’; and, above all, Tony Fry, who said, ‘do it.’

Introduction Re-crafting an unsettled world D Wood

I

n 2009, during the first months of my doctoral candidacy in Design Studies in New Zealand, I attended a lecture by Bill McKibben, the American environmentalist and climate change campaigner. McKibben was at the University of Otago to promote 350​.or​g, his worldwide association that advocates private and public action to reduce global warming. The organization was founded in 2008 when the atmosphere contained about 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Having paid little attention to atmospherics to that point, I found McKibben ardent and inspiring and the lecture stayed with me. I am not a marcher or soap-boxer or group-joiner, so over the next few years I wondered what I could do to counter the ruinous society of which I am part. World travels brought me back to the southern hemisphere in 2016 to attend a workshop1 that aimed to make its participants aware of unsettlement. Conducted by design philosopher and educator, Tony Fry, plus international academics, we were given a metaphor: unsettlement is best envisaged as a boat crowded with refugees or asylum seekers. The boat is on an ocean that is rising or waning, subject to currents, winds and rain, and landfall is unknown and uncertain. It was easy to imagine the boat, its occupants and dark waters, because video coverage of this actuality was prevalent, yet a closer-to-home codicil was added by Fry: the inhabitants of planet Earth are figuratively in that boat. We have perpetrated irrevocable damage to the biosphere that continues: in 2019 the atmosphere contained more than 415 parts per million of carbon dioxide,2 with consequences that are reported regularly. Reflection on my contribution to global unsettlement needed more urgency, but the issues were overwhelming and seemed beyond my expertise and capability. Then, one of the workshop facilitators said, ‘do what you know’. Craft is what I know – as a practitioner, teacher, researcher and writer – and an idea began to evolve. Instead of being privately passionate about craft I could

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publicly promote it as an alternative to mass-produced temporarily adequate goods; advocate for the maintenance of craft skills; proselytize about repair and retrofitting; draw attention to the importance of the hand for much more than pressing a touch screen; and continue to write, bringing recognition to littleknown craft practitioners and practices. The stark reality of 350​.o​rg and the unsettlement workshop required me to address the existing circumstances, to act politically. Hence, Craft is Political. Why place craft in a political context? Because my research in the microcosm of New Zealand showed what became of the national craft organization when its funding was cut by government, and crafts were re-categorized as visual arts. Craft programmes were replaced by computer studies in primary and secondary schools; craft curriculum was eliminated from almost all tertiary institutions; and design, supplanting craft, was valorized as a panacea for improvement in export earnings. New Zealand is representative of the consequences of craft’s loss of political advocacy. In the macrocosm, the necessity for craft’s politicalness is because Western countries like Canada, the United States, England, New Zealand and Australia are not signatories to UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.3 It is because major museums and universities have deleted the C-word4 from their names, thereby eliminating respect for craft and its worth. It is because colonialism denied and, in some jurisdictions, continues to denigrate Indigenous practices and beliefs. And it is because handmade quality goods are marketed as luxury,5 instead of their being promoted as obtainable via a change in mindset, from make-do to make-last. Why craft in a political context now? Because anthropocentrism, that champions capitalism, perpetuates inequity, condones ecological degradation, embraces neoliberal economics and advances globalization, is in the boat with refugees and asylum seekers. The boat is floundering and may sink, let alone reach shore. As I write this, the world is dealing with coronavirus, a crisis that political economist, William Davies, says is due to aspects of capitalism – business and leisure, travel and trade – and dependence on the vulnerable labour market. Davies proposes: ‘Rather than view this as a crisis of capitalism, it might better be understood as the sort of world-making event that allows for new economic and intellectual beginnings.’6 Craft represents an alternative economic and ontological paradigm; its practice – institutional as well as individual – and end products warrant re-consideration and adoption. And I don’t mean a proliferation of online platforms! Highlighting the ways in which craft has been and is political is my contribution to addressing unsettlement. As the essays in this book will show, ‘craft is political’ embraces more than protest. It exists as an aspect of class, race and identity; it applies to the Indigenous as well as settlers; it is about historical and contemporary issues; it can be seen in making as well as the made; and it applies to an extensive

INTRODUCTION

3

range of craft media beyond the usual clay, fibre, glass, metal, wood.7 Carol Hanisch’s assertion in 1969 that ‘personal problems are political problems’8 holds true for every craft practitioner today. The very fact of making a thing by hand is political because handcraft runs counter to the hegemonic industrially made, mass-produced environment that pertains today. Hanisch’s ‘political’ fifty years ago was ‘to tell it like it is, to say what I really believe about my life instead of what I’ve always been told to say’.9 The authors of the essays herein are telling craft ‘like it is’ to create new discourses in the prevailing canon. Before providing a synopsis of the international craft topics that are gathered in Craft is Political, it is necessary to place the contributions in several theoretical contexts. The first is sustain-ability, with a deliberate hyphen; the second is craft as an agent of change; and the third is the ethics of care.

Craft and the Sustainment Tony Fry makes the distinction between politics and political: ‘politics is an institutionalized practice exercised by individuals, organizations and states, while the political exists as a wider sphere of activity embedded in the directive structure of a society and in the conduct of humans as “political animals”’.10 The political, therefore, consists of the activities of humans, who live in relation to each other, animals and the Earth, and require the enacting of laws and establishment of customs to ensure convivial cohabitation. The political is the everyday and, for many craftspeople discussed in this book, craft is the everyday and a lifestyle: the handcrafting process has been done for generations, without question, with skills and knowledge being passed down. Alternatively, Edward Cooke, writing about the American context, points out that craft was first used as a noun in the 1870s, thereby naming a cultural construct. Since material culture ‘plays a prominent role in the structuring and negotiation of everyday life’,11 craft, as a subcategory of material culture, does too. In the field of design, Fry points out that design’s forms – buildings, transportation, goods and services, technology, leisure spaces and activities, information and its dissemination – have an ideological basis, and as a consequence, are political. For example, the design of a bus system is not only about travel from A to B, but about bringing workers to employment and enabling commerce to support a capitalist economy. As well as being part of material culture, craft is a component of design, although it has largely been set aside by designers, educators and the industrial complex, due to its pace, heterogeneity and human-centred production. Fry recognizes craft as critical in a transformative agenda for the Anthropocene:

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Craft knowledge should not be viewed in a developmental lineage in which it is placed behind new or high technologies, for it is essential in keeping and making the world human and in artificially sustaining the ecosystem. Craft knowledge is, therefore, behind, in front of, and in competition with noncraft technologies. It is not, in terms of importance, marginal. Craft knowledge is in fact of central importance to the future.12 Fry coined the phrase ‘the Sustainment’, which he defines as a time when all decisions are made with cognizance of their impact on the planet and its inhabitants. This utopia, in the sense of an imagined place with a political and social system that serves all its denizens, is not achievable via democracy as it currently exists. Fry asserts that ‘a future worth having requires a political transformation of existing social and economic life, underpinned by a praxis more capable of enabling, directing and maintaining affirmative change than existing institutions of democracy’.13 Fry is not alone in his disdain for democracy’s ability to transform our trajectory. Naomi Klein14 states that change will not come out of the pervasive capitalist ideology and its governments, nor will business and political leaders provide solutions to the vast array of social and environmental problems of now and the future. Much of the proactivity is coming from the grass roots, as 350​.o​rg shows. The political content of craft – eschewing quantity for quality; care about making and being; emphasis on community; valuing labour; ethical use of resources; slow production; perpetuation of traditions; emotionally durable design; knowledge of materials and tools; repair and retrofit skills – contributes to its appropriateness as a praxis of positive change.

Craft as change agent Matthew Kiem, expanding on Fry’s belief in the importance of craft, discusses sustainability, a concept that, in the neoliberal paradigm, is seen in terms of social and economic development that views progress as beneficial and natural resources as limitless and exploitable. Sustainability does little to stabilize or reverse consumption, climate change and loss of resources.15 Sustainability embraces globalization, neocolonialism and anthropocentricity; it institutes recycling, carbon tax, hybrid vehicles, solar panels, energy-efficient lightbulbs and eco-anything under the false assumption that these measures will make a difference to the present condition of planet Earth. A more realistic alternative occurs with the separation of sustain – ‘to keep in existence; to maintain in life and health’ – and ability – ‘suitableness or adaptation for a purpose; suitable power or proficiency; cleverness or

INTRODUCTION

5

astuteness’.16 Sustain-ability is defined as suitable for, or astute enough to, maintain life and health and keep in existence. The unhyphenated word deploys the clever, in the sense of shrewd, to maintain the ideology and economy of capitalism. In contrast, sustain-ability constantly poses the questions, does this [solution] maintain life and health? or, will this intelligently maintain? If the answer is ‘no’, the activity, object, practice or system is insupportable. Craft’s place in sustain-ability is asserted by Kiem: in order to realise both the sustaining and transformative potential of craft, practitioners must develop a capacity for ongoing critical reflection that informs vocational commitment to change through craft practice. In this capacity, it is a call for practitioners to both recognise and engage with the political agency of craft as a way of fabricating new, and more sustainable modes of (human)being.17 Kiem asks not only that practitioners reflect on whether their making and the made answer the sustain-ability question but also that they consciously, through their being and vocation, adopt actions that contribute to a better future. These political actions could include ethical sourcing of materials, teaching craft skills, making work that highlights social or environmental issues, advocating for the maintenance of heritage techniques, promoting the importance of making and the hand in present and future generations, contributing to the craft discourse and advancing its scholarship. Alexander Langlands, by personally experiencing and writing about traditional crafts, knows what craftsmanship is capable of. He invokes the Old English word cræft, which he says doesn’t have an English equivalent and is closer to the German Kraft. Cræft is not mere making, but ‘the power, the force, the knowledge and the wisdom behind making’.18 Practitioners and their community must champion those attributes. Kiem summarizes what is needed: To the question of where such a movement [towards Sustainment] might begin, the answer lies in the dialectical relation, that is, change must be initiated by individuals and groups at each moment of social reproduction. The activities of our daily life, our understanding of the world, our relation to other people, our ordinary work practices, our exchange practices, how we own and use equipment, each of these and more represent sites in which politicised craft practitioners may intervene with the intention of redirecting the force of our unsustainability.19 And while this may seem utopian, Bratich and Brush remind us of context: ‘In the ubiquitous crisis called capitalism, new utopias not only are needed but

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are being enacted (as prefigurative politics). The persistence of crafting despite the catastrophic decomposition called capitalism reminds us of ontological accumulation whose strength establishes the base for utopian projects.’20

Craft as care Philosopher and feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti proposes the ethics of affirmation by which political and social actions are seen as positive, holding the possibility of change for the future.21 Whereas Hegel believed that negativity was necessary to criticize existing negative circumstances, Braidotti advocates for feminist theory that places equal importance on criticism and creativity and is based on the everyday. She states: ‘A politics of affirmation aims at creating the conditions for sustainable futures.’22 An ethics of affirmation complements another feminist theory, the ethics of care. This argument was initially set forth in Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice.23 Gilligan argued that women made choices based on an ‘ethics of care’ whereas men’s decisions aligned with an ‘ethics of justice’. The ethic of care ‘gives moral priority to contextual and particular decision-making, to relationships, and to the responsibilities entailed by those relationships’ whereas the ethic of justice ‘emphasizes universalizable moral choices made by impartial, autonomous individuals, and the rights of such individuals’.24 Debate about this gendered dichotomy, its lack of attention to race and class, as well as the exclusivity of care and justice25 has been considerable, yet the moral concepts of attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness, and integrity,26 and caring as an activity that will generate moral responses are not gender specific. Selma Sevenhuijsen sees care as a social and political activity that applies to citizenship: ‘Care is, and this cannot be stressed enough, not only directed at “others” (those in need of care) but also at the self and the physical environment, as well as interrelations between these.’27 Sevenhuijsen’s concern about humanity, the planet and their connection upholds sustainability. She adds that by being open to the ‘other’, the ethics of care ‘attributes an important place to communication, interpretation and dialogue . . . it appeals for the restitution of sensory knowledge, symbolized by the unity of hand, head and heart’.28 The connection of the senses and hand, head and heart reverberates with craft. Tony Fry asserts that ‘it is by the hand, with care as craft, that the sacred can be made’.29 By sacred he means an intangible collective sensibility at the core of being human. Feminist philosopher Virginia Held invokes the craft milieu: ‘Chopping at a tree, however clumsily, to fell it, could be work. But when it does incorporate

INTRODUCTION

7

such values as doing so effectively, it becomes the practice of woodcutting. So we do better to focus on practices of care rather than merely on the work involved.’30 Care in wood work is quality in wood work. Caring citizenship aligns with Fry’s ontological view of care: ‘Care for self and future, as a working practice toward a quality of the being of objects, and being with objects, clearly is inseparable from the quality of survival of all being.’31 The late design historian Victor Margolin believed that design could contribute to utopia, defined as a better world.32 In an essay on graphic design, he cites the views of Sheila Levrant de Bretteville that credit women’s role in designing a better world: ‘Feminist design is an open set of intentions acted upon with concern, caring, and courage. It acknowledges the private sphere of women’s experience and makes it public and visible. It encourages the strength, grace, and warmth derived from women’s culture and provides visual material based on women’s experience to which we can turn for relief and instruction.’33 In line with de Bretteville’s perspective, the design of this book’s cover is invested with my concern about the planet, care about introducing an alternative discourse in craft scholarship and courage to persist with this publication. It uses a motif that was employed by union and black power movements to bring attention to causes of labour and equality. It depicts a hand which is synonymous with craft practice. And it is executed in embroidery, a mode of expression tantamount to women’s culture. The cover embodies my skill as a craftswoman and holistic commitment to craft as a critical element in caring for the future.

Overview of sections Jill Tweedie, the British feminist and journalist, made the following observation in 1971: ‘I cannot personally think of any widespread injustice that has been remedied by plodding worthily down the middle of the road, smiling and smiling.’34 Two years later Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile, inaugurating a regime of terror that lasted for seventeen years. Rather than adopting smiling neutrality – the middle of the road – Chilean women picked up their needles, thread and scraps of fabric to make arpilleras, the colourful visual narratives that were stealthily sent into the world to relate what was happening in Chile. The arpilleras were created well in advance of the craftivist initiatives that rose out of the World Trade Center destruction in 2001. Betsy Greer, while conceding the invention of the word craftivism to the Church of Craft,35 takes credit for creating craftivism​.c​om in the wake of 9/11, enabling the word’s adoption by multifarious groups. Defined as ‘the practice of engaged creativity,

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especially regarding political or social causes’,36 the concept was initially North American. When it was taken up by Sarah Corbett in Britain in 2008 under the name Craftivist Collective, its manifesto was: ‘To expose the scandal of global poverty and human rights injustices through the power of craft and public art. This will be done through provocative, non-violent creative actions.’37 Corbett’s ethos is a gentle form a political activism: Craftivist Collective made embroidered handkerchiefs that were gifted to board members at the retailer, Marks & Spencer (UK), to influence them to raise the minimum wage for its employees. The campaign – persuasive rather than confrontational – got a positive result that was hoped would inspire other British companies to become Living Wage Employers.38 This restrained craftivist approach contrasts with actions across the Atlantic where craftivism has been peaceful yet public: for example, Jayna Zweiman’s Pussyhat39 Project in which knitted pink hats were worn during the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC, to support women’s rights; Zweiman’s public call for Welcome Blankets that offer a more friendly reception for migrants crossing United States borders; yarnbombing (yarn graffiti) whereby knitting draws attention to the urban environment and societal issues;40 Revolutionary Knitting Circle that stages knit-ins at political events; Walking with Our Sisters, an installation of 1,763 pairs of moccasin vamps (uppers) to commemorate the lives of Indigenous women murdered and missing in Canada; and the Handmaid Coalition, which protests political targeting of women, the working class and minorities by wearing iconic costumes based on Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. Alyce McGovern discusses innumerable additional instances of craftivism,41 including those in her native Australia like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) quilts, instigated by Tal Fitzpatrick, whose statistics claim ‘4 quilts, 131 craftivists, 45 nationalities, 26 languages’.42 Regardless of where it takes place, Craftivists aim to critique the ‘man-made’, and I use that term deliberately. This can include the perfect body form demanded by the fashion and beauty industry, the effects of globalisation on the high street, the pressure for land which forces out local people in favour of expensive housing for incomers, and all other effects of capitalism, globalisation, the industrial-military complex and any other effects of the masculine hegemony we have omitted.43 And while craftivism has its critics,44 the projects mentioned are commendable efforts to bring attention to social concerns within the political arena. The arpilleras of Chile and craftivism in the West are transparent instances of craft’s involvement in politics that eschewed the middle of the road. But in compiling an in-depth book on craft and politics, a broader range of political application is required.

INTRODUCTION

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The essays: legacy, practice and world view Edward Cooke gave impetus to my resolution to give craft and politics a broader purview: ‘Because of its genesis as a social critique, craft has always had a subversive potential, particularly in regard to industrial capitalism, but this facet has rarely received any sustained critical attention.’45 I contacted scholars heard at academic conferences whose topics fit the theme and solicited suggestions from colleagues. Authors who were approached offered additional possibilities. Reviewers of the proposal requested input from the Global South. The result is sixteen essays covering a range of craft practices, countries and academic disciplines. The content offers unique interpretations of the political in the context of craft. This book is a first, and while not exhaustive, is a provocation for subsequent research and publication. Authors were given free rein in how they tackled the theme, with the result that they interpreted ‘political’ in ways that were unexpected, informative and, sometimes, challenging to the craft canon. Some authors focus on longstanding craft communities that need revised or updated discourses; others consider what is made, from various perspectives such as materials, context and the makers; and still others look at the big picture, the philosophical and institutional ways that craft has been politically fashioned. As a result, the sections are titled Legacy, Practice and World View.

Part 1. Craft Legacy Legacy sheds light on craft and the political in Japan, Canada, Taiwan, Turkey, Egypt and Australia. In some of these countries, craft practices of various sorts have existed for millennia.46 Historically, these practices were manipulated by those in control; currently they are under threat by governments, globalization, technology and social change. In communities where artisanry means subsistence living, practices are maintained out of necessity and by the intervention of conscientious outsiders; in one instance documented here, practitioners are capitalizing on their heritage to make political gains. This section also contains two essays that delve into archives to examine assumptions about culture. These researchers demonstrate that craft history is rife with stories that warrant being brought into the light. Yasuko Suga illuminates the Japanese tea ceremony and its transformation through craft. Her research in Japanese sources focuses on the advent of Western-style exhibitions in the nineteenth century and the efforts by Gengensai, a Grand Tea Master, to adjust the Japanese tea ceremony for the appreciation of foreign exhibition visitors. Gengensai, also a craftsman and collector of crafts, was well-placed to introduce furniture and high-quality

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objects into the ceremony. This intervention was instrumental in demonstrating Japan’s modernity and restored prestige to a cultural practice that, at the time, was regarded as old-fashioned. Changes to the Japanese tea ceremony came about for a Kyoto exhibition. Lisa Binkley also discusses an exhibition, this time an Indigenous one in Canada. While Binkley’s essay focuses on a silk patchwork quilt made by Louise Laronde that was displayed at the 1883 Caughnawaga Exhibition, she expands its context to government policies of assimilation of the Kanien’kehá:ka and an attempt to expropriate their lands. The quilt was seen politically as evidence of adoption of a Western craft practice, and therefore adaptation by ‘the other’, whereas the making of quilts by women was a standard Indigenous handicraft. Binkley’s historical research is a reminder that craft exists in societal, cultural and political circumstances and cannot be viewed as isolated material objects. Geoffrey Gowlland’s essay evolved from his residency in Taiwan to examine ceramics. He became intrigued by Indigenous Taiwanese crafts and proposes that instead of their being seen as traditional, as government tourist marketing alleges, they are instead innovative and agentive in negotiating indigeneity with the state, the market and settler communities. He explores the impact of various colonizers on the Austronesian population and describes how the classification of ‘backward’ affected subsequent generations. Now it is the task of Indigenous practitioners in their forties and fifties, who know craft practices and language, to engage with young people about the importance of reinstating what was derided. Gowlland asserts that the case study of Indigenous Taiwanese craft practices and objects, that serve political purposes, could be applied to other Indigenous cultures. Çiğdem Kaya, trained as an industrial designer, documents her research on the differentiation between craft and design in Turkey. Of the multitude of craft practices in that country, dating back to the Ottoman Empire, some have disappeared because of mass-produced goods and changing lifestyles, whereas others are seen to have value only if design is an intervention in their process. The design/craft dichotomy is habitually a hierarchical one, with only a few designers engaging with and giving credit to the expertise of craftspeople. Kaya proposes that this hierarchy maintains class disparity, pitting designers with formal education against master craftspeople whose knowledge has been passed from mother to daughter, father to son. Her research shows that emotional connections among a project’s participants yield more successful results than hierarchical ones. Closing out this section, Anne-Marie Willis also deals with artisans whose practice began in antiquity. While teaching at the German University in Cairo, she observed the thousands of small craft shops dedicated to artisanal practices that crowd the central city. Her first-hand account, telling craft ‘like it is’, engages the senses and paints a colourful exotic picture, yet the reality

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is subsistence, disparity and loss of trade due to mass-produced imports. As a stark contrast she takes us to the annual Tasmanian Craft Fair that couldn’t be more different than Egypt, in its setting, goods and peripheral events like sheep-dog trials. Nevertheless, the noun ‘craft’ applies to both venues. Willis’s discussion reminds us that Western perspectives on craft are light-years away from what is happening in developing countries. She believes, as well, that NGOs need to be more realistic about goals and refrain from imposition of neo-colonialist tropes.

Part 2. Craft Practice In this section, authors discuss Western craft artists and how they negotiate the everyday with respect to sustainable practice, identity, commerce and the troubling social and economic issues of today. The majority of the essays are based in the developed West while two consider craftspeople in marginal societies. The most timely of these, about Rohingyan refugees in Bangladesh, covers a craft intervention that is changing women’s lives. The first essay adds to Alanna Cant’s extensive research and publications dedicated to Oaxacan woodcarvers. Wood carving is not a long-standing practice, but developed in Oaxaca to serve the tourist industry and provide income in an employment desert. Cant questions the anthropological notion of community of practice being a universal framework for studying craft and challenges Richard Sennett’s assertion that quality is inseparable from craft. According to her observations, craft practice is not always driven by romantic ideals; it may be determined by personality and financial necessity. These considerations should be concomitant in future studies, according to Cant, to reflect the reality of craft in a wider range of jurisdictions. David Palazón, a photographer and documentary film-maker, originally intended to write about craft in Timor-Leste, but during the evolution of Craft is Political, he relocated to Bangladesh. As a result, he and his colleagues, Shahirah Majumdar, Lurdes Macedo and Verity Marques, tackle an up-tothe-minute political travesty: the expulsion of the Rohingya from Myanmar. Under the auspices of the International Organization for Migration, Palazón et al. document embroidery programmes for women in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp. Embroidery, a long-standing activity for the Muslim women, was manifest initially in a restricted range of motifs, but through professional instruction and ongoing workshops, the women have expanded their repertoire, concurrently raising their self-esteem and depicting aspects of their culture that might otherwise be lost. Moving from East to West, Heidi McKenzie reveals that Theaster Gates was responsible for her epiphany about race as an aspect of craft. As a

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ceramics practitioner who has dealt with race, her essay considers Canadian practitioners whose identities influence their ceramics. McKenzie contends that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) artists are rarely included in the craft canon, and analysis of their work, based on identity, is absent. She redresses this situation by profiling three portfolios of hybridity – Chilean/ European, Jamaican/Métis and Egyptian/Guyanese – and observing how the women navigate their craft practice in a medium that, in Canada at least, needs improvement with respect to racial inclusion. Considering another material, Elizabeth Shaw begins her essay with the politics of jewellery, providing instances of prominent women wearing a particular brooch to send an intentional message. Shaw’s concrete examples conform to Jean Baudrillard’s theories on the semiotics of everyday life. As a jeweller and educator, Shaw upholds an ethical and environmentally sustainable practice and conveys her beliefs in her studio instruction. She writes here about jewellery as a component of fast fashion and cites initiatives whose actions bring sustain-ability to the sector. Shaw then describes Radical Jewelry Makeover, originating in the United States, and JUNK, at Birmingham City University (UK), that propose alternative sourcing of materials and serve to educate jewellery students and consumers about the consequences of material choices. Next, Fiona McDonald examines the phenomenon of craft markets in Aotearoa New Zealand, both actual and virtual. Her field work centred around woollen blankets that have been reconfigured into a range of items that invoke memory and nostalgia for their purchasers. Yet, when she reflected on her research, she realized that the blankets were part of a significant community of practice. She argues that the kinship bonds forged by the women who participate in the craft markets are economic as well as social. The physical and online markets and their female creators are indicative of the politics of the handmade as well as an alternative economic paradigm that embraces women’s roles and interactions. McDonald observed the activity in the Auckland region pre-internet and now trawls social media as a digital ethnographer. Finally, in the Practice section, D Wood gathers a selection of current Western craft practices wherein the objects created, across the traditional media of clay, glass, metal, wood and textiles, are overtly political in their themes. These themes, including war, revisionist history, the environment, labour, identity, immigration, sexual assault, politics, colonialism and apartheid, are indicative of the issues of everyday life in the twenty-first century. This representative sample of conscientious craft artists contains several who are reluctant to attach the word political to what they make. Wood’s primary research discovered fear of backlash on social media that would affect the makers’ reputation and income, or worse.

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Part 3. Craft World View The last section, World View, is devoted to essays that consider craft in the big picture. Two are philosophical, arguing that the craft community, itself, must review its language and spiritual underpinnings to align with today’s ontological circumstances. Another focuses on craft education and the importance of longevity in education policy to ensure its maintenance. And while an essay on Chilean arpilleras could have been slotted into the Practice section, I have placed it here because the analysis is as much about the political and economic environment in which the arpilleras were made as the embroideries themselves. And last, but certainly not least, a case study in which a craft practitioner and educator illuminates climate change by means of craft and a material that exists in the learners’ back yards. First up, Fernando Alberto Álvarez Romero addresses philosophy from his perspective in the Global South. Andean Indigenous peoples are beholden to Pachamama (Mother Earth) who provides raw materials to the craftsman. The subsequent making constitutes social relationships and results in objects of use that symbolize a reciprocity between humanity and nature. This symbiotic connection aligns with the ethics of care and is the antithesis of the ravagement and degradation of the environment that Western profit motives have perpetrated in Andean countries. Álvarez places craft practice firmly in the metaphysical realm as a viable ethos that stands in opposition to an industrially manufactured, capitalistically idealized world view. Staying on the South American continent, the next essay by Nathalia Santos Ocasio connects the arpilleras of Chile with the neoliberal economic measures instituted by Pinochet and perpetuated by subsequent governments. Basing their imagery on daily life in Santiago’s poblaciones, Chilean women expressed their grief, despair and, eventually, anger about the deaths and torture carried out by their elected officials as well as the economic conditions under which they and their families were living. The arpilleras – ‘handstitched newspapers’, a memorable metaphor coined by Santos Ocasio – are an example of grassroots political action by means of craft. Santos Ocasio’s impassioned writing about her homeland serves to ‘tell it like it is’ in Chile today as well as offering an insider’s look at the renowned embroideries of its women. Anna Kouhia also writes about government in her native country. Finland, probably the only country in the world where craft is compulsory in primary school, has had legislated craft curriculum throughout its history. However, the aims of that curriculum have been political and varied according to the ethos of Finnish identity that successive governments wished to project. Kouhia, whose craft expertise is in textiles, recounts developments over time and points out that while non-gendered choices of craft media are encouraged

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today, gender socialization is difficult to overcome. Top-down political policy takes time to translate into human interactions. Next, a philosophical essay by Leopold Kowolik, who debates authenticity and sincerity in craft. Kowolik’s argument starts with John Ruskin, proceeds to William Morris and Lionel Trilling, and concludes with an assessment of contemporary craft objects, preferring to assign them the accolade ‘sincere’ rather than authentic. With the adoption by ad agencies of craft-related words such as heritage, artisan and traditional to market everything from coffee and beer to bread, bacon and lettuce, consumers are confused about what constitutes authenticity. Kowolik develops a cogent argument for the adoption of sincere as the best adjective for craft. The last essay in Craft is Political, by Seema Goel, is placed here because it is evidence of craft as sustain-ability, craft as an agent of change and craft as care. Goel was one of five artists/scientists selected to participate in Lovely Weather in County Donegal, Ireland. Her wide-open mandate was to connect with locals about climate change, and she began by pulling an Aran-style sweater out of her Canadian closet. As a craft practitioner she epitomizes how skilled and committed makers can influence others, long term. Goel’s reflections on sheep-farming, the capitalist economy and the success of learning by doing are an upbeat conclusion to this book. Goel’s modest intervention can plausibly be replicated in other settings with other materials and tools. Undertaking and recording such projects expand scholarship and discourse on craft and politics. This Introduction was written during the early weeks of the worldwide coronavirus. The full extent of the repercussions of the pandemic are as yet unknown. For many craft practitioners in the West, it means a loss of livelihood with the cancellation of markets and fairs. E-commerce is an alternative, but an online purchase denies the meaningful connection between maker and buyer. For practitioners in developing countries, the loss of tourist traffic and orders from retailers is devastating. However, this global crisis, when it has abated, was a waste of humanity if business-as-usual is restored. I entrust readers with the provocation to embrace craft as an agent of change, be political in singing its virtues and walk the talk of caring craft practice.

Notes 1 Studio at the Edge of the World: Seeing Unsettlement/Intercultural Responses, 4 January to 7 February 2016, University of Tasmania, Launceston. ‘The project is based on the proposition that the deepening problems and proliferating complexity of climate change, global geopolitical instability, actual and potential inter-cultural conflict, global inequity and rapid

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technological change all combine to unsettle vast numbers of people in numerous ways. In so many ways many people feel like the world is broken.’ Tony Fry. www​.the​stud​ioat​thee​dgeo​ftheworld​.com 2 350​.or​g. 3 As of May 2018, 175 countries are signatories. http:​/​/www​​.unes​​co​.or​​g​/eri​​/la​/ c​​onven​​tion.​​asp​?l​​angua​​​ge​=E&​​KO​=17​​116 4 John Perrault, ‘The C-Word: Craft’, Artopia: An Arts Journal Blog, 7 October 2014. http:​/​/www​​.arts​​journ​​al​.co​​m​/art​​opia/​​2014/​​10​/th​​e​-c​-w​​​ord​-c​​raft.​​html 5 Victoria & Albert Museum and British Crafts Council, ‘What Is Luxury?’ Exhibition April–September 2015. The V & A’s website states: ‘Making luxury is not concerned with practical solutions but with the extraordinary, nonessential and exclusive. Mastery of a craft and exceptional expertise…’ Juxtaposition of craft with exclusive perpetuates public belief in its being the preserve of the wealthy. 6 William Davies, ‘The Last Global Crisis Didn’t Change the World. But This One Could’, The Guardian, 24 March 2020. https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/co​​ mment​​isfre​​e​/202​​0​/mar​​/24​/c​​orona​​virus​​-cris​​is​-ch​​ange-​​world​​-fina​​nci​al​​-glob​​al​-ca​​ pital​​ism. 7 For example, culinary craft has been explored in academic research and documentaries. See Susan Terrio, ‘Visions of Excess: Crafting and Consuming Good Chocolate in France and the United States’, in Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization and Capitalism, ed. Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber and Alicia Ory DeNicola (Bloomsbury: London, 2016), 135–52. 8 http:​/​/www​​.caro​​lhani​​sch​.o​​rg​/CH​​writi​​ngs​/P​​​IP​.ht​​ml. Hanisch states that ‘The Personal is Political’ was an editorial choice for a title to her paper and it became a rallying cry for the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s. 9 Ibid. 10 Tony Fry, Design and Politics (London: Berg, 2011), 5–6. 11 Edward Cooke, Jr., ‘Modern Craft and the American Experience’, American Art 21, no. 1 (2007): 2–9, 7. 12 Tony Fry, ‘Sacred Design I: A Re-creational Theory’, in Discovering Design: Explorations in Design Studies, ed. Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 190–218, 212. 13 Fry, Design and Politics, 4. 14 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (London: Allen Lane, 2014). 15 For example: ‘400 million tons of plastics are produced globally every year. Globally only 9% of plastic ever produced has been recycled, while 79% can now be found in landfills, dumps or the environment and 12% has been incinerated.’ Published by Sustainability Management School Switzerland (SUMAS), ‘Sustainability Statistics Worth Knowing in 2019’. https​:/​/su​​mas​.c​​h​/ sus​​taina​​bilit​​y​-sta​​​tisti​​cs/ 16 Oxford English Dictionary. 17 Matthew Kiem, ‘Theorising a Transformative Agenda for Craft’, craft + design enquiry (2011): 33–48, 33.

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18 Alexander Langlands, Cræft: How Traditional Crafts Are About More Than Just Making (London: Faber & Faber, 2017), 339. 19 Kiem, ‘Theorising a Transformative Agenda for Craft’, 42. 20 Jack Bratich and Heidi Brush, ‘Fabricating Activism: Craft-Work, Popular Culture and Gender’, Utopian Studies 22, no. 2 (2011): 233–60, 255. 21 Rosi Braidotti, ‘The New Activism: A Plea for Affirmative Ethics’, in Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization, ed. Lieven De Cauter, Ruben De Roo and Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2011), 264–71. 22 Ibid., 270. 23 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 24 Catherine Gardner, The A to Z of Feminist Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006), 42. 25 Lawrence Blum, ‘Gilligan and Kohlberg: Implications for Moral Theory’, in An Ethic of Care: Feminist and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Mary Jeanne Larrabee (London: Routledge, 1993), 49–68; Bill Puka, ‘The Liberation of Caring: A Different Voice for Gilligan’s “Different Voice“’, in Larrabee, An Ethic of Care, 215–39. 26 Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1994), 126–37. 27 Selma Sevenhuijsen, Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist Considerations on Justice, Morality and Politics (London: Routledge, 1998), 23. 28 Ibid., 61. 29 Fry, ‘Sacred I’, 211. 30 Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 37. 31 Fry, ‘Sacred I’, 207. 32 Clive Dilnot, ‘Obituary: Victor Margolin: The Generosity of Mind’, Design and Culture 12, no. 1 (2020): 1–4. 33 Victor Margolin, ‘Reform, and Revolution: American Graphic Design for Social Change’, Design Issues 5, no. 1 (1988): 59–70, 67. 34 Jill Tweedie, ‘Why Nice Girls Finish Last’, in Women of the Revolution: Forty Years of Feminism, ed. Kira Cochrane (London: Guardian Books, 2010): 9–11. 35 Betsy Greer, ‘Craftivist History’, in Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, ed. Maria Elena Buszek (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011): 175–83. 36 http://craftivism​.com​/definition/ Greer states that after fifteen years of being identified with the craftivism website she is now using hellobetsygreer​.co​m. 37 Sarah Corbett and Sarah Housley, ‘The Craftivist Collective Guide to Craftivism’, Utopian Studies 22, no. 1 (2011): 344–51, 344. 38 Sarah Corbett, ‘How to Be a Craftivist: Gentle Doesn’t Mean Passive: The Strength of Temperate Activism in Breaking Down Corporate Barriers’, in Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to

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the Pussyhats, ed. Hinda Mantell (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 227–32. Corbett quotes the Chairman of M & S saying: ‘It’s a campaign that is thoughtfully done and heartfelt. We feel every bit as heartfelt about our employees.’ Sarah Corbett, How to Be a Craftivist: The Art of Gentle Protest (London: Unbound, 2017), Chapter 12, no pagination. 39 President Donald Trump, as evidenced by a Hollywood Access tape recording in 2005, said he grabs women ‘by the pussy’. The pink pussyhats were designed and knit as a protest to Trump’s election in 2016. Hinda Mantell, ‘Yarn, Thread, Scissors, Fabric: A Crafter’s Tool Kit for Mending Democracy as Engaged Citizens’, in Mantell, Crafting Dissent, 1–11. 40 Marianne Jørgensen’s pink Tank Cozy (2006), envisioned by the Danish artist and made by volunteers around the world, was Jørgensen’s and the knitters’ protest against Danish, American and British participation in the war in Iraq. It remains the most iconic example of yarnbombing. 41 Alyce McGovern, Craftivism and Yarn Bombing: Critical Criminological Perspectives (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2019). 42 https://quilts​.moadoph​.gov​.au 43 Ann Rippin and Sheena J. Vachhani, ‘Craft as Resistance: A Conversation about Craftivism, Embodied Inquiry, and Craft-based Methodologies’, in The Organization of Craft Work: Identities, Meanings, and Materiality, ed. Emma Bell, Gianluigi Mangia, Scott Taylor and Maria Laura Toraldo (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), 217–34, 225. 44 Laura Portwood Stacer, ‘Do-It-Yourself Feminism: Feminine Individualism and the Girlie Backlash in the “Craftivism” Movement’ (Paper presented at the International Communication Association Convention, San Francisco, CA, 2007). https​:/​/ww​​w​.aca​​demia​​.edu/​​18634​​81​/Do​​-It​-Y​​ourse​​lf​_Fe​​minis​​m​ _Fem​​inine​​_Indi​​vidua​​lism_​​and​_t​​he​_Gi​​rlie_​​Backl​​ashin​​​_the_​​Craft​​ivism​​Movem​​ ent; Samantha Close, ‘Knitting Activism, Knitting Gender, Knitting Race’, International Journal of Communication 12 (2018): 867–889; Tamela J. Gordon, ‘Pussy Hats: The Confederate Flag for White Feminists’, Medium, 7 January 2018. https://medium​.com/​@shewritestolive​/puss​​y​-hat​​s​-the​​-conf​​ edera​​te​-fl​​ag​-fo​​r​-whi​​te​-fe​​minis​​ts​-7a​​21352​​b2f5e​. 45 Cooke, ‘Modern Craft and the American Experience’, 6. 46 The online craft journal, Garland, launched in 2015 and edited by Kevin Murray, has extensive archives devoted to cultural heritage practices in the Indo Pacific. Garland is produced by the World Crafts Council – Australia. https://garlandmag​.com​/about/

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1 Politics of tea furniture Invention of ryu ˉ rei style in late-nineteenth-century Japan Yasuko Suga

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hen the British designer and botanist Christopher Dresser visited Japan, he received an invitation from the Governor of Kyoto to go to a temple garden for a tea ceremony. Sent by the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) as a connoisseur of Japanese art, he wanted to enjoy the best of Japanese aesthetics. The tea ceremony represented literally a total art that pleased the five senses, as it consisted of appreciating the burning charcoal and incense, listening to the water boiling, eating sweets and drinking from a tea bowl, viewing and delicately handling the items made of ivory, metal, wood, lacquer, bamboo and fabrics, and considering them. It was a compilation of different crafts most carefully selected by the host to match and produce a special occasion for the guests. In a small, square, four-and-ahalf tatami mat room – each tatami being 6 feet by 3 feet – Dresser observed that ‘everything is done with the same strange precision’ and following the ‘code of etiquette’.1 In fact, the tea ceremony was and is not only about crafts and aesthetics: it is also deeply ‘political’. Dresser recorded how he learned that ‘at these meetings private matters are often discussed and secret plots concocted, and that most of the revolutions of Japan have been planned at these secret

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gatherings’, because political, military and financial leaders would meet and dine at tea houses.2 In Japanese history, the tea ceremony has provided a strategic setting since the time of Sen Rikyū (1522–1591) who systematized the rules in the sixteenth century – the Age of Civil Wars. Also, the tea ceremony itself has metamorphosed over time. For example, during wars, various procedures using a style of portable tea-box were devised to enjoy the tea ceremony even at a battlefield or on a battleship. Highly crafted tea bowls and powdered-tea containers were often given by a lord to his servants as a reward at battles. A number of procedures and styles have been devised by successive grand masters, often to harmonize tea culture with contemporary socio-political movements. Perhaps the most revolutionary adaptation was the invention of ryūrei (standing courtesy) style, which used Western-style tables and stools instead of traditionally sitting directly on the tatami floor with one’s legs folded. The style was devised in the middle of Japan’s rapid modernization after it opened to the West in the mid-nineteenth century. Its creator was the eleventh Grand Tea Master, Gengensai (1810–1877) of the Ura-Senke school, one of three major tea schools established by Sen Rikyū’s descendants to pass on his ‘Way of Tea’. Gengensai’s dual ‘invention of tradition’ is observable in that he wanted the tea ceremony to be more accessible to foreign visitors in the time of Japan’s opening after centuries of national seclusion, thus contributing to its international representation. Also, domestically, he projected the ryūrei style as the nation’s indispensable cultural tradition of value in the modern age. This article explores the cultural and political significance of the ryūrei style, by focusing on the Kyoto Exhibition of 1872 where it was first demonstrated, and on Gengensai’s philosophization of tea culture. In addition, the essay reveals how the new tea furniture was invented out of political considerations for the attraction of and catering to Western visitors and, subsequently, to function as a bilateral interface of both ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in tea culture.

Kyoto and tea culture in hard times After Japan opened to the West in the 1850s, the government focused on two initiatives in order to catch up with Western civilization: ’leave Asia, enter Europe’ (datsua-nyūou) and ‘Japanese spirit combined with Western learning’ (wakon-yosai). Japanese officials were sent to the United States and Europe, and one of the myriad novel things they reported on was a medium of national publicity: exhibitions. They visited the London International Exhibition in 1862 with awe and marvel. Interestingly, this was the exhibition where the

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Japanese artefacts exhibited by the first British minister to Japan, Sir Harry Parkes, attracted many European artists, designers and dealers such as Walter Crane and Arthur Liberty, lured by the Japonisme craze in the West.3 At once, the culture of exhibitions was fashionable in Japan. According to the writer and editor Ishii Kendo (1865–1943), exhibitions became a symbol of the West and modernity during the Meiji period, especially between 1872 and 1877, together with other novelties such as schools, horse carriages and Jinriki-sha (rickshaw).4 The first step, taken by the municipality of Kyoto in 1871, was an exhibition at a temple. From 1872, for another thirty-one years, annual exhibitions were held in Kyoto. Other major cities also organized exhibitions, but Kyoto differed in that while other cities tended to follow the style of conventional shops, Kyoto’s exhibition introduced the Western system of jury selection and the display of imported machines, based on the understanding that European exhibitions worked as a medium of knowledge and learning.5 Why such a difference and strong determination to hold exhibitions to the Western standard in Kyoto? One obvious reason was the political competition between Kyoto, the ancient Japanese capital from 794 AD to the end of Edo period (1603–1868), and Tokyo, a new capital after the Meiji Restoration. When the Meiji period (1868–1912) began, all governmental functions moved to Tokyo. In addition, Kyoto and nearby Osaka, which had been the centres of commerce for centuries, had a drastic downfall. In May 1871, yen currency was newly introduced as the only currency exchangeable with dollars, in place of ryo used in feudal times; two months later the abolishment of feudal domains and established prefectures occurred. The former feudal lords lost their dominions and ruling powers, and those who had borrowed large amounts of ryo from major money exchange merchants, mostly based in Osaka, escaped from their debts, which caused Osaka merchants’ demise and the city’s fall from the summit of national economic power. It was no wonder that Kyoto jumped at the opportunity to demonstrate local identity in order to revitalize the economy. The organizational group for the Kyoto Exhibition stated that Kyoto had ‘experienced the turbulent changes of the Restoration’ and ‘faded’; therefore ‘in order to vitalize the critical decline’, Kyoto officials and important business figures gathered to realize the Kyoto Exhibition.6 The first exhibition was held with 166 Japanese exhibits, 131 Chinese exhibits and 39 Western offerings; 11,211 visitors saw the displays during the thirty-three days of viewing.7 During the Restoration, similarly to the city of Kyoto, tea culture underwent a disruptive transition because the tea families had largely been hired and protected by the feudal lords. The days when a good warrior and ruler was expected to know the deep aesthetics of tea culture were over: the new Meiji Government in Tokyo considered tea culture as simply ‘old-fashioned’ and of

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little importance in the time of Westernization and modernization, and it was deemed one of the quaint leisure activities like Sumo wrestling, Kabuki acting and street performances. The income of the tea families dropped and so did that of the merchants dealing in tea ceremony utensils. A strategic discourse on tea culture as something which would lead the nation towards modernity on a par with the West had to be configured, for the sake of the weakening Sen families and craft dealers. During this time, Gengensai, the eleventh Grand Master of the Ura-Senke, actively worked for the promotion of tea culture. He was adopted from a feudal lord family into the Ura-Senke family, and became the Grand Master at the age of seventeen. Coming from outside the three major tea families, Gengensai had freer thoughts, and his wide, influential connections with priests, wealthy merchants, feudal lords and their families, and court nobles were his unparalleled strength.8 He communicated with priests at powerful temples such as Tokudaiji, Chionin and Higashi-Honganji, who all joined and supported the Ura-Senke school. He also established a good relationship with the Imperial family, performing the tea ceremony at the palace in Tokyo, thus geographically bridging the new and old capitals by himself. Besides this, among all successive tea masters, he was known for his extensive collection of tea item masterpieces, and was himself an adept craftsperson making items for the tea ceremony, such as incense containers, bamboo tea scoops and tea bowls, and practising calligraphy. Making and using his collectable craftwork and travelling near and far, he energetically dedicated himself to enlivening tea culture by successfully holding Rikyū’s 250th Commemoration Ceremony (1839) and enlightening a wide range of people on his expeditions (Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1  Tea items made by Gengensai: bamboo flower container and raku tea bowl. With permission of Chado Shiryo-kan, Kyoto.

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When the Restoration took place, Gengensai’s career as the Great Master was nearing its end, but what he brought to tea culture at large was substantial. He was asked to support the staging of the Kyoto Exhibition in 1872 with other tea family members and offered a most unconventional idea in that difficult time – one that projected both the past and the future of tea culture.

Ryūrei style at the Kyoto Exhibition After the local exhibition in Kyoto in 1871, the Kyoto Exhibition Company was set up jointly with Kyoto Prefecture and the private sector. The politician Makimura Masanao (1834–1896) was the central figure for the occasion.9 In 1872, when the Kyoto Exhibition was organized by the Company, the exhibition committee included the Governor of Kyoto and important citizens and local celebrities. The Governor of Kyoto explained how ‘overseas countries hold exhibitions’ for the purpose of gaining the knowledge of civilization.10 Among the ‘Supportive Attendance’ members were the names of Sen Sosa, Sen Soshitsu (Gengensai) and Sen Soshu, and Yabuuchi Shouchi, all members of the major tea families.11 The Exhibition was planned to last for eighty-nine days using part of Kyoto Palace, showing both domestic and Western exhibits. A novel consideration was that the organizers wanted to attract foreign visitors as well as Japanese. For the purpose, they secured three temples as the sites especially for the entertainment of foreign visitors: Nishi-Honganji, Kenninji and Chionin. As a result, the Kyoto Exhibition was aimed at being the first ‘international’ exhibition held in Japan, preempting such an event in the capital Tokyo. Accordingly, the facilitators officially and practically prepared for foreign visitors. At that time foreigners were confined to a 40-kilometre radius from the designated ports of Yokohama and Kobe. As a means of accommodation, from 10 March 1872 for fifty days, foreigners with special permission from their national embassies were allowed to visit Kyoto, but prohibited from going to certain areas or hunting or firing a gun.12 The residents of Kyoto made every effort to welcome foreign visitors: there were no Western-style inns or hotels in Kyoto then, but eateries prepared menus that included roast beef, bread, champagne and coffee for the comfort of overseas guests. A total of 2,485 exhibits were displayed, and the Japanese exhibits included a variety of teas, raw silk, dyed silk, cotton, Kyoto’s traditional silk woven textiles, gold- and silver-works, bamboo and ivory crafts, a variety of papers, musical instruments and so on.13 There were also many splendid tea-related exhibits that belonged to the tea families, and works by special craftspeople, such as Tsuchida Yūko, a pouch-making artisan. The craftspeople

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were designated as Sen-ke Jusshoku (Ten Artisans of the House of Sen) who supplied their works to the three major tea families. Gengensai, too, exhibited many of his family treasures, such as an iron helmet given to Sen Rikyū from Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Imperial Regent in the late sixteenth century, and many tea items with special aesthetic features or histories.14 The biggest contribution made by Gengensai was the tea ceremony performed in the novel ryūrei style, as he named it. Gengensai and three other tea practitioners from major tea families took turns to give ceremonies both in the open-air and indoors at Kenninji, one of the ‘extra entertaining sites’. This was largely Masanao’s doing, as he approached Maeda Zuisetsu, a dealer in bags and pouches in Kyoto and one of Gengensai’s best pupils, to ask how to give a tea ceremony to entertain foreign visitors. Zuisetsu discussed the matter with Gengensai and he proposed the usage of tables and stools for the ease of foreigners not used to sitting on tatami mats, an idea which seems to have been already in his mind as early as 186815 (Figure 1.2). Conventionally, when entering the tea room, guests need to shuffle in on their knees and kneel on tatami mats. But the ryūrei style allows one to walk in and remain standing to look at and appreciate the items placed in the tokonoma (alcove), and then sit on stools, just as Western manners require when sitting at a table. In the ryūrei style, a table called tenchaban (tea-serving

FIGURE 1.2  Gengensai’s sketch of the ryūrei style. With permission of Chado Shiryo-kan, Kyoto.

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table) is used, which is made of bamboo and cedar, about 55 centimetres high and painted with black Japanese lacquer. Also, the guests use a kikka, a table for guests drinking tea. The master and guests sit on an eni, a round stool about 45 centimetres high, also lacquered black, on top of which is placed a round flat cushion. Gengensai’s political calculations in designing the furniture and the procedure for the most radical ryūrei style were clear. In respect to the traditional tea world, he wanted to show the maximum formality that was visibly possible, by choosing and presenting the set of furniture and items in a particular way in order to persuade the Japanese to accept its unconventionality. Tenchaban and kikka are both flatpack furniture, suggesting the portability of the new furniture to be placed, at least temporarily, in a traditional Japanese-style tatami-matted room. But the style had to be acknowledged as very important, with plain black lacquer finish signifying the highest formality in the world of the tea ceremony (Figure 1.3). Also, he intentionally introduced the same items used on the tenchaban as those with the daisu-temae, a formal procedure using a large utensil stool, which is considered prestigious and elegant. On a tenchaban table, a brazier and a kettle, as well as a set of matched utensils (fresh-water container, ladle stand, waste-water container and lid rest) are decoratively placed.

FIGURE 1.3  Ryūrei style furniture. With permission of Chado Shiryo-kan,

Kyoto.

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Additionally, the ryūrei style signalled to the authorities that this was an agency of modernity. Tenchaban tables and eni stools were placed on tatami mats, thus tailoring the invented tea furniture for the centuries-old traditional Japanese rooms. The literal mixture of Japanese tatami-matted floor with the Western use of tables and chairs demonstrated that the tea ceremony embodied Western modernity in the middle of Kyoto. In a time when there were no public spaces in Japan where Western forms could be seen, the ryūrei tea ceremony provided an example of new possibilities in lifestyle. Another political significance of the ryūrei style which could be attributed to Gengensai, although unrecognized by him, was the popularization of the Way of Tea among females. There had been a strong gender-bias in tea practices during feudal times, which were available only to feudal lords, male merchants and male citizens. The situation changed in the Meiji period. Social change necessitated physical and mental accessibility to the tea ceremony, which was again provided at the 1872 Kyoto Exhibition. As another attraction for foreign visitors, the Miyako Odori Festival was organized, whereby geishas (traditional female entertainers trained in singing and dancing) sang and danced to the lyrics Masanao wrote to introduce sightseeing spots in Kyoto. Soon after, definitely by 1876, before the geishas’ dancing, a tea ceremony in the ryūrei style was organized as a curtain raiser (Figure 1.4). Tea and dancing combined proved so popular that, during the cherry blossom season in April, the festival became Kyoto’s famous annual event that has survived until now. People

FIGURE 1.4  Tea Ceremony at Miyako Odori by Geishas. Photograph by Joi Ito, Creative Commons.

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annually witnessed the ryūrei style conducted by females in public, thereby contributing to promotion of participation by the female population in tea culture. From the mid-1870s, girls’ schools introduced tea ceremony classes in their curriculum as part of bride training. Both the ryūrei style, as well as the conventional Japanese style, were taught in schools.

Aftermath: The way of tea as Japanese philosophy The Kyoto Exhibition in 1872 was considered a great success. A total of 31,103 Japanese adults, 7,531 Japanese students (boys and girls) and 770 foreign visitors were recorded. Among the foreign visitors, one hundred and twenty-five were from Britain, seventeen from France, sixty-six from the United States and thirteen from Germany.16 It was reported that the Kyoto Exhibition as a whole was reviewed as ‘fairly popular with good reputation’.17 When Gengensai himself wrote to his friend, Tsunematsu Yokichiro, a wealthy merchant, and lamented the drastic change in people’s human nature after the Restoration, he did not forget to mention how popular the Kyoto Exhibition was.18 How was Gengensai’s breakthrough received by other Japanese? It is hard to find contemporary sources of direct reference to the novelty in the domestic tea culture. There is one reference which was addressed to the international audience in later years. A Harvard University graduate who worked for the Oji Seishi Paper Manufacturing Company and contributed much to American– Japanese cultural exchange, Yasunosuke Fukukita (1874–1944), introduced the ryūrei style in a chapter titled ‘New Methods for New Times’ in his book Tea Cult of Japan: An Aesthetic Pastime (1935). He introduced the style and criticized it as ‘a poor makeshift, and not without some incongruity’.19 He considered that it had ‘scarcely been improved since it was originally devised as a makeshift only’. He went on: It is natural that some tea-masters and devotees of the orthodox type should attach little importance to the practice of using tables and chairs, for they don’t quite harmonise with a Japanese room. Among other things, the presence of tables and stools spoils the artistic effect of the alcove decoration, which is the most important part of a Japanese room.20 I have not so far found a direct written criticism of the style in Japanese, and it may be that Fukukita was able to critically write about the tea master’s radical attempt because he presupposed the book’s readers as foreigners. But it is

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likely that Gengensai anticipated such a viewpoint, and arguably he designed the style with formality in the furniture and items to protect his alteration. When he and the other two tea families were asked again to assist with the Fifth Kyoto Exhibition, the ryūrei style was not adopted for the occasion. But Gengensai continued to capture other occasions to demonstrate the style. It is said that Gengensai adopted a boy from a long-standing Kyoto merchant family, the Suminokura family, who lost their fortune due to the Restoration. When he visited the Suminokuras, he entertained the guests with a tea ceremony in the ryūrei style because a French ambassador was staying at their house.21 Gengensai did not stop there. Around the time of the Kyoto Exhibition, the government intended to regulate tea ceremony activities with the issuing of a ‘Performing Arts License’. The Meiji Government introduced taxing for theatres and spectacles and regulated performing activities, thus screening out obscenity and vulgarity in an attempt to place popular culture under control. However, Gengensai strongly opposed the authority. He led the tea families and as a representative wrote to the Kyoto local government,22 in a letter titled ‘Sadou no Geni’ (root meaning of the Way of Tea), to say that the tea ceremony was not simply an amusing performing art but a spiritual ritual, an outcome of Confucianism and, therefore, far from a leisurely practice. The letter was written in July 1872, a few months after the opening of the Kyoto Exhibition. Gengensai, from his childhood, learned neo-Confucianism, which was considered the most authentic religion in the Edo period. Neo-Confucianism adopted a principle that was introduced by Confucianism, namely the orderly maintenance of human relations, and valuing the virtues of humanity, justice, courtesy, wisdom and sincerity, both fairly and rationally. This principle was used as the basis for his explanation of the Way of Tea. In addition, he emphasized the spirit of communication based on classless equality and frugality, valued as the pervading spirit of tea practice, and thus elevated tea culture to a philosophy of modern living. Gengensai’s letter was sent to the Governor of Kyoto, with the signatures of the three major tea families. Perhaps the authority took the success of the Kyoto Exhibition into consideration. The strong determination of the tea proponents moved the officials, and tea practice was not included in the system of licensing performing arts. Tea was now an element of Japanese culture that expressed Japanese high morality and intellect. With the above understanding as the basis, Japan made more and more use of tea culture. On the one hand, at international exhibitions the combination of a Japanese garden with a tea house became a central feature of the Japanese display. At the 1873 Vienna, 1876 Philadelphia, 1878 Paris and 1893 Chicago Exhibitions, the combination was popular. For the 1904 Louisiana Purchase

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Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World’s Fair, the tea ceremony was demonstrated at a tea house.23 On the other hand, at home, tea culture was actively applied to girls’ education towards the end of the nineteenth century, so much so that in the twentieth century, the gender ratio was reversed from feudal days: the majority of tea practitioners had become female.

Conclusion According to Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea: the simplicity of the tea-room and its freedom from vulgarity make it truly a sanctuary from the vexations of the outer world. There and there alone can one consecrate himself to undisturbed adoration of the beautiful. In the sixteenth century the tearoom afforded a welcome respite from labour to the fierce warriors and statesmen engaged in the unification and reconstruction of Japan. In the seventeenth century, after the strict formalism of the Tokugawa rule had been developed, it offered the only opportunity possible for the free communion of artistic spirits. Before a great work of art there was no distinction between daimyo, samurai, and commoner. Nowadays industrialism is making true refinement more and more difficult all the world over. Do we not need the tea-room more than ever?24 Okakura’s book on tea is internationally famous, for it has placed the tea ceremony in the context of philosophy. He based his writing on the philosophization of tea culture promoted by Gengensai in the late nineteenth century. The mixture of Western style with Japanese proceeded, and by the 1920s the décor in which rattan tables and chairs were displayed in tatami-matted Japanese rooms became more common.25 The Japanese began wearing Western clothes, and people acclimatized to the use of Western furniture designs. These changes originated in Gengensai’s ryūrei invented more than a century ago. He initiated the possibility of a modern Japanese lifestyle, and simultaneously reinforced the significance of tea culture as an insightful act in the time of change. And this was communicated through his new tea furniture and tea items organized in a special design. Gengensai’s innovative style demonstrates how the tea ceremony conveyed multilayered political messages through the forms, colours and settings of craft items. His juxtaposition of furniture with high-quality handmade utensils

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and tea sets not only restored the significance of the tea ceremony in Japan, but also acted as a bridge to the West, symbolizing Japan’s willingness to embrace modernity. He used his knowledge as a craftsperson to design tenchaban tables and eni stools to hospitably and graciously accommodate Western visitors, and by maintaining features like tatami mats he ensured a traditional experience for foreigners. One could say that Gengensai’s crafty, in the sense of shrewd, abilities satisfied both domestic and international interests. His craft and political legacy were honoured by succeeding Grand Masters of the Ura-Senke family.

Notes 1 Christopher Dresser, Japan: Its Architecture, Art and Art Manufactures (Edinburgh: R&R Clark, 1882), 158–9. Dresser’s translator, Haruo Sakata, who travelled with him throughout Japan provided the information. 2 Dresser, Japan, 158–9. 3 For the impact of Japonisme and how Japan used the opportunity, see Yasuko Suga, ‘“Artistic and Commercial” Japan: Modernity, Authenticity and Japanese Leather Paper’, in Buying for the Home: Shopping for the Domestic from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, ed. David E. Hussey and Margaret Ponsonby (Farnham, UK: Ashgate 2008), 91–114. 4 Kendo Ishii, Meiji Jibutsu Kigen [Origins of Things in Meiji] (Tokyo: Nihonhyoronsha, 1929), 1018. 5 Shunya Yoshimi, Hakurankai no Seijigaku [Politics of International Exhibitions] (Tokyo: Chuko-Shinsho, 1992), 123. 6 Kyoto Hakurankyokai, ed., Kyoto Hakurankai Enkakushi [Historical Records of Kyoto Exhibition], Jo-kan [first volume], 1906), 1–2. 7 Ibid. 8 Former Daimyo families such as the Tokugawa, Ikeda and Maeda. His friends who were wealthy merchants included Tsunematsu Yokichiro of Iwami and Takekawa Chikusai of Seshuu, who also joined the Ura-Senke school. See Sen Soshitsu, Ura-Senke Konnnichian Rekidai: Gengensai Seichu, 11-kan [Ura-Senke Konnichian Successive Great Masters: Gengensai Seichu, Vol. 11] (Kyoto: Tankosha, 2008). 9 Makimura later became the Governor of Kyoto from 1875 and put all his effort into revitalizing Kyoto. 10 Kyoto Hakurankai Enkakushi, 1–2. 11 Kyoto Hakurankai Enkakushi, 6. 12 Kyoto Hakurankai Enkakushi, 9–12. 13 Kyoto Hakurankai Enkakushi, 38. 14 Hakurankaisha, Kyoto Hakurankai Buppin Mokuroku: Zen [All Lists of the Exhibits at Kyoto Exhibition]. Privately bound, microfilm, Tokyo National Museum.

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15 Gengensai sketched the idea of ryūrei in one of the seven books called Houmeikibun, which were considered to have been compiled in the late 1860s. See Sen Soshitsu, Ura-Senke Konnnichian Rekidai. 16 Kyoto Hakurankai Enkakushi, 38. 17 Kyoto Hakurankai Enkakushi, 32. 18 Sen Soshitsu, Ura-Senke Konnnichian Rekidai. 19 Yasunosuke Fukukita, Tea Cult of Japan: An Aesthetic Pastime (New York: Japan Society, 1935), 60. 20 Ibid., 60–1. 21 Home Page of Taikoan, https​:/​/ww​​w​.tai​​koan.​​jp​/20​​13​/11​​​/07​/2​​013年1​1月/ 22 Sen Soshitsu, Ura-Senke Konnnichian Rekidai. 23 By this time, Japanese green tea was a merchantable export good, competing with Indian black tea and Chinese tea. See Robert Hellyer, ‘Dueling Tea Rooms: British-Japanese Competition for the US Tea Market at World Expositions, 1893-1917’, Expos and Human History (International Symposium, International Research Center for Japanese Studies [Nichibunken], Kyoto, December 2015), 99–108. 24 Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), 98–9. 25 For more, see Sarah Teasley, ‘Nation, Modernity and Interior Decoration. Uncanny Designs in the 1922 Peace Commemoration Tôkyô Exposition Culture Village Houses’, Japanstudien 13, no. 1 (2002): 49–87.

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2 (Dis)playing politics Craft and the Caughnawaga Exhibition, 1883 Lisa Binkley

Introduction

F

ollowing the inception of the Indian Act 1876, Indigenous peoples in Canada were no longer permitted to participate alongside non-Indigenous people in public exhibitions. This chapter discusses one specific fair as an example of the separation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous participation in Canada and one specific craft, highlighting the significance of Indigenous women’s needlework practices as vehicles through which to express the role of women in matriarchal society. The 1883 Caughnawaga Grand Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition was the first of its kind in Canada to limit participation to Indigenous peoples only.1 Although it followed the establishment of regional and local agricultural and industrial exhibitions taking place across Canada as well as the Great Exhibition of Industry of All Nations (London, England, 1851), the Caughnawaga fair was evidence of the Canadian government’s intentional situation of Indigenous participants within the national and the global political contexts of citizenship.2 Through the display of objects, the Exhibition was rooted in ‘potent mechanisms and visualizations of power relationships, [classifying differences] between the colonizer and the colonized’.3

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The separation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous objects at public fairs was a recent concept and differed from that previously displayed at the Great Exhibition. The popular lithograph of that Exhibition’s Canada booth, wherein the highly romanticized coexistence of outdoor modes of travel glorified the aesthetics of settlement and the ideas of nature, suggested peaceful coexistence, a concept that would have appealed to spectators, especially those contemplating a trans-Atlantic relocation. Hanging centre stage as the focal point, a Kanien’kehá:ka4 birchbark canoe drew viewers’ attention to other interesting objects, such as a fashionable cariole, draped with sumptuous furs, and taxidermized wildlife. To viewers, the booth would have served as a tableau of sorts, allowing patrons to step inside a curated and civilized Canadian scene. In his Annual Report to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, the Indian Agent5 John Davidson articulated his interpretation of the current state of the Kanien’kehá:ka through the Exhibition. The deliberate categorization of exhibits was explicitly divided between objects associated with traditional Indigenous life and those that were more closely tied to Euro-settler customs. For example, handcrafted items were separated according to the form of construction and use in which they were associated, implicitly categorizing certain elements as racially and culturally inferior. For example, the tent labelled Indigenous craft, which included moccasins, beadwork, lacrosse sticks and pipes, was installed separate from the tent which housed Special items and featured Euro-settlerinfluenced objects such as dresses, robes, petticoats and quilts. Although the fair included items produced only by Indigenous peoples, the layout of the exhibit tents clearly differentiated between those that were made in a more traditional manner and those that represented Euro-settler culture. Through a circus-like appeal that drew local Euro-settler and tourist spectators, fair organizers facilitated a spectacle which essentially emphasized any underlying political agenda. Through this, the government sought to declare itself in a position of power for the purpose of the viewing public and as a reminder to the reserve residents. The chapter will explore the Exhibition as a vehicle through which the Canadian government sought to emphasize its position on the so-called ‘Indian question’.6 Furthermore, I look at two items displayed in the Special tent that included non-Indigenous forms of sewing, a silk dress made by Celia Flints and a silk patchwork quilt made by Louise Kon8aseti Laronde. To tourists, spectators and government agents, the adoption of making silk dresses and quilts by Indigenous women supported ideas of assimilation and a willingness to participate in Victorian consumerism. However, interrogation of these objects reveals how Indigenous women maintained their integral roles as central to matriarchal society.

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The politics of the Caughnawaga Exhibition Organizers of the 1883 Caughnawaga Grand Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition sought to highlight industrial development and economic potential, as well as feature cultural activities of an Indigenous community in transition. Agricultural implements and husbandry, and produce and livestock, including horses and cattle, were presented alongside various ‘amusements, such as war and snake dances, pony races, canoe races, and a championship lacrosse match between the Royal Caughnawagas and the Cornwall Indians . . . among other attractions’.7 By publicly displaying a moment in time of the lives of the Kanien’kehá:ka in the fall of 1883 through public display, organizers simultaneously elucidated and masked the government’s underlying policies of aggressive assimilation. Juxtaposition of modern exhibits and agriculture, and Indigenous craft and performance, moved patrons from one arena of the Exhibition to another, from Indigenous to Western, situating Indigeneity as anachronistic or as ‘a space inhabited by prehistoric, atavistic, and irrational [people], inherently out of place in the historical time of modernity’.8 For patrons to experience this Western-non-Western dichotomy, they first travelled to the Exhibition from Montréal or nearby Lachine by steamer across the St. Lawrence River or by rail service over the Victoria Bridge; through the threshold of the established reserve boundary, designated for the fair as: ‘Welcome to Caughnawaga, Speed the Plough’9; and then, once on the fairgrounds, they were guided by effective signage on respective tents identifying particular exhibits: ‘Native Handicraft and Art, Agriculture, A Baby Show, Poultry, and Domestic Art’.10 Some community members were mobilized to participate in agricultural and industrial contests, where winners were awarded prizes such as wringer washers, sewing machines and ploughs – modern implements intended to encourage cleanliness, domesticity and agriculture; others, committed to traditional lifeways, sold beadwork and baskets and engaged in cultural performance. In particular, patrons were treated to a display by a dance troupe from Akwesasne (Figure 2.1) who regularly toured across Canada and the United States, at times travelling as far as Kansas and Colorado. Beadwork artists earned income through the sale of handmade items, such as beaded handbags and memorable keepsakes, catering to Victorian consumer demands; such artists were regularly seen at tourist sites such as Montréal and Niagara Falls (Figure 2.2). These modes of handicraft enterprise were especially popular during the 1860 Royal tour of Canada by Prince Edward Albert.11 Although the Indian Agent dedicated considerable space in his report to traditional Indigenous handcrafts, agriculture was indeed where Davidson focused his attention. In fact, he even included closing remarks from the Exhibition issued by Montréal advocate R. C. Smith, on how he ‘hoped to

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FIGURE 2.1  W. S. Tanner, St. Regis (Akwesasne) Indian Show Company, 1894, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. USZ62-42816. see [Indigenous community members] not only relieved from the restrictions that now hampered them, but that they might even surpass their white neighbours, of who they were not behind many now and ahead of some’.12 These remarks differed from those issued earlier by the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in his 1881 report, which drew consternation about some of the continuing practices demonstrated by community members, such as, basket-making, ax-handle manufacturing, bead work, moccasin-making and other Indian handicraft, [which] have to be resorted to in order to supply the deficit. And to dispose of these articles the Indians have to visit numerous places, and thus their old, and to them, congenial habit of wandering about the country is fostered, which is attended with evil results to them, morally and materially.13 While the juxtaposition of events at the Exhibition revealed some movement towards modernization and agriculture, it also highlighted how some community members vehemently rejected agriculture as a way of life. This resistance to agricultural practices was more complex than merely a rejection of Western measures of self-sustenance or how ‘agriculture and farming were viewed as offensive to the earth’.14 Rather, this rejection was exacerbated by the

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FIGURE 2.2  George Barker, Tuscarora Squaws, Luna Island, Niagara Falls, c. 1870. Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum 1981.6374.0001.

fact that routine and concentrated land cultivation was viewed as a mode through which the government could more easily facilitate enfranchisement and eventually dismantle and assimilate the reserve community through the sale of land to the non-Indigenous.

Kahnawà:ke land survey The Caughnawaga Exhibition served the government of Canada’s intentions regarding Indigenous assimilation: it separated what it viewed as traditional craft practices from those customarily associated with those made by Eurosettlers, European ones, designating the latter as ‘special’. It should be noted that this early use of the word ‘craft’ as a tent label – Indigenous craft – is significant, yet its juxtaposition with Indigenous when it was dropped from Special, could be interpreted as pejorative. Such politically charged language was coupled with an additional, more insidious agenda however, namely the intent to expropriate the Kahnawà:ke lands. Through his involvement with the community and as Caughnawaga fair organizer, William McLea Walbank (b. 1856) was considered the ideal

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candidate for a government contract. Walbank, a Montréal architect, land surveyor and civil engineer, was an ambitious young entrepreneur intent on cultivating his professional interests in Kahnawà:ke through land survey. Not yet 30 years of age, Walbank was granted the contract by the federal government to survey common lands, marking out 30 acre lots to be granted in the form of ‘location tickets’, eligible to men who met particular requirements: they had to be literate, morally upright and debt free.15 As part of this agreement, if band members accepted the terms of the location ticket, they would be forced to abandon their existing property and relocate to an assigned plot, which might also mean trading in fertile land for scrub brush.16 Furthermore, the terms of the agreement would require that band members must agree to enfranchisement, which extinguished Indigenous status and any accompanying rights, rendering land title as something that could be sold and transferred to anyone outside the community. Thus, the eventual dissolution of Kahnawà:ke as a contiguous parcel of Indigenous land was a possibility. Within close proximity to Montréal, Kahnawà:ke presented itself as an attractive parcel of land, ripe for development.17 Walbank’s initial contact with the Indigenous community followed a request by more affluent community members to have the boundary surveyed, challenging several land claims by numerous non-Indigenous residents. One land claim, in particular, identified concerns with a land agreement held by Thomas Phillips, a non-Indigenous property holder, who had acquired his plot from Edouard Deblois, a French Canadian. For several years, Phillips had neglected to pay rents to the band, causing some members to view this as an ideal opportunity to reclaim the land for the community. To circumvent any laws that would be reason to rescind his agreement, Thomas Phillips placed land title in his wife’s name, Tsawennorseriio, as she was a member of the Kahnawà:ke community.18 As a result of negligence by the Department of Indian Affairs to maintain the collection of land rents and its intentional minimized efforts to get involved with reserve politics, this, the haphazard management of reserve land under the mandate of the Indian Act, might have been somewhat intentional.19 Either the government did not care to intervene in the micropolitics of the community or it hoped to see the reserve eventually disintegrate in order to make way for public ownership. However, by 1879, when revisions to the Indian Act removed local powers to administer reserve lands from Indigenous community leaders to the Department of Indian Affairs, the federal government revised its approach towards land management as though it had realized it might have missed an opportunity to better determine the assimilation of the community members. This would have been within the scope and objectives of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who also happened to be the Minister of the Interior and manager responsible for land settlement and expansion in Canada.

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To further modernize the land use and planning initiatives on the reserve, Walbank, a newly established business owner, set up a satellite office in the community in 1882, with the directive to divide the common land into measured lots. The division and allotment of lands to individual owners was thought to overcome the increasing number of land disputes that had erupted over the past two decades. While primary concerns revolved around the right to harvest wood for building and heating, other issues included the operation of maple sugaries on common land, and the absence of property improvements by residents when parcels of land were continually denuded by community members.20 According to Kahnawà:ke customary law, upheld by the chiefs, those who claimed parcels of land could not legally stop other Mohawks from cutting wood on their parcel. From this point of view, Kahnawà:ke territory was a wood commons. The customary law on wood had been spelled out in some detail by chiefs in 1801 and continued to be practiced since then.21 In an effort to control the abundant harvesting of wood, some residents built fences with the idea they might protect property that they had occupied for some time, while others rushed to cut wood, keeping it for their own use.22 Although Walbank spent over two years on the reserve, eventually completing the official survey, it was disputed by community members and never used as intended. In 1883, Walbank was appointed Honorary President and Head of the Executive Committee for the Caughnawaga Exhibition,23 a task that would have well-suited his professional agenda: promoting the ideas of modernity, agriculture and domesticity. Figuring prominently on the reserve during 1882 and 1883, Walbank’s position as fair organizer would have been vested in his business interests, which included the potential to situate himself as a stakeholder for any future possibilities of Montréal expansion to the south side of the river. The personal elements illuminate underlying factors guiding the planning and management of the Exhibition. It was no secret that the city of Montréal was interested in seeking new directions to accommodate its increasing population; equally so, Walbank, the entrepreneur, was invested in expansion and development, and likely furthering his political position among city elites. His architectural and engineering accomplishments reveal a list of commercial buildings across Montréal and, later, a hydro-electric power company that harnessed energy from the Lachine Rapids.24 The Victoria Bridge, constructed in 1859, connected the island of Montréal to the south shore, facilitating the movement of people and goods to the Eastern Townships and beyond to the United States, further establishing improved trade routes that were once reliant on water travel. For the Montréal elite, and the local and

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federal governments, the common lands at Kahnawà:ke would have been viewed as valuable, ripe for development within close proximity to the city. The Indian Agent’s generous commentary on the Exhibition, including mention of Walbank’s devotion to the outcome, is worthy of a full quote and offers insight into the President’s commitment to the festivities: The faces of men, women and children – who are, as a rule, well dressed – are lit up with joy and enthusiasm over the novel event in their history; and the exhibition promises to have excellent and lasting results upon the future of the Indians in Canada. . . . Now that the existence of the Exhibition and its attractive features are generally known, as well as its easy access, nothing but fine weather should be required to induce a great throng on the grounds today.25  By all recorded accounts, the Exhibition proved successful to the participants, having attracted over 4,000 spectators during the two-day event. At five o’clock, on the second afternoon of the Exhibition and as part of the closing ceremonies, the Executive Committee was joined by an invited group of local dignitaries, including local politicians and businessmen, who took the stage. In addition to this group of elites, three of the remaining hereditary Chiefs in regalia were present, signifying the last public representation of traditional laws before the introduction of elected councils on Indigenous reserves through the Indian Advancement Act (1884), leading to the eventual diminishment of hereditary leadership.26 Together, the procession of people involved in the closing ceremonies portrayed the emerging social and political undercurrents of Kahnawà:ke life. James Kewley Ward, wealthy lumberman and, eventually, member of the Legislative Council for Quebec, thanked Mr Walbank for ‘his energetic and successful management of the exhibition’.27 Walbank followed these remarks with his closing statement, inviting spectators to visit and view the farms and their farmers so that they could witness for themselves that indeed, ‘Indians could become farmers.’28 The details of the closing ceremony as recorded by the Indian Agent, in his report to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, reveal the underlying focus on the government’s interest in promoting agriculture as a primary source of employment and the direction in which the government sought to shift Indigenous culture.

Louise Kon8aseti Laronde’s silk patchwork quilt Although the Indian Agent’s report offers the most robust written account of the Exhibition, it is necessary to consider how participants might have

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experienced and understood the event. An interrogation of Louise Kon8aseti Laronde’s silk patchwork quilt as material culture offers an alternative view through which to explore her experiences and the roles of women in matriarchal society. It is unknown whether Laronde’s quilt still exists. From its brief description in the Indian Agent’s report, however, it is possible to consider the quilt as an expression of the maker’s social, cultural and political identity and as a vehicle through which to recoup the community’s understanding of the fair. Described as patchwork, Laronde’s coverlet would have comprised a collection of patches of silk cloth, likely assembled in an aesthetically pleasing overall geometric patterning, featuring any of some 4,000 design possibilities.29 Patchwork was a popular form of quiltmaking in the region between 1870 and 1890, an activity often commemorating significant events through the use of significant fabrics. The making of Laronde’s quilt coincided with an increased availability of manufactured cloth and the circulation of quilt patterns in women’s periodicals such as Godey’s Ladies Book and Peterson’s Ladies Magazine. Laronde’s use of silk for patchwork would have heightened the interest in this coverlet and thus added to its visual appeal. The use of silk for patchwork was rare and suggests the quilt would have been made as a commemorative piece, perhaps in celebration of this firstever Caughanawaga fair, or a community member’s upcoming marriage, or as a keepsake representing the Royal Caughnawaga lacrosse team’s most recent overseas travel, where it had been documented that team members brought home silk yardage for family members (Figure 2.3).30 For example, it is likely the silk dress made by Celia Flints was a product of cloth brought home by her husband Sam or her brother Big John Canadian, both members of the community’s lacrosse team. In recent years, the team had travelled to Europe on several occasions, 1867, 1876 and 1883, playing exhibition matches across the British Isles and France, with the intention of generating international interest for the game.31 Captain W. B. Johnson of Montréal had organized the first trip abroad in 1867, as ‘a profit-making enterprise, hoping that British spectators would come to view the Canadian Indian playing a traditional game’.32 The subsequent tours to Europe in 1876 and 1883, as well as Canadian matches played in Canada (in 1860, for the visiting Prince Edward Albert and in 1869 for Prince Arthur), were organized by W. George Beers, a nationalist, who was instrumental in westernizing the game and sought to use these opportunities as ‘patriotic celebrations of Canadian manhood’.33 The most recent tour to Europe in May 1883, included a match before Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle where she commented, ‘how pretty is the game’.34 For community members, the lacrosse team’s public recognition would have been significant in Kahnawà:kero:non history, and its relationship to the silks brought back by family members would have been memorable.35

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FIGURE 2.3 Photographer unknown, Indian European Team, 1883 at Scarborough, 28 July, Scarborough, England. Centre player Big John Canadian, Team Captain. McCord Museum, Montréal, Que. M2000.21.7.25. For Flints and Laronde, the silk used in their creative outputs was closely tied to these Royal events and Beers’s ideas of nationalism and identity, which promoted Canada as an independent nation. However, to community members, Laronde’s quilt would have represented the integral role of needlework to Indigenous lifeways. Although quiltmaking customarily has been viewed as a form of Euro-settler craft, ‘quilts are as quintessentially Native as any other object that supports a Native belief system, worldview, or sense of identity’.36 Quiltmaking offers one example of the exchange between settler and Indigenous women through the exchange of supplies, designs and skills.37 For Indigenous women, textile production is viewed as a position of honour and fulfils women’s roles within matrilineal society. Scholars of colonization have attested, ‘local and Indigenous peoples, who are often supposed to be passive recipients of European material culture, selectively appropriated external objects and practices, and actively negotiated sociocultural transformations’.38 Nevertheless, through needlework, traditional knowledges are passed on from grandmother to mother to daughter and between community members; these practices embrace women’s biological and reproductive roles, and women’s roles within the community,39 disrupting hetero-patriarchal processes of colonization reinforced by the Indian Act and the residential school system.40 Therefore, ‘State-sanctioned discrimination

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and diminishment laid the groundwork for a culture of racism and misogyny’,41 set forth by government initiatives that sought to foster a culture of genderbased inequity.

Curating politics The curation of objects and events at the Exhibition reveals a distinct division between Indigenous and non-Indigenous modes of craft and served an underlying purpose to guide spectators through a maze of racialized hierarchies of display. For example, when the Indian Agent addressed his interest in the items displayed in the tent ‘devoted to female industry’, he distanced himself from the collection, positioning it as gendered and domestic. Furthermore, as the government’s representative to Kahnawà:ke and the surrounding Kanien’kehá:ka communities,42 he instantiated his own interpretation of quiltmaking and needlework from a hetero-patriarchal position, supporting government ideologies that informed policies dedicated to enfranchisement as an aggressive assimilative measure. This position followed the government’s deliberate policies towards the erasure of Indigenous peoples,43 first introduced with An Act for the Gradual Enfranchisement of Indians, 1869, followed by the Indian Act, 1876: Any Indian woman marrying any other than an Indian, shall cease to be an Indian within the meaning of the Act, nor shall the children issue of such marriage be considered as Indians within the meaning of this Act; Provided Also, that any Indian woman marrying an Indian of any other tribe, band or body shall cease to be a member of the tribe, band, or body to which she formerly belonged, and become a member of the tribe, band, or body of which her husband is a member, and the children, issue of this marriage, shall belong to their father’s tribe only.44 These measures have ‘generated damaging legacies of hierarchy, domination, intolerance, hatred, and the annihilation of others [my italics]’.45 Through subtle messaging within a government document such as Indian Agent Davidson’s Exhibition report, hetero-patriarchy and the marginalization of Indigenous women became further entrenched in what the government aimed to accomplish through an exhibition restricted to Indigenous participation. Laronde’s silk patchwork quilt was installed along with other domestic objects, such as dresses, petticoats, robes and drapery (noted above) as Special objects, separated from items identified as Indigenous handcraft, such as moccasins, beadwork and baskets.46 It was suggested to fair patrons how

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attendees to the fair might consider purchasing any of the ‘ornate and dazzling Indian goods, as presents for friends across seas or anywhere, or material to add to treasuries of curios in our own land’.47 For Exhibition patrons, the division between Indigenous and settler styles of craft supported government objectives and satisfied some of the concerns set forth by settlers, who viewed Canada’s Indigenous population as a group of peoples in need of civilizing, and those of the region’s elite, such as R.C. Smith, who, in his closing remarks declared, The exhibition was one of which any community might very well be proud. It was not merely creditable for its display of Indian curiosities and handiwork, but in the great excellence of the agricultural products shown. All who saw were proud of their progress, and the event was an important step, elevating the Indians to the full status of citizens of the Dominion.48 Dividing handmade items into specific categories as Indian craft and Special items in an all-Indigenous exhibition supported the Canadian government’s objectives, which identified Indigenous peoples through the objects they made. Through separate spheres of display that were organized according to Indian craft and Indian dancing, and women’s industry, produce and livestock, organizers evoked a sense of past and present. It was as though Indigenous displays captured a moment in time – in the past – juxtaposed to new ideas of agriculture and industry intended to present aspirations of a future economy and lifestyle on the reserve. Handcrafted items made by Indigenous women have been viewed as both functional and aesthetic, and often valued for their representation of a culture on a path to extinction. In the years following the Indian Act, Indigenous craft made for the purpose of sale served a twofold purpose: firstly, to appeal to consumers, thereby providing income for its makers and their community, especially for those rejecting government pressures to succumb to Western modes of employment and agricultural development; and, secondly, as one of several ways of maintaining cultural knowledges through the practices of needlework. Until recently, the making of patchwork quilts has often been overlooked as a mode of traditional needlework because of its association to Euro-settler practice and its purpose as a useful domestic object. However, Indigenous women across Turtle Island (what is now known as North America) since the mid-nineteenth century have been stitching quilts in different patterns with myriad intentions, claiming this form of craft practice as their own. Thus, I maintain that Laronde’s quilt, from her acquisition of cloth through to its making and then its display, is a political object. Recently, scholars, such as Marsha MacDowell, Sherry Farrell Racette, Janet Catherine Berlo, Ruth Phillips and Kirsty Robertson, have explored the political aspects of

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quilts made by Indigenous women from across Turtle Island. For example, in To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions (1997), Alex Jacobs reveals how Kanien’kehá:ka quiltmakers from Akwesasne have for several decades made and sold quilts for the purpose of raising funds for the Freedom School, an in-community institution dedicated to teaching children in their traditional language49; Sherry Farrell Racette has explored Métis women, who expressed through quiltmaking their views on Prairie life following the Riel Rebellions50; and Kirsty Robertson extends this idea of political agency to her study of the Living Healing Quilt Project that saw the making of hundreds of quilt blocks by residential school survivors and their families, raising awareness of the legacies of trauma incurred by Indigenous peoples in Canada. Recently, I have written about Star quilts, used as symbols of gratitude and gifted to community leaders with an expectation for service to the community.51 The 2015 gifting of a Star quilt by the Assembly of First Nations Chief, Perry Belgarde, to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau affirmed the underlying message of reciprocation: it was expected that the government would reciprocate the gesture by maintaining its promises of reconciliation and reparation following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s inquiry into the generational trauma caused to First Nations peoples.

Conclusion As the first Indigenous only fair, the Caughnawaga Grand Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition served as a political tool, highlighting the transitions to Indigenous life taking place in Canada in the decade after the Indian Act. By demonstrating to the Euro-settler public the advancement of Indigenous peoples as agricultural producers, the Canadian government considered it was well on its way to achieving its agenda. Indigenous participants displayed agricultural produce and livestock, as well as their progress in domestic practices. For organizers, these advancements parlayed into ideas of obedience, rationality and order, all elements that could be viewed through the care taken with land management, both evidenced in the tidy farm and through restructured land allotments surveyed by William McLea Walbank. Although Walbank’s extensive survey of Kahnawà:ke common lands and the proposal to redistribute and relocate residents was never accomplished, the imposition of a renewed political scheme on the reserve challenged existing traditional laws. The Exhibition served as a public display of the turning point in which the community became politicized under different systems of power: traditional Indigenous lifeways and modern Euro-settler politicization. As an ambitious young entrepreneur, Walbank viewed his task of surveying the land

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and organizing the Exhibition as his opportunity to be recognized by the elite community that had an underlying agenda for reserve lands that could serve the needs of a growing Montréal. These political manoeuvrings were further complicated by the display at the Exhibition of handmade craft objects made by community members. For Celia Flints and Louise Kon8aseti Laronde, the display of a silk dress and a silk patchwork quilt served their own political objectives. The making of objects considered sewn in the Euro-settler style would have pleased event organizers and the Indian Agent in that they represented the progress of community members in their advancement towards assimilation. The installation of these items in a tent reserved for Special items was an affirmation of Indigenous progress. However, I maintain that these items were forms of resistance and symbols of how community members were playing their own form of politics. These makers would have applied their own traditional knowledges and methods of making to the silks that were brought home for them by members of the lacrosse team; these silks would have represented the meeting between lacrosse players and Queen Victoria during their public presentation at Windsor Castle. While for some, this presentation would have constituted the modernization of lacrosse as a civilized sport, for the players, it would have represented an important step in the recognition of Indigenous cultures by the Queen of the British Empire. Furthermore, for Flints and Laronde, the dress and the quilt presented the material culture of the perseverance of matriarchal society. To Indigenous women, the passing on of traditional knowledges through these objects indicated, to the community and patrons, the political significance of women’s roles to the community.

Notes 1 Caughnawaga, one of various Euro-settler iterations of the community of Kahnawa:ke. For the purpose of this paper, when referring to the exhibition or the lacrosse team, or if quoting from contemporaneous reports, I will use Caughnawaga as it would have been used in its original form. 2 Stuart Murray, ‘Canadian Participation and National Representation at the 1851 London Great Exhibition and the1855 Paris Exposition Universelle’, The Journal of Social History 32, no. 63 (1999): 1–22. 3 Jeffrey A. Auerbach, ‘Introduction’, in Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851, ed. Jeffrey A. Auerbach and Peter H. Hoffenberg (London: Ashgate, 2008), xii. 4 Kanien’kehá:ka refers to the Indigenous group commonly referred to as Mohawk or Iroquois and, in particular, those that live in Kahnawà:ke, Akwesasne, and Kanesatake, all communities in the region where Quebec, Ontario, and New York State meet.

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5 ‘Indian agents were almost exclusively non-Indigenous men.’ https​:/​/ww​​w​ .the​​canad​​ianen​​cyclo​​pedia​​.ca​/e​​n​/art​​icle/​​india​​n​-age​​​nts​-i​​n​-can​​ada 6 John S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 18. 7 Government of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December, 1883 (Ottawa: McLean, Roger & Co., 1884), 278. http:​/​/cen​​tral.​​bac​-l​​ac​.gc​​.ca/.​​item/​​?id​=1​​883​-I​​AAR​-R​​AAI​&o​​p​=pdf​​&​ app=​​india​​naffa​​irs 8 Auerbach, ‘Introduction’, ix–xviii, xii. 9 Government of Canada, Annual Report 1883, 278. 10 Ibid., 276–8. 11 Ian Radforth, ‘Performance, Politics and Representation: Aboriginal People and the 1860 Royal Tour of Canada’, Canadian Historical Review 84, no. 1 (2003): 1–32. See also, Ruth Phillips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900 (Montréal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999) and Colin M. Coates, Majesty in Canada: Essays on the Role of Royalty (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2005). 12 Government of Canada, Annual Report 1883, 279. 13 Government of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December, 1881 (Ottawa: McLean, Roger & Co., 1882), 55. http:​/​/cen​​tral.​​bac​-l​​ac​.gc​​.ca/.​​item/​​?id​=1​​881​-I​​AAR​-R​​AAI​&o​​p​=pdf​​&​ app=​​india​​naffa​​irs 14 Wilcomb E. Washburn, Red Man’s Land/White Man’s Law: A Study of the Past and Present Status of the American Indian (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 144. 15 Daniel Rueck, ‘Commons, Enclosure, and Resistance in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, 1850-1900’, Canadian Historical Review 95, no. 3 (September 2014): 361. 16 Ibid., 362. 17 The Indigenous reserve community of Kahnawà:ke is located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, directly across from Lachine, Québec, at the part also referred to as Lac St. Louis. 18 Daniel Rueck, ‘Enclosing the Mohawk Commons: A History of Use-Rights, Land-Ownership, and Boundary-Making in Kahnawà:ke’ (Unpublished thesis, McGill University, 2013), 233. 19 Ibid., 190. 20 M. MacIver to David Laird, 23 December 1873, RG10, vol. 1917, file 2746, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 21 Ibid. 22 Rueck, ‘Enclosing the Mohawk Commons’, 197. 23 Government of Canada, Annual Report 1883, 278.

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24 Unknown, ‘William McLea Walbank’, Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada, 1800-1950, ed. Robert G. Hill. http:​/​/dic​​tiona​​r yofa​​rchit​​ectsi​​ncana​​da​ .or​​g​​/nod​​e​/290​ 25 Government of Canada, Annual Report 1883, 278. 26 Gerald F. Reid, ‘It Is Our Custom – The Persistence of Kahnawà:ke’s Council of Chiefs in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, Haudenosaunee: Kahnawà:ke Branch of the Mohawk Nation, Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy, http://www.Kahnawà​:kelonghouse​.com​/index​.php​?mid​ =2​&p=3 27 Government of Canada, Annual Report 1883, 278. 28 Ibid. 29 Roderick Kiracofe and Mary Elizabeth Johnson, The American Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort, 1750-1950 (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1993), 48. 30 Government of Canada, Annual Report 1883, 277. 31 Stan Shillington, ‘1830-1883 Caughnawaga [Down Memory Lane]’, Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame website, https​:/​/ww​​w​.clh​​of​.or​​g​/ind​​ex​.ph​​p​/abo​​ut​/in​​ -the-​​news/​​news/​​22​-me​​mory-​​lane/​​675​-d​​own​-m​​​emory​​-lane​​-caug​​hnawa​​ga 32 C. Richard King, Native Americans in Sports (New York: Routledge, 2004), 178. 33 Gillian Poulter, Becoming Native in a Foreign Land: Sport, Visual Culture, and Identity in Montréal, 1840-85 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 155. 34 Shillington, ‘1830-1883 Caughnawaga [Down Memory Lane]’. 35 Kahnawà:kero:non is a Mohawk member of the community of Kahnawà:ke. 36 Marsha MacDowell and C. Kurt Dewhurts, ‘Introduction’, in To Honor and Comfort: Native Quiltmaking Traditions, ed. Marsha L. MacDowell and C. Kurt Dewhurst (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1997), ix. 37 Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015 [1998]), 24. 38 Tatsuya Murakami, ‘Materiality, Regimes of Value, and the Politics of Craft Production, Exchange, and Consumption: A Case of Lime Plaster in Teotihuacan, Mexico’, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 42 (June 2016): 56–78, 61. 39 Charlotte Loppie Reading and Fred Wien, Health Inequalities and the Social Determinants of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health (Prince George, BC: National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health, 2009), np. 40 ‘The term residential schools refers to an extensive school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches that had the nominal objective of educating Aboriginal children but also the more damaging and equally explicit objectives of indoctrinating them into EuroCanadian and Christian ways of living and assimilating them into mainstream Canadian society. The residential school system operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the twentieth century. The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Aboriginal heritage and culture or to

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speak their own languages.’ https​:/​/in​​digen​​ousfo​​undat​​ions.​​arts.​​ubc​.c​​a​/the​​ _resi​​denti​​al​_sc​​​hool_​​syste​​m/  41 Kari Dawn Wuttunee, Jennifer Altenbert, and Sarah Flicker, ‘Red Ribbon Skirts and Cultural Resurgence’, Girlhood Studies 12, no. 3 (Winter 2019): 63–79, 67. 42 Kanien’kehá:ka is Mohawk for People of the Place of the Flint and refers to members of the three Mohawk communities, Kahnawà:ke, Akwesasne, and Kanesatake. 43 John L. Tobias, ‘Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History of Canada’s Indian Policy’, in Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian White Relations in Canada, ed. J. R. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 127–44. 44 Government of Canada, An Act for the Gradual Enfranchisement of Indians, 1869. https:///www​.a​​adnc-​​aandc​​.gc​.c​​a​/DAM​​/DAM-​​INTER​​-HQ​/S​​TAGIN​​G​/tex​​te​ -te​​xt​/A6​​9c6​_1​​10010​​00102​​05​_en​​g​.pdf​ 45 Marie Battiste, Visioning a Mi’kmaw Humanities (Sydney: Cape Breton University Press, 2016), 6. 46 Government of Canada, Annual Report 1883, 277. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., 279. 49 Alex Jacobs, ‘The Quiltmakers of Akwesasne’, in To Honor and Comfort: Native Quiltmaking Traditions, ed. Marsha L. MacDowell and C. Kurt Dewhurst (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1997), 145–52, 151. 50 Sherry Farrell Racette, ‘Sewing Ourselves Together: Clothing, Decorative Arts and the Expression of Métis and Half-Breed Identity’ (Unpublished thesis, University of Manitoba, 2004), 232, 241. 51 Lisa Binkley, ‘Piecing Heritage in Transition: The Lakota Star Quilt as a Symbol of Pan-Indigeneity’, in Craft and Heritage: Intersections in Critical Studies and Practice, ed. Elaine Cheasley Paterson and Susan Surette (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, forthcoming, 2021).

3 Indigenous craft is political Making and remaking colonizer–colonized relations in Taiwan Geoffrey Gowlland

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n this chapter I discuss the making of contemporary craft objects by the Indigenous (Austronesian speakers) People of Taiwan. More than the case study, my aim is to make a general claim about the political significance of indigenous crafts that is applicable to other contexts. Specifically, I will suggest how we can re-think the meaning of ‘indigenous craft’ to make the concept useful analytically in research on indigenous cultural rights and definitions of indigenous identity. When I first visited Taiwan1 to conduct research on (non-indigenous) ceramics, I soon became aware of the crafts and arts of the country’s Indigenous People. In Taiwan, sixteen ethnic groups making up about 2 per cent of the population have been officially recognized as ‘Indigenous’ by the government; these people are Austronesian speakers, and their ancestors inhabited the island of Formosa (making up most of what is now Taiwan) and the island of Lanyu before the arrival of Chinese settlers starting in the 1500s. Indigenous material culture is today visible in a number of venues. Certain Indigenous villages have become tourist attractions, proffering performances, traditional food, and, invariably, various crafts for sale. In the main cities, a number of museums display past and contemporary Indigenous crafts, shops

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sell Indigenous craft and design products, and popular cultural events promote artisans’ work. Indigenous crafts, such as the iconic Tao canoes or Paiwan pottery, are also visible in the imagery promoted by the government for tourism or as national symbols. It is clear that crafts play a number of specific roles for Taiwan’s Indigenous People. Crafts provide sources of income, as tourist art, but also as designer clothing items, furniture or artworks. Occasionally, craft objects serve a more decisively political role, for instance when they make their appearance in protests. Similarly, the canoes of the Tao people have become symbols of Indigenous resistance, and are displayed during protests against the dumping of nuclear waste on Tao land, Lanyu island. In at least one instance, crafts have supported claims in the politics of recognition of Indigenous groups. And as I will discuss, the Taiwanese government has political interests in displaying and promoting Indigenous material culture in order to sustain claims of national identity. In other words, beyond the commercial interests of producing crafts for sale, crafts are often – and I contend, always – political. These different roles of craft are not unique to Taiwan’s Indigenous People. With a quick review of the literature, it appears that there are roughly two categories of scholarly articles addressing the crafts of indigenous people worldwide: the first tends to link craft activities and products to expressions of indigenous ‘identity’, while the second group of publications concerns income opportunities for marginalized communities, or an appraisal of the benefits or consequences of marketing craft, for instance, to tourists. Critical-minded versions of these two strands of arguments point to the politics of heritage: in the first category, we see how crafts are instrumental in shaping images of indigeneity that are useful for the political claims of indigenous people. In the second, scholars point to ways in which the past can be commoditized, and to the unequal relations of power between producers and consumers such as tourists. Yet even in critically minded discussions, too often indigenous crafts are characterized as ‘traditional’. Why are craft practices so significant for indigenous people? What is it about the power of things, and the power of making things, that fit so well with the agendas, strategies and needs of contemporary indigenous people? Although it will only scratch the surface of the issue, this chapter will address the complexity of the purposes of crafts, while at the same time point to how the diversity of forms and purposes of crafts serve some common purpose. I will discuss this purpose in terms of recent debates in indigenous studies, and suggest that indigenous crafts are particular kinds of crafts not because they are ‘traditional’ as such, but simply because they are made by indigenous people. Once we accept a relational definition of indigeneity understood as people standing in relation to particular forms of

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power (as I discuss in the next section), then this implies that indigenous crafts are particular kinds of crafts because they have a mediative role in relations between indigenous people and non-indigenous powers such as the state or the market. In this perspective, indigenous crafts are anything but traditional: they are innovative because craft objects and craft practices are means to continuously adapt to the tensions between the need of indigenous people to adapt to life in a settler society, and the desire for cultural resilience. The chapter proposes to do two things: it starts with a suggestion for a redefinition of the meaning of ‘indigenous craft’, and goes on to consider how this redefinition can reveal the power of crafts for indigenous people. The first section will explain my reasons for redefinition, highlighting Clifford’s2 concept of ‘articulation’ as he applies it to indigenous heritage. I then look at crafts in the history of Taiwanese colonialism up to the present day, and go on to consider the significance of craft revitalization practices among Indigenous Taiwanese, in political and commercial terms.

Constructive ambiguities: ‘indigenous’ and ‘crafts’ The terms ‘craft’ and ‘indigenous’ are both ambiguous, nebulous and contested. In this first theoretical section, I argue that this makes the terms particularly interesting as tools of enquiry. One might start by noticing that what ‘craft’ and ‘indigenous’ have in common, at least in the popular imagination, is that they tend to be equated with ‘tradition’. Crafts tend to be perceived as outmoded, ‘traditional’ practices that are now replaced by more efficient and ‘modern’ processes and products. Similarly, when the term ‘indigenous’ is invoked, at least outside of academia, it tends to identify people who are pursuing ‘traditional’ ways of life and are resilient against the changes imposed by ‘modernity’ (however ‘modern’ is defined). Both ‘crafts’ and ‘indigenous’ then tend to be defined in terms of what is ‘non-modern’. We then get another striking similarity between the two concepts, namely that they are both defined by what they are not. Despite attempts at defining what craft is in essence,3 ‘craft’ remains ambiguous, and it is easier and more constructive to define it through contrasts: one might speak of craft to distinguish it from art, or mass-produced items, etc. (though in all cases, the lines of demarcation are blurred4). We might want to give up entirely on the term ‘craft’, but I would argue there is something useful analytically in this ‘not-something-else’ concept, and this is why the term has not gone out of fashion. When we talk of craft in the twenty-first century, it is, for instance,

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often to signal the rejection of mass-produced items, or an expressed desire by people to be makers rather than consumers – in short, a rejection of the principles and negative consequences of capitalism. Craft is that which is notnot-craft, and this makes it a politically powerful concept. ‘Indigeneity’ similarly identifies difference and distinction. To be indigenous is in the simplest terms to be non-non-indigenous. International declarations and conventions have established internationally recognized principles (ILO Convention 169, UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People), and tried to identify the common characteristics that define indigeneity. Yet in scholarship, indigeneity is most usefully defined relationally.5 Specifically, we define indigenous people as groups standing in unequal power relations in settler societies, or in relation to market forces, and who affirm cultural resilience and collective rights to land. Despite the lack of fixed definitions, the concepts of indigenous and indigeneity are significant analytically, to identify movements of people who rally behind the same idea of indigeneity at a global level, and to address relations of power that involve claims to cultural distinctiveness, rights to land, and the need to counter cultural assimilation. The promotion of indigenous identities is a political act; it encapsulates claims of resilience against the powers of the state, of assimilation and of capitalism. It is curious that even in cases where scholars are sympathetic to this relational definition of indigeneity, the term ‘indigenous crafts’ is invoked in terms of what is ‘traditional’. Indigenous crafts are seen as the crafts that indigenous people (whether defined in essential or relational terms) have ‘traditionally’ produced, or that manifest some continuity with these past practices. Yet my argument here is that indigenous crafts are fundamentally innovative precisely because they are made by indigenous people. If we define indigeneity in relational and constantly evolving terms, then indigenous crafts can only be defined in terms of novel and constantly evolving practices that make sense of, and respond to, evolving situations. I would then define indigenous crafts as the material objects and practices that serve the purposes of indigeneity, namely to negotiate relations with the powers of the state and market. James Clifford proposes a particularly useful concept with which to think about indigenous heritage: the notion of ‘articulation’.6 With this concept, Clifford finds a middle ground between two views of indigenous revivals, as either continuity of past practices, or ‘invented tradition’. The term describes how indigenous people around the world negotiate the continuity of practices at the same time as they learn to adapt to the agendas of state and other institutions: ‘this is hegemony at work: interactive and negotiated, but ultimately on terms dictated by the more powerful’.7 Indigenous people are constantly having to ‘articulate’ the demands imposed on them by the powers of the settler society with their own desire for cultural continuity. Claims to

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indigeneity – and indigenous practices – are always (by definition, for Clifford) the result of an articulation of this tension. Arguably, crafts do not exist before colonization for indigenous people, and the notion of ‘craft’ itself, as understood today, has a relatively short history in the West, dating back to the seventeenth century when contrasts were established between creativity and repetition, freedom and determination, and ultimately art and craft.8 The very idea of ‘craft’ is a hegemonic one, a foreign concept that might become accepted by the colonized. Colonizers evaluate and judge local crafts based on their own definitions of art or technology, their own aesthetics and ideas about social evolution. Later I will discuss the historical connection that indirectly imported the ideas and aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement of nineteenth-century Europe to Taiwan, via the Japanese Mingei movement, and was used to make judgements of value regarding Austronesian material culture.9 When ‘craft’ is invoked by the colonizer, it is making a claim to difference when characterizing the material culture of the colonized as non-modern or perceived to be inferior to colonizer or modern technologies. Conversely, the idea of craft can, as I will discuss, be appropriated by the colonized, as a marker of what is different to imported artefacts and technologies, thus serving to articulate the need to adapt to the requirements of living in a settler society, and the desire for resilience. ‘Indigenous crafts’ is then by definition political, and relational. One might then object that the definition of indigenous craft that I am proposing is just as artificial and ethnocentric as definitions imported and at times imposed on indigenous people. The point I want to argue, with reference to my material on Taiwan, is that by starting with a different definition of ‘indigenous craft’, one can approach a topic of study in a different way, and understand how material culture and processes of making things can be powerful for indigenous movements, and why they are such a significant part of the politics of indigeneity. So instead of seeking another term to identify certain material practices of indigenous people, I prefer to use the notion of ‘indigenous craft’, a phrase that is powerful in identifying in the negative what it can be: non-non-indigenous, and not-not-craft. ‘Indigenous craft’ is a concept for understanding the uses of the making, promotion and circulation of forms of material culture by people who make claims as indigenous people. With this new definition of indigenous crafts as articulation, I turn in the next section to my case study, where I explore how the material culture (some of which is eventually identified as ‘craft’) of Austronesian-speaking people (later officially recognized as ‘Indigenous’) has played particular roles in the history of relations between Indigenous People and the colonial state.

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Colonizing crafts in Taiwan: Japanese, nationalist and multiculturalist agendas Indigenous People represent 2 per cent of the overall population of Taiwan; with ongoing claims on the part of ‘assimilated’ populations who until recently identified as Han Chinese, this figure might soon be revised upwards. There is great linguistic and cultural diversity among the Austronesian groups. Linguistic and archaeological research indicates that Taiwan has been inhabited by Austronesians for thousands of years, and the island might have been the original land from which the Austronesians spread through the Pacific and Indian Oceans.10 These scientific arguments were instrumental in the successful claims of Taiwan’s Austronesian populations to be recognized as Indigenous People, as opposed to minority ethnic groups, in the 1990s.11 Material culture has played various roles in the relations between Austronesians and different colonizers. There is a history of relations of trade in goods, such as the glass beads that today are a heritage item among the Paiwan and Rukai people. But I want to start this historical discussion with the Japanese colonizers (1895–1945), who were the first to subjugate the entire Austronesian population of Taiwan, not only in the plains (Austronesian populations there were, by the time of the Japanese era, mostly assimilated) but in the as yet unconquered mountain interior. Previously, China’s Qing dynasty had created a boundary between the mountains and the plains populations; the government had little interest in the mountains, given the limited opportunities for agriculture. In contrast, the Japanese were interested in the resources of the mountainous interior, in particular hardwoods. As part of their subjugation of the Austronesian people, the Japanese banned such material practices as the weavings of the Atayal people,12 or the carvings of the Paiwan people (as my Paiwan interlocutors explained to me). These bans were motivated by the perception that they posed risks to the authority of the colonizers. Atayal weavings were not simply clothing, but the practice of weaving was essential to definitions of Atayal womanhood, and related to the practice of tattooing which was also banned for fear of subversion. For the Paiwan, carvings – on wood and slate – were the prerogative of chieftains, and a ban on carvings was imposed as a form of control of the Paiwan political elites. In parallel to the often-brutal subjugation of the Austronesians, the Japanese also had a fascination for Austronesian material culture. This played out in two fields. In the first, Japanese scholars in the 1930s were influenced by Western anthropological ideas,13 and anthropologists and other scholars became concerned with studying and salvaging cultures that the colonial

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government was busy destroying.14 As evidence of this interest, museums in Taiwan and Japan present rich collections of Austronesian artefacts; these collections also attest to the pillage of artefacts from Austronesian communities. The second field of interest in material culture came from the Japanese Mingei, or ‘folk craft’, movement15 that was taking shape around the same time. Mingei, meaning folk art, was inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. Japanese artists and scholars were enthralled by the Austronesian artefacts displayed at colonial exhibitions in the early 1900s. Mingei theory became closely tied to the Japanese nationalist project, within which expressions of local identity were promoted as examples of the richness of the Japanese empire,16 also becoming a means to transform Austronesians into Japanese citizens.17 Crafts, as other Austronesian expressions, became signs of exoticism and diversity; they were tamed at the same time as expressions of culture deemed dangerous or contrary to the Japanese rule were banned. Arguably, Austronesian material culture became ‘craft’ when it lost its power, when the Atayal weavings were seen in museums or as tourist curios, rather than objects that made girls into women and ensured a good afterlife. At the end of the Second World War, Taiwan was ceded to Japan. Taiwan – the Republic of China – was under military dictatorship from 1949 to 1987. There is a saying that the Japanese broke the stem of the flower that is Indigenous culture, but the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) uprooted the flower. During that time, the Kuomintang government imposed policies of sinicization over the entire native population, Austronesians and Han Chinese alike.18 This included the imposition of Mandarin Chinese as the only language of the nation (a foreign language even to Taiwanese Chinese), and heavy-handed assimilationist policies aimed at eradicating ‘superstitions’ and ‘improving’ the living conditions of Austronesians. Among other practices, local officials encouraged or imposed the destruction of forms of material culture, for instance intensifying the Japanese practice of destroying the carved images of the Paiwan. One of my Paiwan interlocutors told me how schoolteachers, in collaboration with local police officers, would promise candy to children in return for stealing their parents’ artefacts which would then be destroyed. In the context of colonialism, the notion of craft was created to tame the material culture of Austronesians; banning or destroying the material culture that was not tamed in this way was an instrument of control. Action on material culture is political action.19 In the next section, I turn to Austronesian craft revitalization practices, and discuss how such practices are just as political in countering or articulating the effects of assimilation, while contemporary governments find their own purposes for expressions of Indigenous identity.

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Craft articulations Taiwan’s Indigenous movement began in the 1980s, and gained momentum after the end of martial law in 1987 and the democratization of Taiwan with the first democratic elections in 1996. Gradual advances in the recognition of Indigenous rights led to the establishment of the Council of Aboriginal Affairs (later re-named Council of Indigenous Peoples) in 1996; the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law came into effect in 2005. More recently, in 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen addressed a formal apology to the Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan. In the new turn to recognition of Indigenous rights, the momentum of Indigenous movements, and promotion of multiculturalism, Indigenous crafts took on new significance, both for Indigenous People themselves, and for politicians. Two parties, the Kuomintang, which was the single ruling party during martial law, and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the opposition party, both wanted to distance themselves from the martial law era.20 For the Kuomintang, a discourse on localism – local expressions of culture – was a means to avoid the fraught debate about Taiwan being part of China that was previously promoted by the same Kuomintang party throughout martial law. In the same way, the DPP party promoted local expressions of culture, but for a rather different purpose: multiculturalism was a way for the party to make claims about Taiwan being distinct culturally, and therefore politically, from China. Within the political discourses and debates of both parties, Indigenous revitalization projects could thrive, among them projects to revitalize craft practices that had been discouraged and abandoned during the assimilationist era. Crafts can be deeply political for Indigenous People in Taiwan.21 Artefacts being revived today are some of the same that were actively repressed by past colonial powers, such as Atayal weavings and Paiwan carvings as mentioned above. In the perspective of this difficult past, the very existence of revitalization practices is political: remaking artefacts that in the past were considered uncivilized or evil is an act of countering repression and the effects of cultural assimilation. Revitalization is not simply an expression of ‘identity’; acts of making are not passive ‘expressions’ but ways of engaging with structures of power and lingering effects of assimilation. They are lingering because hegemonic ideas about civilization and the backwardness of Indigenous culture were internalized by a generation during the martial law era. Apart from some early pioneers, the key actors in revitalization projects are individuals in their 40s or 50s, who are able to bridge two generations: they are still fluent in their native language and able to talk with elders (who seldom speak Chinese) to learn about stories and practices of the past. In turn, these same people are fluent in Chinese, and can talk to youth, few of whom speak their Indigenous language. One of the better-known craft revitalization initiatives is that of Paiwan artist Sakuliu Pavavalung. He is probably the person who has contributed the most

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to cultural revival, not only through his own work, but by teaching youth in his community and travelling around Taiwan to foment revitalization work among other groups. One of Sakuliu’s first projects was to restore the production of Paiwan pottery. This is a case of ‘revival’ rather than revitalization: the Paiwan had not been producing pottery for perhaps centuries, and rather acquired pots through trade. Besides recovering and figuring out the techniques of pottery, talking to makers from other ethnic groups and finding inspiration in books about African and Central American pottery, a key aspect of Sakuliu’s research was to interview elders about the meanings of the range of motifs that appear on heirloom pots. Thus the production of new objects was combined with research (the Chinese word is yanjiu). The initiative for Sakuliu was at first primarily a cultural and educational one, and he gathered youth from the community to learn about pottery and other practices. Proof of the success of his initiatives in the 1990s is that many of the children he taught have become successful artists and artisans. Pots were produced for purchase both within the community as wedding gifts, and outside of the community as tourist art (Figure 3.1). Sakuliu appears to have set the standard for the revitalization of craft objects, by conducting extensive research, and talking to elders about practices and symbology. ‘Research’ has become a way of evaluating the work of artists and artisans and is deemed to be at the heart of revitalization projects. A consequence of this is that Indigenous artists and artisans, at least among the Paiwan (the people I am most familiar with), have acquired a new status

FIGURE 3.1  Ceramic pot made by Paiwan artist Masegseg Ruladen, on the model of those revived by Sakuliu Pavavalung. Photo by the author.

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in their communities, not only as makers but as political figures: they have in many instances become authorities on their culture and tradition, and at times, certain tensions have developed between them and the traditional holders of cultural knowledge, the chieftains. Artists and artisans are often also the representatives of their communities, for instance being invited, as Sakuliu often is, by museums to represent their culture through art and knowledge.22 Craft revitalization practices frequently go hand in hand with other claims to Indigenous rights. One case in point is the revitalization of the banana fibre weaving of the Kavalan. One of the prime motivators for the Kavalan was to claim status as a distinct ethnic group – previously, they had been grouped with the more numerous Amis people. In their petition to the government for recognition as a separate indigenous group, one factor was the revival of a form of weaving that, judging by museum collections, was only produced by the Kavalan. The revitalization of banana fibre weaving involved asking elders to recall the process of production. After its successful use in their petition to the government, the weaving practice has taken on a life of its own. Within the community, weavings are worn during the harvest festivals; outside of the community, the Kavalan demonstrate the preparation of fibres at cultural events, and sell artefacts as design and tourist art (Figure 3.2).

FIGURE 3.2  Members of the Kavalan Indigenous group (Hsin-she village) demonstrating the preparation of fibres from the banana plant at a cultural centre in Hualien City, Taiwan. Photo by the author.

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In a way, these processes of revitalization are re-infusing objects with the powers they once had before they became tamed as crafts under colonial rule. And yet, these forms of craft are still ‘safe’ insofar as they are consistent with contemporary state policies that promote multiculturalism. In this respect Barclay23 has argued that a recent major exhibition of crafts, Rainbow and Dragonfly, held in 2014 at the National Taiwan Museum, played into the tropes of colonialism. Recalling Clifford, this is a reminder that indigenous revitalization projects are always processes of articulation: they express the resilience of indigenous people, yet have to operate within structures and hegemony imposed by the state or other powerful actors. In other instances, creating craft products is more directly aimed at providing a source of income. But because Indigenous crafts derive at least some of their value through their association with Indigenous cultures – they reproduce patterns, themes or functional objects that are promoted as ‘traditional’ – the lines between cultural identity and marketization tend to be blurred. A comment that one Indigenous artist made to me during an interview captures this point. He stated quite bluntly that he and his fellow Indigenous artists and craftspeople were in the business of ‘selling taboo’. I translate, somewhat inaccurately, the Paiwan word palisi as taboo, (palisi is usually translated as jinji in Chinese which in turn is translated as ‘taboo’ in English). The artist implied that his work used designs and motifs regulated by ‘palisi’ – a set of customary laws – to make items for sale. The issue for him and others – at least among the Paiwan I am most familiar with – was not so much the ethical issues related to selling cultural items that should not be commercialized, but rather that selling such objects had unintended repercussions for ownership and rights of use of designs. What was palisi was not so much the design itself, but rather who can or cannot reproduce the design, and once reproduced, who can acquire the object. The phrase ‘selling taboo’ captures the bind artisans are in, as they have both responsibilities for promoting their culture to those outside their communities and to local youth, at the same time as they have to earn a living to continue their work. This leads to, at times, difficult choices and accusations by others of privileging cash over culture. Cash itself is ‘articulation’ in Clifford’s sense. There are many possibilities afforded by income: perhaps most importantly, as expressed by artisans, income opportunities for youth that preclude their need to migrate to the cities to find jobs. This also counters the widespread problem of dissolution of Indigenous communities, particularly in the mountains.

Conclusion This chapter started by asking why craft practices, whether as part of cultural revitalization movements or commercial enterprises, are so often significant

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within indigenous movements. I suggested several answers to this question relating to the Taiwanese case: these all have to do with efforts to find articulation within relations of power in a settler society. To understand the multifaceted role of crafts, it is prudent to consider crafts, not as ‘traditional’, or at times ‘inauthentic’ objects and practices, or as simply the material output of indigenous people, but as processes and resulting artefacts that serve political purposes. They are things and processes that are agentive, in Gell’s sense,24 of articulating relations between indigenous people and either the state or the market. As a result, rather than ‘traditional’, indigenous crafts should be approached as fundamentally innovative material practices, in that they serve to constantly engage and work with changing relations of power between indigenous communities and the state, the market or nonindigenous populations. To identify things as ‘crafts’ is to draw contrasts with things that are not craft. The Arts and Crafts movement drew this contrast with mass-produced items, or even with crafts that did not fit with the movement’s principles, such as eighteenth-century veneering.25 Indigenous crafts similarly draw a contrast between indigenous and non-indigenous things, and ultimately, people. As such, they are important in the politics of resilience of indigenous people. Even so, makers of indigenous crafts also act within the hegemonic framework of the colonizer, accepting hegemonic ideas of modernity or accepting to work within the terms dictated by the market.

Notes 1 Research in Taiwan was conducted with my wife, cultural historian Marzia Varutti; we consider the data gathered together as co-owned. 2 James Clifford, ‘Indigenous Articulations’, The Contemporary Pacific 13, no. 2 (2001): 467–90, https://doi​.org​/10​.1353​/cp​.2001​.0046. 3 E.g. David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968). 4 Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through Craft (London: Berg Publishers, 2007). 5 Marisol de la Cadena and Orin Starn, ed., Indigenous Experience Today (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2007); James Clifford, Returns (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 6 Clifford, ‘Indigenous Articulations’; Clifford, Returns, 45–6. 7 Clifford, Returns, 46. 8 Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London: Routledge, 2000), 350; R. Coleman, The Art of Work: An Epitaph to Skill (London: Pluto Press, 1988), 7.

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9 Y. Kikuchi, Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007). 10 David Blundell, Austronesian Taiwan: Linguistics, History, Ethnology, and Prehistory (Berkeley, CA: Phoebe A. Hearst Museum with Shung Ye Museum, 2000). 11 M. Rudolph, ‘The Emergence of the Concept of “Ethnic Group” in Taiwan and the Role of Taiwan’s Austronesians in the Construction of Taiwanese Identity’, Historiography East and West 2, no. 1 (2004): 86–115. 12 Mami Yoshimura, ‘Weaving and Identity of the Atayal in Wulai, Taiwan’ (MA thesis, University of Waterloo, 2007). 13 Paul D. Barclay, ‘An Historian Among the Anthropologists: The In l Kanori Revival and the Legacy of Japanese Colonial Ethnography in Taiwan’, Japanese Studies 21, no. 2 (2001): 117–36, https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/713683805. 14 Chia-Yu Hu, ‘Taiwanese Aboriginal Art and Artifacts. Entangled Images of Colonization and Modernization’, in Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan, ed. Yūko Kikuchi (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007). 15 Y. Kikuchi, Japanese Modernisation and Mingei Theory: Cultural Nationalism and Oriental Orientalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2004); Hu, ‘Taiwanese Aboriginal Art and Artifacts’. 16 Kikuchi, Japanese Modernisation and Mingei Theory. 17 Leo T. S. Ching, Becoming ‘Japanese’ (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001). 18 Allen Chun, ‘From Nationalism to Nationalizing: Cultural Imagination and State Formation in Postwar Taiwan’, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 31 (January 1994): 49. https://doi​.org​/10​.2307​/2949900; Ketty W. Chen, ‘Disciplining Taiwan: The Kuomintang’s Methods of Control during the White Terror Era (1947-1987)’, Taiwan International Studies Quarterly 4, no. 4 (2008): 185–210. 19 Jean-Pierre Warnier, ‘A Praxeological Approach to Subjectivation in a Material World’, Journal of Material Culture 6, no. 1 (1 March 2001): 5–24. 20 P. Kerim Friedman, ‘The Hegemony of the Local Taiwanese Multiculturalism and Indigenous Identity Politics’, Boundary 2 45, no. 3 (1 August 2018): 79–105, https://doi​.org​/10​.1215​/01903659​-6915593. 21 Marzia Varutti, ‘Crafting Heritage: Artisans and the Making of Indigenous Heritage in Contemporary Taiwan’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 3 (2015): 1036–49. 22 Geoffrey Gowlland and Marzia Varutti, ‘Museums as Sites of Indigenous Revitalisation: Dialogues between National Museums, Indigenous Artisans, and Indigenous Communities in Taiwan’, in Unpacking the Museum in/of Asia, ed. Yunci Cai (London: Routledge, forthcoming). 23 Paul D. Barclay, ‘Tangled Up in Red: Textiles, Trading Posts and the Emergence of Indigenous Modernity in Japanese Taiwan’, in Japanese Taiwan: Colonial Rule and its Contested Legacy, ed. Andrew Morris (London and New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015), 49–74.

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24 Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). 25 Peter Betjemann, ‘Craft and the Limits of Skill: Handicrafts Revivalism and the Problem of Technique’, Journal of Design History 21, no. 2 (20 June 2008): 183–93. https://doi​.org​/10​.1093​/jdh​/epn011.

4 Coexistence of craft and design in Turkey as two separate epistemes Çig˘dem Kaya

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n their essay, ‘Designs on Craft’,1 Ory DeNicola and Wilkinson-Weber consider the discourse in India surrounding designers as modern and design as a cognitive process, while craft is seen as handwork. They state: ‘the association of designers with modernity is so taken for granted it is understood as a right and responsibility for designers, as modern (and model) citizens, to be both benefactor and protector of the “unmodern” maker (printer, tailor, embroiderer)’.2 Their research posits that this prevailing perception bolsters differences of class and power between designers and craftspeople, with designers as ‘developed’ assisting the underdeveloped. This article examines craft in relation to design in Turkey where a similar hierarchical discourse has predominated. In Turkey, the relationship between craft and design has evolved based on factors such as craft heritage, being a non-Western modernity, coming late to industrialization, the influence of globalization and exposure to digitalization. In what follows, these factors are elements in a personal narrative of practice-led research contextualized mainly with French theory on production and consumption in everyday life. Initially I am conceptualizing the mobilization of craft in the Turkish political economy, where it is argued that products are valorized by design. In this agenda, a hierarchy is created between craft and design. Modern design is seen as superior to craft, and craft is valorized by design’s, and designers’, intervention. Later in the essay I challenge this argument and propose that

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craft and design collaboration should be a practice of relationship making.3 This entails letting go of professionalism and corporatism to investigate craft as a way of doing, per se.

Craft and design: vernacular versus industrial The hierarchy between design and craft has been challenged in the international literature. Craft has more to offer than traditional patterns, colours and materials as widely argued by distinguished scholars such as Richard Sennett in The Craftsman,4 Glenn Adamson in Thinking Through Craft,5 Susan Luckman in Craft and the Creative Economy6 and Malcolm McCullough in Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand.7 Going deeper than semantic links between visual signs and their latent meaning, I am interested in eliciting modes of making in craft and reframing them with an industrial design vocabulary, my field of expertise. Choosing to examine industrial design outside industry is part of a larger investigation of everyday life in the discipline of sociology. Karl Marx indicated that commodities are part of a socioeconomic system.8 Historically, their production resulted in the alienation of labour, thereby influencing the Arts and Crafts movement. In Critique of Everyday Life, LeFebvre stated that the everyday contained ‘human wealth’9 outside mass-produced modern life.10 According to Michel de Certeau, to understand the various dynamics of material culture at play, everyday life should be examined.11 And semiologist and writer Roland Barthes showed the cultural meanings of everyday objects in modern life.12 Thus, the everyday – what people do as part of their normal routine which, in some societies, includes craft – is a canvas that is ignored in the modern era of mass production. Trained as an industrial designer with this theoretical background, I searched the knowledge and skill set of industrial design outside of industry13: in craft, in handcrafts, in designer-makers’ practices and in the activity of making in everyday life. This chain of research indicated that in the Turkish context, the encounter of craft and design is an encounter of class, as is the coupling of design and industrialization over the handmade. Both are indicators of political elitism.

Turkey’s craft history The context of the stream of research presented in this article on Turkish craft is both nurtured and inhibited by tremendously old and different traditions. The

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craft tradition and heritage in Anatolia has been extensively studied in Turkish folklore studies, with ample evidence that the craft tradition practised by both men and women dates back to Neolithic Anatolia.14 American folklore scholar Henry Glassie authored Turkish Traditional Art Today, documenting his fieldwork conducted in Turkish villages using methods of ethnography and oral history.15 Glassie stated that crafts in Turkey include ancient arts of saddlery, carpentry, pottery, masonry, metalsmithing, felt making, woodworking, basketry, copper working, knife making, stone working, bookbinding, calligraphy and marbling, among numerously varied arts of shaping materials.16 For the urban context, Gökhan Karakuş states that the guild system has influenced the production culture in contemporary Turkey, ‘a largely urban and industrial society’.17 According to Karakuş, the Ottoman guild system heritage is an important part of Turkish contemporary trade and craft.18 For example, crafts workshops are typically present in clusters in today’s Istanbul as a heritage of the Byzantine and later Ottoman guild systems where workshops were in proximity.19 Another example is Istanbul’s jewellery production that was based on the guild tradition and system, situated in close proximity in one building (bedestans), as documented by Halil Inalcik in his historical studies of Istanbul.20 Orlandi and Kösebay Erkan note that the workshops in the jewellery sector in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul are today still connected not only by means of vicinity but also by co-production of products.21 Both Turan and Karakuş state that craft disappeared from the design scene in Turkey until the twentieth century.22 After more than a decade of research on craft and its knowledge in Turkey, the authors assert that, in the modern design milieu, the inclusion of craft is rare, and the design work integrating craft with traditional motifs, materials and techniques is avant-garde, if at all present. Turan identified discussions in the 1930s in Turkey that were both for and against craft production versus industrial production as part of the development discourse.23 Industrialization was rapidly adopted by the new state; prior to this, production was mainly based on craft and small enterprises.24 Seen contrary to industrial production, crafts, as minor arts, carried a certain stigma compared to modern design.25 The research by Turan and Karakuş shows that the borders between craft and design were political as well as artistic.

Craft and design in Turkey: product differentiation Craft in Turkey has not been immune to industrialization, the digital revolution and globalization, professionally mobilizing craftspeople and handcrafts

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practitioners.26 The term ‘crafts’ expanded within the creative industries in the twenty-first century in Turkey, whereas previously they were deemed a concept excluding women’s daily handcraft practices. In the past, women’s handcraft practices were mainly to make items for domestic use and for their trousseaus for marriage. Craft, as a gendered practice, transformed because mass-produced items became preferred for the trousseau. Likewise, in kilim production in villages, the number of women making kilims declined because of job opportunities in factories. Labour in craft and handcrafts was gendered and was part of the informal economy. However, in the past decade, these practices started to become visible through research and design. For example, the atlas design collection27 was created by selected designers and is produced by local and refugee women in Harran in south-eastern Turkey. The items of this collection are for sale on the atlas website.28 The latter example illustrates the expansion of the concept of craft as a phenomenon of the post-industrial world where hands-on processes have been reintroduced as added value. In addition, since the late 1990s, the folklore literature in Turkey indicates that crafts should be re-interpreted and commercialized for their sustainment and also for economic value.29 Furthermore, transformation has been observed in craft practices and its objects due to immigration and changing lifestyles.30 For example in Maraş, saddlery disappeared due to the proliferation of cars, and felt making declined due to mass-produced textiles.31 Some crafts have survived and revived as they found a new market in global tourism consumption and export opportunities as cultural artefacts.32 Uslu and Kiper state that the number of silversmith shops increased from eight shops to seventy-three ateliers as a consequence of tourism in the town of Beypazarı.33 Etikan and Çukur report that in Çomakdağ-Kızılağaç, beadwork, practised by women and traditionally used on the collars of the long shirts worn as an inner layer of clothing, on the portion of the çemperi (silk head-dress) that holds it to the chin, and on nazarlık, a traditional protector from evil energy, is now used on bracelets, chokers, belts, bags, cell phone cases and as wall decorations for touristic consumption. Similarly, decoration used on şalvar (traditional pants), called yaneş embroidery, is used on wall decoration pieces and wallets.34 In 2009, Orlandi as well as Köroğlu et al. described the competitive power of the jewellery sector stemming from traditional making in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, and situated craft products as a strategic resource, stressing the potency of innovation in the jewellery sector in global market competition.35 In later research, Orlandi and Kösebay Erkan pointed out the innovative capacity of the craftsmen in the Grand Bazaar for developing metrics of innovation evaluation.36 As a result of the research, in terms of innovation capacity, among forty-seven master craftsmen, twenty-four were found to be potentially eligible for the designation of UNESCO’s Living Human Treasures.37

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In 2006, Ingin stated that crafts are strategic elements in the case of craftspeople clustered in the Şişhane neighbourhood in Istanbul who manufacture designers’ designs, thereby initiating Made in Şişhane.38 Later, in 2015, Ingin declared that craft neighbourhoods are open design systems that offer the resources of crafts to designers to facilitate making their products.39 Crafts in the examples presented above were mobilized with a ‘handmade’, ‘locality’ and ‘added value’ ethos. Being handmade and manufactured by means of local production has been seen as added value. This could be observed as branding for the collaboration projects and the resulting products. Here, the influence of marketing is apparent. Some of the inherited craft practices in Turkey have been used in the design and production of new products developed and co-developed by some designers in professional and commercial projects. It could be said that the outcomes of these collaborations carry agency in connecting tradition and modernity as an alternative to industrial production, enabling the perpetuation of crafts and leading to new sustainable consumption items that are produced both with slower and ethical production, as well as being emotionally durable. The inclusion of craft in design projects in Turkey is significantly employed to add value to products. Inhibited by the historical hierarchy between craft production and industrial production, the project examples in the previous section argue for the ‘betterment’ of craft by added value through design, forming a developmentalist discourse in Turkey. In contrast, there is recent research that situates craft and design outside the development and class discourse. Gürdere and Kaygan state that the inclusion of craft in design projects for added value and local development is an example of social design in Turkey,40 and Karakuş argues that craft can be an ‘urban vernacular’, practised in the cities, including digital technologies and resulting in distinctive one-of-a-kind products.41 Orlandi and Kösebay Erkan state that craftspeople have innovation capacity on their own, without designers’ involvement.42 Aktaş and Mäkelä43 used Ihatsu’s44 triangle diagram of the craft field that defined craft as an area within ‘design’, ‘art’ and ‘craft’. Their method of participant selection was based on this expertise diagram. For each corner of the diagram a representative felt maker in Turkey was selected as a participant for their research.45 Thus, the relationship of craft and design was partially contextualized outside a developmentalist discourse based on a hierarchy relationship between craft and design. We have seen so far that Turkey’s rich and considerable craft heritage is overwhelmingly regarded as producing products that are enhanced by design intervention, whether that be by maintenance of an aesthetic and technical ranking, or an externally imposed branding. Both demean craft labour and confer political powerlessness on those who do it.

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A dialogical and expert-expert learning bond I am a Turkish industrial designer,46 schooled in an environment where design was considered female and aesthetic. As a practitioner I designed items for mass production, yet also saw that industrial design added competitive advantage to craft. This view was endorsed by many of my colleagues in interviews about research on craft and design. In time, as a researcher, instead of accepting the notion of a binary clash between craft and design or a marriage for competitive advantage for both parties, I studied the separate epistemes of craft and industrial design and identified first a dialogical bond,47 then a learning bond,48 and finally an emotional bond between craftspeople and designers during the production of products designed by designers and fully or partially produced by craftspeople. The stream of research presented here is based on hands-on fieldwork conducted by me and my colleagues with unstructured interviews, simultaneous participation in the making, photo and video documentation, and methods of anthropological fieldwork. The documentation not only contains verbal reports and past design work but work in progress and the actual making process. Therefore, strategies to document the making with the sole aim of eliciting explicit knowledge from the tacit knowledge49 contributed to the method and analysis. The analysis, indicating changes in the researcher’s various roles as designer, researcher and participant, required documenting and developing methods that contained both visual and verbal information concurrently.50 In The Craftsman, Sennett conceptualizes craft as a method of making, associating the quality of making practices with craft. However, he does not investigate individual making in the everyday, which is what my research attempted to do. In order for me to undertake various roles in the research, self-reflection was required. It is important to state that for an industrial designer to let go of professionalism requires a substantial amount of unlearning, and this is only possible by avoiding Cartesian thinking as much as possible; it also requires leaving behind a binary perspective and recognition of uncategorizable, awkward and mismatching situations. As argued by Bruno Latour in Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, reliable data can only be obtained when people are allowed to behave in any possible way, like micro-organisms under a microscope.51 If I intended to explore the everyday, I had to be part of and accept the everyday. My research in 2007 started with investigating economic empowerment of women handcraft practitioners in Turkey, with the intention of exploring form, colour, volume and taste in the works of these practitioners. From my viewpoint, the practitioners were designers without formal design education, in other words, non-designer makers.52 Here, a different understanding and practice of design was present. The handcrafts knowledge and practice were

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gendered and transmitted through generations as part of female culture. Formal choices were not based on modern taste but on cultural meaning, yet experimentation and innovation were present. Hence, it is not easy to argue that modern design brings experimentation and innovation to this practice as is widely argued in the industrial design discourse. Between 2008 and 2011, I collaborated with the Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work (KEDV, Kadın Emeğini Değerlendirme Vakfı) as part of a Social Support Program (SODES, Sosyal Destek Programı) under the Turkish Ministry of Development (Kalkınma Bakanlığı), spending an extensive amount of time as a participant in communities of handcraft practitioners in Mardin, in southeastern Turkey. This project was inspired by a collaboration between the National Institute of Design (NID) design faculty and Jawaja leather producers in India.53 The transformation of women’s traditional handcraft practices, formerly used to make trousseau items, resulted in women-led micro enterprises that had agency for moderate financial empowerment with available skills. The products vary from home textiles to garments marketed as branded collections as well as gifts. They stand out for their quality since the skills inherited from trousseau practices are exquisite. By being simplified and adapted to modern needs the results exist between mass-produced items and collection pieces. Hence, empowerment of practitioners and production of handmade items for slower and conscious consumption transform traditional handcrafts. Later, challenging obstacles in our past research on empowerment with craft and design, we stated that the valorization of craft as a socioeconomic asset supports the financial empowerment of practitioners in cases where commissioners decrease and where craftspeople have more direct access to the market.54 In this perspective, it is argued that the intermediaries should not gain benefit based on the labour of craftspeople. However, the lack of an intermediary structure can, as well, decrease the reach of items to the market unless the craftspeople themselves develop the necessary structures.55 In later research, we developed a tool to compare the empowerment of projects using the capability approach of Amartya Sen56 and Martha Nussbaum.57 In this approach, Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics, states that the welfare of people should not be measured by their income but by their capabilities. Based on the Jawaja Project in India and the DOBAG58 project in Turkey, we argued that empowerment in craft with design can be achieved by increasing both the internal and external capabilities of craftspeople instead of mere concentration on market success.59 In Mardin and then Salihli, as participant designer-researchers, we avoided a top-down approach by building rapport with practitioners and by deliberately refraining from teaching. The encounter of designers and craftspeople created expert-to-expert situations instead of expert-to-novice situations where designers are experts and craftspeople are novices to be taught. Crafts

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practitioners were experts since they had extensive experience although not within the formal design profession. They are experts of the craft epistemology. Therefore, the designer-craftsperson relationship is not and should not be a hierarchical relationship. Instead of a teaching relationship between designer and craftsperson, we constructed a ‘learning platform’, theorized as such in our work at Salihli, in western Turkey. A learning platform is built by the equal participation of all participants where design knowledge is not taught but emerges.60 The idea of a platform was later expanded by constructing design rubrics and putting the research online, where craftspeople had access to these rubrics. Here, the rubrics were developed based on the inspiration resources of the craftspeople we interviewed.61 In the meantime, with Burcu Yagız, on the basis of our observations and experiences and reports by our colleagues, be they academics or practitioners, I identified collaboration between designers and craftspeople in Istanbul. This was the first time I witnessed an equal participation in the design process: a collaboration versus a clash of two epistemes.62 The collaboration contained knowledge exchange between designers and craftspeople. In this regard, craft was a channel of knowledge between formal modern design and informal vernacular practice.63 For example, designer Özlem Tuna collaborates with metalsmiths in the Grand Bazaar, where craftsmen working in the jewellery sector have been clustered since the Ottoman Empire. Tuna provided a remarkably detailed and transparent report of her design process with craftspeople, indicating the pitfalls and obstacles of her project both when I interviewed her alone and also with Vilyan Usta. Tuna’s report of rapport with craftsmen and use of simple semi-prototypes and like analogies to communicate her ideas indicated that there was a particular communication and relationship. In another example, Chicago-based industrial designer Eli Bensusan collaborates with goldsmith Aret Colakyan and finishing master Boncuk Karagöz in the Grand Bazaar area.64 Bensusan, trained as a designer in Turkey, sends 3-D prints to masters and finalizes his jewellery with the feedback of the master craftsmen. Unlike in orthodox practice, Bensusan includes the name of each craftsperson who contributed to the making of his jewellery by attributing their expertise, thereby providing evidence for the separation of different epistemes in an expert-expert situation.65 In these examples, the hierarchy between design and craft is negated.

An emotional bond By means of empowerment, digitalization and a goal to reach markets beyond the traditional as required by contemporary culture, crafts’ foundational formal

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elements have transformed. During this growth and transformation, its clash with modern design is evident. The knowledge gap between craftspeople and designers is not a gap between the binaries of positive and negative. It is a gap between two separate epistemologies that cannot be positioned in relation to each other hierarchically. The expert-expert situation is jeopardized by a binary hierarchy. Formal designers are trained as independent creative individuals whereas craftspeople are trained through the hierarchical apprenticeship system from very young ages. They did not attend formal education until it was required by law. When they attend formal education, the cultural inhibition of hierarchy is prevalent. For example, in past research, where designers and craftspeople collaborated, designers retained their professional jargon and methods as a means of negotiation. Reports indicated cases where craftspeople perceived the design episteme as superior, prompting rejection of participation. In addition, when craftspeople were asked how they came up with a design idea, there were intuitive responses such as ‘it came from inside me’.66 In formal design education and practice, a rationalization of the design activity based on conscious reasoning is expected.67 An intuitive response is discounted in formal design. More importantly, an encounter between two fundamentally separate epistemes was possible, perhaps required, in the presence of extraprofessional relationship making between designers and craftspeople. Within a professional context, this encounter could only be a clash. Research indicates that cooperation between designers and craftspeople does not entail a mere professional relationship, because the design and craft epistemes are different. In a preferred scenario, a social bond is required. An encounter of these two epistemologies occurs without pre-plan, on its own. It has a unique space, time and context. It has an aura specific to its zeitgeist. Therefore, beginning from an identification of the potential clash and the necessity for cooperation, attempts to unite or separate these two epistemologies require in-depth research. Referring to Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,68 instrumentalizing this encounter initiates a ‘cult value’ (magic or mystery) and hence opens up the responsibility of envisaging new epistemologies that do not perpetuate a political ‘us’ and ‘them’. In further research, the nature of the relationships between craftspeople and designers should be investigated to see where crafts’ holistic nature and integrity can be recognized. In Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand, McCullough argued that with digital technologies, crafts would be valorized to the extent that its products could compete with industrial production. Although certain craft practices gained some competitive advantage with technology and marketing

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knowledge, in the Turkish context they are far from competing with industrial products.69 However, the meeting of craft and technology in Turkey has highlighted the meaning of making in the everyday, other than the binary perspective of craft versus mass production. The political content of the clash between design and craft under the rubric of class in Turkey has some similarities with the perception of craft and its practitioners in India. Although the definition and relationship of craft and design are similar, a caste system was not present in Turkey. Nevertheless, the relationship of craft, design and class in Turkey needs further investigation.

Notes 1 A. DeNicola and C. M. Wilkinson-Weber, ‘Designs on Craft: Negotiating Artisanal Knowledge and Identity in India’, in Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization and Capitalism, ed. Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber and Alicia Ory DeNicola (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 79–98. 2 Ibid., 83. 3 C. Kaya and B. (Yancatarol) Yagiz, ‘Design in Informal Economies: Craft Neighborhoods in Istanbul’, Design Issues 27, no. 2 (2011): 59–71. 4 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 5 Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through Craft (London: Berg Publishers, 2007). 6 Susan Luckman, Craft and the Creative Economy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 7 Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997). 8 Karl Marx, Capital: An Abridged Edition (Oxford World’s Classics) (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008). 9 ‘All we need do is simply to open our eyes, to leave the dark world of metaphysics and the false depths of the “inner life” behind, and we will discover the immense human wealth that the humblest facts of everyday life contain’. Henri LeFebvre, Critique de la vie Quotidien [Critique of Everyday Life] (Paris: L'Arche, 1997), 8. 10 Henri LeFebvre, Dialectical Materialism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 9. 11 Michel de Certeau, L’Invention du Quotidien [The Practice of Everyday Life] (Paris: Gallimard, 1990). 12 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Point, 2014). 13 Early research and practice on the interaction of craft and design, although rare and marginalized could be further studied in research by Secil Satir, who was initially trained as an applied art teacher of flower making and later pursued both interior architecture and industrial design degrees in Devlet

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Tatbiki Güzel Sanatlar Yüksek Okulu (State Academy of Applied Arts) and in Gesamthochschule Kassel consecutively. 14 R. O. Arik, Les Fouilles d’Alaca Höyük [The Excavations of Alacahoyuk] (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu [Turkish Historical Society], 1937); Ian Hodder, The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Catalhoyuk (New York: Thames & Hudson, Reprint edition, 2011). 15 Henry Glassie, Turkish Traditional Art Today (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). 16 Ibid. 17 G. Karakuş, ‘A Manifesto for Design and Craft in Turkey in the Twenty-First Century’, in From Crafts to Design, ed. Merve Yucel (Istanbul: Istanbul Modern, 2015), 14–19. http:​/​/zan​​aatta​​ntasa​​rima.​​istan​​bulmo​​der​n.​​org, 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Halil Inalcik, ‘The Hub of the City: The Bedestan of Istanbul’, in Studies in Ottoman Social and Economic History, ed. Halil Inalcik (London: Variorum Reprints, 1985), 1–17. 21 A. Coskun Orlandi and Y. Kösebay Erkan, ‘Value Creation in Jewelry Fabrication Today: Exploring the Interrelations of Crafts and Innovation Through the Case of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul’, 11th European Academy of Design Conference Proceedings, 22–24 April 2015 (Paris: Descartes University Institute of Psychology). https​:/​/ww​​w​.aca​​demia​​.edu/​​33039​​122​/V​​ ALUE_​​CREAT​​ION​_I​​N​_JEW​​ELLER​​Y​_FAB​​RICAT​​ION​_T​​ODAY_​​EXPLO​​RING_​​ THE​_I​​NTERR​​ELATI​​ONS​_O​​F​_CRA​​FTS​_A​​ND​_IN​​NOVAT​​ION​_T​​HROUG​​H​_THE​​_​ CASE​​_OF​_T​​HE​_GR​​AND​_B​​AZAAR​​_OF​_I​​STANB​​UL 22 Karakuş, ‘A Manifesto for Design and Craft in Turkey in the Twenty-First Century’; Gulname Turan, ‘Craft and Design in the Early Turkish Republic’ (Türkiye'de Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi Zanaat ve Sanayi Üretiminde Tasarım) (Unpublished PhD thesis, Graduate School of Social Sciences, Istanbul Technical University, 2005). 23 Turan, ‘Craft and Design in the Early Turkish Republic’. 24 S. Gürdere Akdur and H. Kaygan, ‘Social Design in Turkey through a Survey of Design Media: Projects, Objectives, Participation Approaches’, The Design Journal 22, no. 1 (2019): 51–71. 25 Karakuş, ‘A Manifesto for Design and Craft in Turkey in the Twenty-First Century’. 26 C. Kaya Pazarbasi, P. Ozemir and E. Ercis, ‘Knowledge Sharing Between Designers and Craftspeople in Turkey: Development of A Platform’, Milli Folklor 31, no. 121 (2019): 141–51. 27 ‘atlas is based on a social responsibility model supporting the local and Syrian women living in Harran to generate their economic independence by being at the core of the production process at the felt, wood, weaving and ceramic ateliers developed in ADEM (Family Support Centre) within the Governorship of Harran’. https://www​.atlasharran​.com​/en​/story/ 28 Ibid.

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29 M. Kahveci, ‘21. Yüzyıla Girerken Geleneksel Türk El Sanatları’ [Traditional Turkish Handcrafts While Entering the Twenty-First Century] Folkloristik (1998): 387–97; I. Ozturk, ‘Türk El Sanatlarının Günümüzdeki Durumu (Tarihçe, Sorunlar, Öneriler)’ [The Condition of Turkish Handcrafts Today, History, Problems, Suggestions], Sanat Dergis 7 (2010): 67–75. 30 Ozturk, ‘Türk El Sanatlarının Günümüzdeki Durumu’. 31 N. Gunay, ‘XIX. Yüzyıldan Günümüze Maraş’taki Ekonomik ve Sosyal Değişikliklerin Şehirdeki Bazı Geleneksel Meslekler Üzerindeki Olumsuz Etkileri’ [The Negative Impact of Economical and Social Change in Maraş on Some Traditional Occupations from Nineteenth Century to Today], Milli Folklor 22, no. 86 (2010): 163–73. 32 A. Odekan, ‘A Resource for Design: Traditional Handicrafts from Anatolia’, in Turkish Delight, ed. G. Gunaltay and B. Kohl (Berlin: Conrad Citydruck & Copy GmbH, 2008), 19–53. 33 A. Uslu and T. Kiper, ‘Turizmin Kültürel Miras Üzerine Etkileri: Beypazarı/ Ankara Örneğinde Yerel Halkın Farkındalığı’ [’The Impact of Tourism on Cultural Heritage: The Consciousness of Local Residents in the Example of Beypazari/Ankara’], Tekirdağ Ziraat Fakültesi Dergisi 3, no. 3 (2006): 305–14. 34 S. Etikan and T. Çukur, ‘Kırsal Turizm Faaliyetlerinin Çomakdağ-Kızılağaç Köyü El Sanatları Üzerine Etkisi’, Art-e Sanat Dergisi 4, no. 8 (2011): 1–15. 35 A. E. Coskun Orlandi, ‘21.Yüzyılda Türkiye Mücevher Endüstrisinde KatmaDeğer Dinamiği Olarak Endüstri Tasarımı ve Küresel Rekabet: “Made in Italy” Örneği Üzerinden Bir Model Önerisi’ [‘Industrial Design and Global Competition as Added-Value Dynamics in Jewellery Industry in Turkey in the Twenty-First Century’] (Unpublished PhD thesis, Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi, 2009); B. Armatli Köroğlu, Tanyel Ozelci Eceral and Aysu Ugurlar, ‘The Story of a Jewelry Cluster in Istanbul Metropolitan Area: Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı)’, Gazi University Journal of Science 22, no. 4 (2009): 383–94. 36 Orlandi and Erkan, ‘Value Creation in Jewelry Fabrication Today’. 37 Ibid. 38 A. Kiyak Ingin, ‘Kentsel Ölçekte Tasarım- Üretim İlişkisi: Şişhane Örneği’ [Design and Production Relation on Urban Scale: The Case of Şişhane], III. Ulusal Tasarım Kongresi Bildiri Kitabı [Proceedings Book of the 3rd National Design Conference] (Istanbul: Istanbul Technical University, 2006), 224–39. 39 A. Kiyak Ingin, ‘The Crafts, Once Again: A Review of the Relationship Between Design and Istanbul’s Craft System’, in From Crafts to Design, ed. Yucel, 20–5. http:​/​/zan​​aatta​​ntasa​​rima.​​istan​​bulmo​​d​ern.​​org 40 Akdur and Kaygan, ‘Social Design in Turkey through a Survey of Design Media’. 41 Karakuş, ‘A Manifesto for Design and Craft in Turkey in the Twenty-First Century’. 42 Orlandi and Kösebay Erkan, ‘Value Creation in Jewelry Fabrication Today’. 43 B. Merve Aktaş and M. A. Mäkelä, ‘Craft Dynamics: Empowering Felt Making Through Design’, Nordes 7 (2017): DESIGN+POWER, www​.nordes​.org.

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44 A. M. Ihatsu, Craft, Art-Craft or Craft-Design? In Pursuit of the British Equivalent for the Finnish Concept ‘käsityö’. (Joensuu, FI: University of Joensuu, 1998). 45 Aktaş and Mäkelä, ‘Craft Dynamics’. 46 ‘The State of Design: Towards an Assessment of the Development of Industrial Design in Turkey’, METU Journal of Faculty of Architecture 13, no. 1–2 (1993): 31–51. Alpay Er points out the significantly high number of female graduates of industrial design and states that industrial design was misunderstood as an ‘arty and classy’ and ‘soft’ profession in Turkey although it was a ‘hard’ profession in the West. Later Pınar Kaygan stated that industrial design was seen as ‘arty’ or ‘real’ meaning making pleasure for the senses versus use of technology and its association with gender based on narratives from Turkey. Pinar Kaygan, ‘“Arty” versus “Real” Work: Gendered Relations between Industrial Designers and Engineers in Interdisciplinary Work Settings’, The Design Journal 17, no. 1 (2014): 73–90. I am a female industrial designer who has designed numerous ‘real’ and ‘hard’ products manufactured by large factories and exported in masses. I received no recognition including for vehicle design projects where I not only designed the interior but also the exterior. 47 Kaya and Yagiz, ‘Design in Informal Economies’. 48 Çiğdem Kaya, ‘Designer as Enabler: A Methodology of Intervention for Designers’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, 2011). 49 Michael Polanyi theorized about tacit knowledge in his book The Tacit Dimension (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). 50 Kaya, ‘Designer as Enabler’; C. Kaya, P. Ozemir and E. Ercis, ‘Knowledge Sharing Between Designers and Craftspeople in Turkey: Development of A Platform’, Milli Folklor 121 (2019): 141–51. 51 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 52 Kaya, ‘Designer as Enabler’. 53 Ibid. 54 O. Von Busch and C. Kaya Pazarbasi, ‘Just Craft: Capabilities and Empowerment in Participatory Craft Projects’, Design Issues 34, no. 4 (2018): 66–79. 55 Ibid. 56 Amartya Sen, Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam, NL: Elsevier, 1985). 57 Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Belknapp, 2011). 58 DOBAG is an abbreviation for Doğal Boya Araştırma ve Geliştirme Projesi [Natural Dye Research and Development Project]. In this research and development project initiated by German chemistry teacher Harald Bohmer in the 1980s, a group of craftspeople and researchers worked to increase the quality of kilim rugs made by women in the Aegean region of Turkey, mainly by using natural dyes.

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59 Busch and Pazarbasi, ‘Just Craft’. 60 C. Kaya and K. Gelmez, ‘Grassroots Empowerment with Design in a Community of Practice in Turkey’, Journal of Arts and Communities 5, no. 1 (2014): 55–72. 61 Pazarbasi, Ozemir and Ercis, ‘Knowledge Sharing between Designers and Craftspeople in Turkey’. 62 C. Kaya and B. Yagiz (Yancatarol), ‘Design in Informal Economies: Craft Neighborhoods in Istanbul’. 63 Ibid. 64 http://www​.neferka​.design​/about 65 Interview with Eli Bensusan, September 2020. 66 Author’s translation. In Turkish ‘İçimden geldi’. refers to an emotional subjective spontaneous gut feeling. 67 N. Bayazit, ‘Investigating Design: A Review of Forty Years of Design Research’, Design Issues 20, no. 1, (2004): 16–29. There are two major schools of rationalization of the design process which have influenced design education and practice. These are the Bauhaus School and the cybernetics movement. 68 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (London: Fontana, 1969), 214–18. 69 M. Kadir Altintas, ‘Kaybolmaya Yüz Tutmuş Geleneksel Türk El Sanatkârlarının Karşı Karşıya Bulunduğu Ticari Sorunların Analizi’ [The Analysis of Commercial Problems of Disappearing Turkish Handcrafts Practitioners], Bilig 77 (Spring 2016): 157–82.

5 Leisure and livelihood A Socioeconomic reading of craft in Australia and Egypt Anne-Marie Willis

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hat is craft? It is different things in different places. This does not only mean different techniques, materials and artefacts, but that ‘craft’ has different meanings in different places. And here, meaning does not just refer to motifs, visual languages, styles, or even the deeper cultural meanings of artefacts, but also to the practice and context of craft – to the intrinsically political questions of who does it, how it is valued or not valued within and between cultures and by different social groups within a particular culture. The differences can be great, to the extent that across and between cultures, when we evoke ‘craft’ we are not all talking about the same ‘thing’. These differences and their implications will be explored via a deliberately extreme comparison of craft practices in Australia and Egypt. What prompted this essay was a temporal collision between two places. After four years of living in Cairo, I moved to Tasmania. The environments could not be more different. A city of 20 million people versus an island state of half a million people.1 A crumbling, ancient and car-choked metropolis versus lush forests, farmland and small towns. Low income and inadequate housing for the majority versus high income and comfortable houses for the majority. And this is to say nothing of cultural and political differences between and within each place. Craft has a presence in both Cairo and Tasmania. There are weavers, potters, jewellers, metalsmiths, leather workers, embroiderers, bookbinders

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and furniture makers in both places. But given the huge differences, can such practices be seen as equivalent? In comparing recent craft practices in Egypt and Australia, the point is not to resolve differences, or to seek an irreducible essence of craft. It is, rather, to argue against uncritical deployment of generalized Eurocentric notions about the nature of craft and its intrinsic value, and the transposition of these ideas to other places and people. In this sense, the comparison is informed by the politics of decoloniality.2 The argument will be developed via a descriptive account of the craft practices of Australia and Egypt focusing on conditions of production and consumption, and the identity and status of craft practitioners. Both nations have outstanding craft practitioners, but what follows is not about individuals, it is about perceptions, and the actuality of craft in the different socioeconomic contexts of Australia and Egypt. Explicit and implicit assumptions of various social actors about the value of craft will be drawn out and argued with, because so many of the claimed benefits of craft are actually undermined by actions seeking to support it. This observation applies particularly to the work of non-government organizations (NGOs) in promoting craft as a means for the empowerment of the women of impoverished communities in Egypt and many other parts of the world. Power, of course, is at the heart of the political, and it operates at multiple levels from the barely perceptible and taken-for-granted through to the overt and oppressive actions of social actors or institutions across all domains of socialeconomic-cultural existence. In this sense, ‘the political’ is to be distinguished from ‘politics’ which refers to the formal structures of the contestation of different interests – political parties, governments, policies, etc.3 The topic is large, and the argument will be advanced mainly by symptomatic readings of reports on craft practice in Australia and Egypt and my own observations.4 Jessica Hemmings’ idea of the ‘smallness of craft’ will provide a framing.

The smallness of craft Jessica Hemmings has argued that many researchers and writers on craft tend to overclaim its power, this being prevalent in academia where craft has had to legitimate itself vis à vis established disciplines. This overclaiming is especially prevalent within the discourse of craftivism, which asserts craft as politically empowering, often based upon a limited repertoire of continually reiterated examples.5 Hemmings argues that what needs to be engaged instead is craft’s inadequacy in the face of ‘the scale of the social problems that surround it’, and that ‘the smallness of craft’ needs to be acknowledged and investigated.6

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Instead of engaging craft practices directly, Hemmings demonstrates this by turning to literature: selected novels and short stories from Chilean, Indian and Zimbabwean writers in which craft appears incidentally as part of the lives of characters.7 Analysing these narrative moments of making clay figures, carving wood animals, knitting, sewing quilts and repairing shoes, she finds that ‘empowerment created by the production of craft remains brutally limited . . . [it] does little to alleviate the troubled lives of characters’ and is shown as ‘tiring labor for at best, meagre financial remuneration’.8 We will return to her observations when considering the craft-as-empowerment claims of many NGOs.

Sites of craft: the Tasmanian Craft Fair and Islamic Cairo You arrive at the picturesque town of Deloraine on the Meander River, surrounded by big sky, green fields and mountain ranges. Signs direct you to an open paddock, where smiling volunteers guide you to park your car in perfect alignment with all the others. You walk across the grass, buy a ticket and enter the first pavilion of the Tasmanian Craft Fair. Described in promotional material as the largest working craft fair in Australia, it began forty years ago selling the work of local artists and craftspeople. The event grew, and now runs for four days every November attracting 20,000 visitors and craftspeople from all over Australia. The work ranges from high end musical instruments, contemporary jewellery, fine timber furniture and ceramics, through to textiles, clothing, accessories, toys, homewares, decorative art and novelty-ware, all handthrown, spun, woven, dyed, collaged, patch-worked, embroidered, blockprinted, carved, engraved, forged and cast, with natural and recycled materials heavily featured (Figure 5.1). The Fair takes over the town, spreading across fourteen venues, taking in the specialist art and craft shops on the main street, and out to the showground where you can sample local gourmet food and watch the ‘working sheep dog trials’. Since its inception, the Tasmanian Craft Fair has been organized by the Rotary Club of Deloraine, and its proceeds have funded many local improvement projects over the years. There are now regular craft markets and fairs in towns and cities across Australia. Tasmania, despite its small population, has many craftworkers who sell their work in specialized shops and galleries, and at a weekly market at Salamanca Place in Hobart that attracts many tourists and locals. If you superimposed the area of Deloraine over a map of Cairo to take in El Gamaliya, Bab el Khalq, Muizz Street, Khan el Khalili bazaar, the ‘Tentmakers Street’ and Ahmad Maher Street you would have an area of 5 square

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FIGURE 5.1  Tasmanian Craft Fair: Glass Manifesto and Tasmanian Glassblowers (left) and Crick Hollow Pottery (Photo by Tony Fry). kilometres, just 10 per cent of Central Cairo. In this dense urban area crafts and trades have been practised for more than six hundred years. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of small workshops, some open to the street, others in rear courtyards and on the upper levels of buildings. You will find blacksmiths, sheet-metal workers, carpenters, furniture makers, shoemakers and tailors, as well as the decorative arts of glass-blowing, brass work, lanternmaking, gold and silver jewellery, alabaster, and mother-of-pearl inlay. Entering Muizz Street from the ancient city gate of Bab Al Futah, you walk past ancient buildings revealing the intricate work of stonemasons and carpenters. Here are building crafts dating back to Cairo’s origins which are still practised today such as decorative marble work in which small pieces are assembled into Islamic geometric designs used not only for restoration but also for new mosques; and mashrabiya, tiny pieces of hand-turned wood assembled into window screens that allow airflow while preventing a view to the interior.9 Muizz Street ends with the tourist market of Khan el Khalili, overflowing with mass-produced Pharaonic figures and lurid coloured belly dancing costumes. Crossing the road to a covered market and passing through the ancient city gate of Bab Zuweila you enter the famous Tentmakers Bazaar where men sit crosslegged, sewing khayamia, the colourful appliquéd cloth traditionally used for ceremonial tents and marquees, nowadays made as wall-hangings and cushion covers mainly for the tourist trade.10 You might then walk along Ahmad Maher Street towards the Islamic Museum, passing many blacksmiths, sheet metal and carpentry workshops. This is where local restaurants source cookware, where street food vendors obtain charcoal burners for roasting sweet corn, and where garden contractors can order tall wooden stepladders needed for trimming the hedges and lollipop trees of the gated compounds of outer Cairo. Further on you will pass street stalls and shops selling mass-produced clothing that could have been made anywhere in the world, alongside fruit, vegetables,

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dried beans, nuts, packaged snack food, live chickens, pigeons and rabbits. And rounds of flat bread cooling on racks outside bakeries, delivered around the neighbourhood by men on bicycles balancing trays on their heads, dodging motor scooters, tuk-tuks, vans, cars and pedestrians. This dense, vivid, noisy mix of old and new, local and international is not unique to Cairo. Small-scale artisanal production for local needs continues in villages, cities and megacities throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America (in other words, most of the world). From one perspective the cramped workshops, the noise, polluting materials and processes, the crude tools, and basic products turned out, can be seen as an undesirable remnant of the past that needs to be updated or eliminated – this is the mind-set of modernization. From another perspective such workshops can be viewed as elements of a sustainable local economy. While concern is expressed about decorative crafts ‘in danger of extinction’, practical crafts are overlooked, yet many of them ‘sustain that which sustains’ such as the making of specialized pots for cooking traditional food that is much more nutritious than the industrially manufactured snack food sold by street vendors (often financed by micro-loans from NGO poverty-reduction programmes).

Craftworker identity To further indicate the inappropriateness of a universal definition of craft, let us look at examples of the identity of the craftworker. The first is from an Australian report Crafting Self: Promoting the Making Self in the Creative Micro-Economy in which the researchers refer to the uncertain identity of contemporary craft practice evidenced in the proliferation of descriptors: craftsperson, artisan, artist, maker, designer, designer-maker.11 They note that craft practitioners they interviewed preferred to describe themselves by their medium/practice: ceramicist, jeweller, metalsmith, furniture maker, textile artist, glass artist and the like. The second example is from a report on craftspeople in Upper Egypt (that is, the upper reaches of the Nile in southern Egypt) in which the researcher tells of an extended family of potters who owned a small plot of land in a village. During the time of her research the family divided up their courtyard, demolished the kiln and built a house in its place because of pressure from two of the brothers who wanted to split off from the household. Their sister and her husband wanted to continue pottery but that was impossible without a kiln. The researcher reported: The woman is still hopeful that they would be able to resume pottery making somehow. For the time being, her husband will concentrate on

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his work as a pottery trader. The other two brothers are working in brickmaking. . . . When I asked if this new development meant they are no longer fakharaniyya (potters) they were horrified at my question. The woman said: ‘are we going to disown our origins? Of course not. Even if we don’t practice the profession we are still potters’.12 Though both the Australian and Egyptian craftspeople identified themselves by their craft, the meaning of that identification is worlds apart. ‘Ceramicist’ or ‘metalsmith’ for an Australian is a self-chosen identity, actualized via formal education and individual effort to establish a professional practice and a reputation. Crafting Self noted that Australian craftspeople are mostly university educated in visual arts, craft or design. As in other Western nations, Australian craftworkers see themselves, and are perceived as, creative individuals. The potters of Upper Egypt were born into their craft. Fakharaniyya is a hereditary identity that determines a livelihood based on making utilitarian items (such as the Zir, a ceramic pot for holding and cooling water). Fakharaniyya is also a tribal affiliation that mediates social relations within the larger community, determining status, circumscribing marriage and residence options.13 While the association between craft, tribal identity and social status is probably weaker now than when Saad conducted her study, especially due to the economic decline following the 2011 Revolution which affected the whole country and pushed more people into precarious informal wage labour, tribal structures have not entirely disappeared from Upper Egypt.14

Craft socioeconomics: Australia The differences between craft in Australia and Egypt arise from their dramatically different economic, social and demographic character. Put simply, Australia has a small population (25.3 million), a post-industrial economy, and high per capita income. Egypt has the reverse: a large population (100.4 million), a mixed economy and low per capita income.15 The two places are in different historical moments of time, and within each nation people exist in different temporalities. Craft is of little economic significance in Australia. It is not possible to identify it separately in census data: the Australian Bureau of Statistics classifies craft as part of the subset of the Creative Arts industry, ‘a variety of occupations which rely on creative expression’ which includes painters, sculptors, writers and composers, with the 2011 census identifying 648 sculptors and 459 ceramicists/potters.16 The National Association of Visual Arts similarly

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defines craft as creative expression.17 Other reports show the low incomes of art and craft practitioners, indicated by their titles: Do You Really Expect To Get Paid? and What’s Your Other Job?18 But artist incomes are only low in the Australian context, certainly not in global terms, and while the latter title is intended as facetious, the point is that other jobs are actually available, which is not the case for the vast majority of Egyptian craftspeople. Crafting Self gives a picture of Australian craftworkers as micro-enterprises and, as such, requiring skills beyond their craft: product positioning, pricing, marketing, stock control, cash flow, and, of course, a carefully crafted online identity. Rather than the optimistic hype of the internet as easy access to the global marketplace, the report tells of the increasing time craftspeople are having to spend online creating a social media identity and maintaining it across multiple sites. As the authors say, having an online professional identity is now a baseline for creative professionals; it proves you exist, but will not build sales by itself.19 Craft gains its significance in Australia and other Western nations in the context of the decline of manual labour, whereby ‘doing something by hand’ moves into the domain of leisure. A recent survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics of participation in cultural activities found that craft was the most popular, practised by 56 per cent of women and 24 per cent of men.20 The survey defined craft as including ‘knitting, embroidery, cross stitch, tapestries, quilting, appliqué, dressmaking or tailoring, jewelry making, beading, scrapbooking, card making, collage, wood crafts, pottery, ceramics and mosaics’. These are mainly hobby crafts, done for personal fulfilment, rather than income. That amateur crafters outnumber professionals is perhaps not surprising, and while there would be some overlap (the hobbyist who sells to friends), the pattern would be similar in other Western nations. All of these busy hands, however, make no difference to the system of mass production that craft advocates have sought to oppose since the time of the Arts and Crafts movement. Hobby craft is firmly in the domain of consumption; much of it could be regarded as consumerism masquerading as creative production, each craft requiring the purchase of specialized equipment and materials, often in kit form, with limited use beyond the particular craft activity. In Western economies, the craft supplies industry probably generates much higher turnover than the output of craftworkers, amateurs and professionals added together. An interesting (and short-sighted) qualification in the ABS survey of participation in cultural activities is that respondents were asked to exclude home DIY projects, ‘mending, repairing and maintenance for clothing and wood craft’, the assumption being that these are routine and ordinary. Yet repair, as Richard Sennett and others have argued, ‘is an all-important aspect of technical craftsmanship’, a way of learning how something works by pulling

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it apart.21 The need for repair forces attention onto the material construction of something, it can prompt innovation, retrofitting, repurposing. And then there are the skilled practices of restoration and renovation, and techniques of mending (of china, of textiles). The sad contemporary reality is that repair has become increasingly impossible because manufactured things are not designed to be disassembled and are produced and sold so cheaply that replacement is easier. Mending, repair and maintenance could be regarded as endangered practices, in the same way as many traditional handicrafts are. The low cost and ready availability of mass-produced items is what constantly marginalizes the handcrafted product, even when it is functional (tableware, etc.), relegating it to the display shelf or ‘for special occasions only’. Against this, Tony Fry has elaborated a politics of ‘craft remade’ within a quality-based economy with the ‘general aim . . . (of) reconfiguring the relation between production and consumption’ in which long-life products, expanded services, and new high-level maintenance and repair would be key elements.22

Craft socioeconomics: Egypt The practice of repair in Egypt is economically driven. The floating of the Egyptian Pound in November 2016 reduced its value by nearly 50 per cent – the float was a condition imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order for the Egyptian government to access a loan – greatly reducing the purchasing power of wage-earners. This has pushed many people to buy less, and especially to keep their clothes longer. The cobbler and the raffa (a tailor specializing in repair) are attracting more clientele, even t-shirts are being brought in for mending. Shoemakers on the verge of closing down are now doing good business repairing not only shoes, but also handbags, schoolbags, anything that can be patched and stitched on their heavy-duty sewing machines, and some are cleaning trainers (sneakers) ‘to look as good as new’.23 While craftspeople and what they produce are statistically insignificant in the Australian economy, in Egypt craft is a means of gaining a livelihood; it is rarely practised for leisure. The economic significance of craft is registered by the fact that ‘Handicrafts’ (handmade textiles, pottery, porcelain, ceramics, woodwork, metal handicrafts, carpets and jewellery) comprise one of the nineteen Chambers of the Federation of Egyptian Industries, with the claim of employing four million workers.24 The handicrafts industry is linked closely to tourism which, beginning with President Sadat’s ‘open door’ policies of the 1980s, became an increasingly important part of the Egyptian economy.25 Traditional handicrafts from the different regions were adapted for the tourist

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market: for example, the geometric patterned rugs and basketry of Aswan; the woven textiles from the village of Nagada; the intricate embroidery of Sinai; other styles of embroidery from Siwa. Handicraft producers and artisans have low social status, even those who produce fine decorative work. In her account of attempts to establish an official Centre for Traditional Crafts in Cairo, Reem Saad noted one of the problems was that craftsmen were hired as low paid workers and treated accordingly: the craftsmen I met see themselves as creative artists rather than craftsmen . . . In a place where classical hierarchy between administrative and manual work operates, they are seen as inferior to the administrative staff. Y. said: ‘If the state was really sincere about promoting crafts, this place would not have 70 administrators and 30 craftsmen’.26 This goes to the class divisions of Egyptian society. If you are ‘high class’ you don’t work with your hands; you avoid physical labour, hiring ‘low class’ people to do cleaning, gardening, car washing, pick-ups and deliveries, with many families employing full-time maids and drivers. Among the middle and upper classes, there is no culture of do-it-yourself, while hobby crafts and home sewing are almost unknown.27 As Egyptian sociologist, Mona Abaza, has indicated, a small sector of the elite has cultivated a taste for Egyptian handicrafts, going against the grain of upper class taste, which since the early twentieth century has been firmly European (and later, American) especially in fashion.28 Shahira Mehrez built a collection of the regional styles of Egyptian peasant clothing, organizing fashion shows in the embassies and cultural institutes of Cairo;29 some Western-educated Egyptian artists and designers have adapted elements of, and valorized, ‘traditional crafts, ethnic-looking architectural styles, furniture, costumes and jewellery’ creating a taste regime differentiated ‘from the upper middle class majority of Westernized taste’.30 For some, whose Western education has been extensive, the take-up of Egyptian ethnic culture is part of their own search for an identity. Yet, the elite’s view of peasant and nomad cultures (ignored, or despised by their parents’ generation) is mostly an aestheticized one rooted in Western exoticization of the ethnic, and replicated globally.31

NGOs and craft One constituency that constantly over-claims the power of craft is the NGO sector. A widespread strategy to combat poverty in Egypt and other parts of

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the world is to focus on rural women and traditional handicrafts. The claim, and the appeal to donors, is that the revitalization of craft is a pathway to the ‘empowerment of women’ by improving their chances of earning an income. Handicraft is favoured because, for cultural reasons, many women do not work outside their homes, and they already have homebased skills such as spinning and weaving. In heritage discourse, traditional crafts practised by only a few people are referred to as ‘endangered’. In the villages, such crafts would be viewed differentially: mourned by those who had excelled in them, regarded as unwanted tedious labour by others; or as old fashioned and undesirable by youth with different ambitions. According to the logic of the development industry, traditional crafts can be revitalized if directed towards the production of goods for aesthetic consumption by Western(ized) customers, especially tourists. This is not just a change of function, it is a different economy, requiring new knowledge and networks beyond the local. The empowerment discourse originated in the 1980s (its roots can be traced back further) in the politics of activists of the Global South opposed to Western developmentalism, seeking instead a process whereby ‘women and the poor gain awareness, individually and collectively, of the dynamics of dominance that marginalize them, and to build up capacities to radically transform inequitable economic, social, and political structures’.32 In her history of the empowerment discourse, Anne-Emmanuèle Calvès explains how empowerment became co-opted by international development institutions and ‘became a vague and falsely consensual concept’ that has ‘come to assimilate power with individual and economic decision-making, has de-politicized collective power into something seemingly harmonious and has been employed to legitimize top-down policies and programs’.33 Many small and medium sized Egyptian NGOs have adopted the same depoliticized, economistic rhetoric of empowerment, setting up projects claiming to empower impoverished rural women by training them in craft, design and entrepreneurial skills. This one is typical: ‘The organization (Badaweya)… provides the women training in technical skills, design development and entrepreneurship. …. Aiming to empower Bedouin women, support and develop the community and preserve centuries-old traditions.’34 This is extraordinarily ambitious, and to be successful would require lengthy training of highly motivated participants. The reality is large groups of women, many illiterate, attending training programmes of several days, rather than several months’ duration.35 The instruction is often delivered in classroom settings by visiting experts, conditions remote from those conducive to the cultivation of craftsmanship, that is, the acquisition of skills through lengthy, dedicated practice under guidance of an expert in that craft. A reality check: having completed several years of education, what percentage of university

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design graduates actually go on to establish successful enterprises and launch innovative products into the market? This recalls Hemmings’ remarks noted earlier about craft’s inadequacy to deal with social problems and empowerment being limited with little economic gain. This can be linked to the story of another researcher in Qena, Upper Egypt, who assisted a group of potters in getting connected to the electricity and water supply. This increased the value of the land, so they sold it and dispersed. She was disappointed because she’d only been trying to improve their quality of life, but instead they abandoned their craft. Reem Saad commented that such situations ‘push us to an uneasy hypothesis: that poverty is positively correlated with enduring traditional modes, including craft production’ and she asks whether preservation of traditional crafts can be ‘harmonized with the more important goal of improving the standard of living of the poor and marginal producers’.36 There are thousands of Egyptian NGOs, as well as international development agencies and foreign NGOs all dedicated to alleviating poverty. Many have been operating for more than fifty years, running programmes of skills training, health education and literacy classes. Yet the problems do not go away. There are two linked factors that prevent this model from being a force of transformation towards the elimination of disadvantage. The first is that the development organizations have their own agendas and community members have theirs, and they are usually not the same, nor are they the same within a community; there are misunderstandings and wilful misunderstandings.37 The second is that NGO development programmes are increasingly filling in for governmental neglect: they become permanent fixtures and create a structural dependency.38 The fundamental problem is that NGO craft initiatives, and their other income-generating projects for poor communities do not address the problem head-on, which is that an impoverished underclass is a structural part of the economy and the society, in which political power is tightly held by a small elite. NGO programmes for the people of urban informal areas and rural villages are thus a diversion. They would not be needed if there was equality of opportunity for all – fair wages, affordable healthcare and housing, and, linking all these, free access to good quality education. These are the conditions enjoyed, and taken for granted by the majority of Australians, and Australian craftworkers.

Conclusion Every November, when the Tasmanian Craft Fair is running at Deloraine, the Egyptian village of Tunis holds its Pottery and Handicrafts Festival. Like Deloraine’s, this event began forty years ago when a Swiss artist, Evelyne Porret,

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FIGURE 5.2 Work of graduates of the Fayoum Pottery School: Platter or wall plaque (unknown Fayoum potter). The design is based on decorative elements on front of houses of Tunis village Fayoum; Bowl by Mahmoud Elsherif. Photos by Tony Fry.

her husband and children, came to live in Tunis, among palm trees beside Lake Qaroun, near the town of Fayoum. She started making pottery. The children of the village watched her and she noticed how they played with mud from the stream making it into the shapes of tractors and animals. Evelyne Porret had worked with Egyptian architect Ramses Wissa Wassef on a project with children in Haraneya, Giza, and was impressed with the way he harnessed their talents.39 This gave her the idea of starting a pottery school. It took time, and there were bureaucratic hurdles, but the Fayoum Pottery School opened, and in time, some of the graduates set up studios in their houses (Figure 5.2). Tunis now has a reputation for its distinctive pottery. Visitors come from Cairo and overseas. Others were attracted. The respected artist Mohamed Abla established an Art Centre and Museum of Caricature. There is a modest eco-lodge.40 The organic development of the Fayoum Pottery School has been slow: it takes a long time to acquire craft skills. This contrasts with the programmes of large NGOs, where bureaucracies push on-the-ground staff and volunteers to deliver unrealistic goals in unfeasible timeframes; in the meantime, small NGOs are idealistic, often lacking the resources and knowledge to reach their aims. Craft as a means of economic development happens unintentionally. Its results are small, not spectacular. It happens where there are conditions for reciprocity, and it can take a lifetime. Political change – towards an equitable and quality-based economy – is on the same timeline.

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Notes 1 Tasmania’s population as at June 2019 was 534,000. See Australian Demographic Statistics, https://www​.abs​.gov​.au​/ausstats​/abs@​.nsf​/mf​/3101.0 The population of greater Cairo is 18.8 million (Cairo Governate 9.8 million plus Giza Governate 9 million). https​:/​/ww​​w​.cit​​ypopu​​latio​​n​.de/​​en​/eg​​​ypt​/a​​dmin/​ 2 Decoloniality demolishes the ‘post’ of postcolonialism, asserting that colonialism does not end with the arrival of political independence but continues as the imposed modes of thinking, fracturing of ways of being and of communities, and other destructions of colonialism continue through many generations. As Madina Tlostanova says, ‘Global coloniality . . . continues long after colonialism is over and flourishes in unexpected and not evident spheres of modern disciplines and academic divisions, in the production and distribution of knowledge, as well as in geo-historical and geo-political situations’. Decoloniality, as a discourse of scholars of the Global South, names a process, and one that must happen through ‘delinking from modernity/ coloniality and decolonizing our being, knowledge, perception, gender, and memory’. Madina V. Tlostanova, ‘What Is Coloniality of Knowledge?’ Design Philosophy Reader, ed. A.-M. Willis (Bloomsbury: London, 2019), 110. See also B. Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (London: Routledge, 2016) and W. Mignolo and A. Escobar, ed., Globalization and the Decolonial Option (London: Routledge, 2009). 3 The distinction between politics and the political underpins Tony Fry’s Design as Politics (Oxford: Berg, 2011), which also has much to say on how design and craft could be remade as political practices. 4 Living and working in Cairo 2013 to 2017 and visits 2018 and 2019. 5 Jessica Hemmings, ‘Rereading and Revising: Acknowledging the Smallness (Sometimes) of Craft’, Craft Research 9, no. 2 (2018): 273–86, 276. 6 Ibid., 274. 7 Hemmings discusses novels and short stories by Isabelle Allende, Rohinton Mistry, Yvonne Vera, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Brian Chikwava. 8 Hemmings, ‘Rereading and Revising’, 284. 9 For an illustrated account of the crafts of building, their history and contemporary applications see Agnieszka Dobrowolska, The Building Crafts of Cairo: A Living Tradition (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2005). 10 Khayamiya has been promoted internationally by Australian quilt-maker, Jenny Bowker, and art historian Sam Bowker, who has researched its history and contemporary contexts. See Sam Bowker, ‘The Urban Fabric of Cairo: Khayamiya and the Suradeq’, International Journal of Islamic Architecture 3, no. 2 (2014): 475–501; and Sam Bowker, ‘The Symmetry of Khaymiya and Quilting: International Relations of the Egyptian Tentmakers in the Early 2000s’, craft + design enquiry 6 (2014): 29–60. 11 Susan Luckman, Jane Andrew and Tracy Crisp, Crafting Self: Promoting the Making Self in the Creative Micro-Economy (Adelaide: School of Creative Industries, University of South Australia, 2018), 18–19. 12 Reem Saad, ‘Transformations of Marginality: Crafts and Craftspeople in Upper Egypt, Final Report’ (Cairo: Ford Foundation, 2007), 38–9.

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13 Saad, ‘Transformations of Marginality’, 7–8. Saad also notes that potters, unlike blacksmiths ‘do not carry the stigma of a “lowly origin”, as they are supposed to be . . . descendants of the Prophet’, 12. 14 ‘The share of informal wage employment outside fixed establishments has increased especially fast: from 12% of total employment in 2006 to 18% in 2012 to 23% in 2018. This form of employment is most vulnerable to job insecurity, as measured by irregularity of employment and involuntary parttime work. It also has some of the highest rates of exposure to occupational hazards and injuries’. Ragui Assaad, ‘Egyptian Economy Still Not Creating Good Jobs’, The Economic Research Forum, 21 October 2019. https​:/​/th​​eforu​​ m​.erf​​.org.​​eg​/20​​19​/10​​/21​/e​​gypti​​an​-ec​​onomy​​-stil​​l​-not​​-cr​ea​​ting-​​good-​​jobs/​ 15 Australia’s economy is 71 per cent service sector; Egypt’s mixed economy is 54 per cent service sector. 16 https://www​.abs​.gov​.au​/ausstats​/abs@​.nsf​/Lookup​/4172​.0main​ +features232014 17 ‘Craft: Original, handmade craft that is high in quality, innovative in its use of materials and aesthetic vision and has been made by a skilled craft practitioner (artist, designer, maker), in the areas of ceramics, fibre/ textiles, glass, woodwork, metalwork, jewelry, furniture and new technologies.’ And ‘Contemporary craft: Original, high quality, craft that was recently made and/or produced by a living craft practitioner and the result of an individual process of investigation and critical enquiry. This can include work that is designed by a practitioner and produced by another practitioner or machine process.’ Liana Heath and Joe Pasco, Mapping the Australian Craft Sector (Sydney: NAVA, 2014), 9. 18 David Throsby and Anita Zednik, ‘Do You Really Expect to Get Paid? An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia’ (Surry Hills, NSW: Australia Council for the Arts, 2010); and S. Cunningham and P. Higgs, ‘What’s Your Other Job? A Census Analysis of Arts Employment in Australia’ (Surry Hills, NSW: Australia Council for the Arts, 2010). 19 Luckman et al., Crafting Self, 41–2. 20 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Participation in Selected Cultural Activities, Australia, 2017-18 (Canberra: ABS, 2019), https://www​.abs​.gov​.au​/ausstats​/ abs@​.nsf​/mf​/4921.0 The survey measured active participation in the previous 12 months; ‘active’ meant playing a musical instrument rather than attending a concert, making art rather than visiting an exhibition, etc. It was conducted by phone, had 28,243 respondents and found that 31.4% of Australian adults participate actively in culture. Women had a higher participation rate (37%) than men (25%). 21 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 199–200. 22 Fry, Design as Politics, 64–5, 94–5, 139–40, 208. 23 Mai Samih, ‘Many Craftsmen in Egypt Are Developing Their Skills to Meet the Increasing Needs of Middle-class Customers’, 30 July 2019. http:​/​/eng​​ lish.​​ahram​​.org.​​eg​/Ne​​wsCon​​tent/​​7​/0​/3​​38488​​/Life​-​-Sty​​le​/0/​​Egypt​​-Deve​​lopin​​g​​ -the​​ir​-cr​​afts.​​aspx

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24 According Mosaad Omran, president of the Chamber of Handicrafts Industry in an interview with Egyptian Streets. https​:/​/eg​​yptia​​nstre​​ets​.c​​om​/20​​19​/10​​/17​ /t​​hree-​​handi​​craft​​-skil​​lsets​​-that​​-are​-​​dying​​-in​-e​​gypt/​ 25 Overseas visitor numbers declined dramatically after the Revolution of 2011 and the instability that followed. Since 2017 they have slowly started to increase. 26 Saad, ‘Transformations of Marginality’, 65. 27 The rarity of middle-class home craft (and the labyrinthine character of the city to an outsider) is captured in this exchange on a Cairo Expat Forum in 2014: 12 March: Where can one buy wool and knitting/crochet and craft things from? . . . Anyone know of anywhere? 13 March: I know someone who knits and they said there is a small shop in grand mall. Good luck! 13 March: Yes, Maadi grand mall. Ground floor near the entrance on the side of road 250. 21 March: There is another store that sells yarns and sewing supplies, just off of where the bridge descends before you get to Midan Horeyya. It’s called Tricot MM. The exact location on the Yellow Pages map isn’t quite right. If you turn right onto Rd. 100 . . . I’ve heard of another store downtown called Abd El Hady (‫ )الهادي عبد‬located in a small street left off 26th July after Sharia Emadeddin, heading towards the Attaba metro station . . . https​:/​/ww​​ w​.exp​​atfor​​um​.co​​m​/exp​​ats​/e​​gypt-​​expat​​-foru​​m​-exp​​ats​-l​​iving​​-egyp​​t​/369​​697​​-w​​ here-​​buy​-w​​ool​.h​​tml 28 This was disrupted from the 1980s onwards with increasing numbers of middle-class women starting to wear the hijab, and the subsequent arrival of ‘Islamic chic’ fashion. Mona Abaza, ‘Shifting Landscapes of Fashion in Contemporary Egypt’, Fashion Theory 11, no. 2/3 (2007): 281–97, 288–9. 29 Ibid., 291–4. 30 Saad, ‘Transformations of Marginality’, 53–4. 31 Abaza, ‘Shifting Landscapes of Fashion in Contemporary Egypt’, 294–5. 32 Anne-Emmanuèle Calvès, ‘Empowerment: The History of a Key Concept in Contemporary Development Discourse’, Revue Tiers Monde 200 (2009/4): 735–49, 746. 33 Ibid. 34 Interview with Sherif El Ghamrawy, founder of Hemaya and co-founder of Badaweya. https​:/​/ww​​w​.cha​​ngema​​kers.​​com​/M​​ENAwo​​men​/b​​log​/e​​mpowe​​ ring-​​women​​-and-​​reviv​​ing​-b​​​edoui​​n​-tra​​ditio​​ns 35 Reports on NGO projects are difficult to obtain. Annual Reports and case studies on the websites of such organizations are not very informative as their function is promotional, emphasizing the numbers of people who have benefitted from their programmes, which can seem impressive but often what is measured is just ‘people through the door’. A rare example of a publicly accessible detailed report is by Thaap Consultancy and Advisory

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Services, ‘Empowering Women Through Craft. UNESCO-Norway Funded Project: Mapping of Cultural Assets in Districts Multan and Bahawalpur, End of Assignment Report’ (Lahore: Thaap CAS, 2010). https​:/​/ww​​w​.aca​​demia​​ .edu/​​10203​​23​/EM​​POWER​​ING​_W​​OMEN_​​TH​ROU​​GH​_CR​​AFTS 36 Saad, ‘Transformations of Marginality’, 75. 37 Gwendolyn Kulick discusses some telling examples in ‘Conducting Design Research in Pakistan’s Craft Sector: Opportunities and Limitations’, Nordes: Design Ecologies, no. 6 (2015).https​:/​/ar​​chive​​.nord​​es​.or​​g​/ind​​ex​.ph​​p​/n13​​/arti​​ cle​/​v​​iew​/4​​40​/41​2 38 See Anne-Marie Willis and Eman Elbana, ‘Socially Engaged Design: A Critical Discussion with Reference to an Egyptian Village’, Design Philosophy Papers 14, no. 1–2 (2016): 3–57. 39 Ramses Wissa Wassef worked closely with Hassan Fathy whose ill-fated New Gourna village was the basis of his book Architecture of the Poor that became very influential internationally, if not in Egypt. 40 This account is based on a visit in 2015, and ‘From Mud to Art: The Proud Potters of Egypt Shaping Futures Through Clay’, Middle East Eye, 11 December 2019. https​:/​/ww​​w​.mid​​dleea​​steye​​.net/​​disco​​ver​/p​​otter​​y​-​rur​​al​eg​​ypt

PART 2

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6 The politics of craft and working without skill Reconsidering craftsmanship and the community of practice Alanna Cant

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hese days, ‘artisanal’ and ‘craft’ are everywhere. From cheese and beer to beauty products and landscaping services, in contemporary North American and Western European markets, these words now function as a shorthand to indicate goods that are ostensibly made in less mechanized forms of production than their industrially produced equivalents.1 Although the exact measure of artisanal objects’ ‘handmade-ness’ is highly variable and often impossible to determine, the ability to position one’s product as artisanally produced is lucrative in the twenty-first century.2 The renewed interest in craftwork is driven by particular emergent uppermiddle class dispositions that lightly critique – but do not reject – industrial capitalism and mass manufacturing. These dispositions are marked by the cultivation of taste, expertise and aesthetics that generally relate to lifestyles and consumption, rather than individuals’ political or working lives. At the heart of these perspectives is the implicit and explicit assumption that handmade products necessarily have a high level of quality, which derives from their maker’s skilfulness and satisfaction with their work, thus making them worthy of higher prices.3

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Craft, as it is colloquially understood, is therefore intimately connected to a particular ethics that places high value on producers’ learned skills, abilities, thoughtfulness and even pleasure.4 This ethics is neatly illustrated by the way that we use the term ‘craftsmanship’ to indicate precision, mastery and rigour, rather than simply the condition of working as a craftsperson, which is what the word grammatically suggests. 5 I want to draw attention to this semantic shift in this chapter. It is analytically important to do so, because this particular ethical understanding of craftsmanship has heavily influenced the way that craft scholars imagine the subject of our studies. We, too, tend to implicitly believe that handmade objects, food and drink are made through more satisfactory and less alienating processes than industrial goods. As I will discuss, this development is perfectly understandable from the perspective of researchers. However, one consequence is that certain kinds of craftspeople become invisible when we only approach craft in this way – particularly those who work at lower ends of artisanal commodity markets. This invisibility is decidedly political in nature, in ways that go beyond just issues of representation: it reinforces hierarchies of power and value among producers by excluding those craftspeople who do not fit the archetype of the skilful, satisfied artisan. As these hierarchies also inform markets for craftwork, they directly affect artisans’ livelihoods and well-being. As such, the semantic shift between craft as ‘something that is made by hand’ and craft as ‘something that is made by hand that manifests skill, perception, and quality’ engenders a political act. In order to highlight the consequences of this slippage, I will focus here on the concepts of ‘craftsmanship’ and the ‘community of practice’ (CoP) because they have been so useful to us as analytic frames. I do not intend this as a critique of the CoP approach per se; rather, I use CoP as a foil to question what and whom gets missed when we imagine artisanship as an ethical condition of being, rather than a category of person who makes things by hand. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research that I conducted with woodcarvers in Oaxaca, Mexico, I will show how the CoP approach does not account for artisans whose personalities and conditions of work mean that they regularly work ‘without skill’.6 While most of the artisans I worked with enjoyed the rhythm and flow of their craft, there were a few who resisted these qualities of the work and at times resented the conditions of economy and chance that made craftwork their fate. Since they did not perceive their work as a satisfying engagement with materials and form, formulations of ‘craftsmanship’ and the ‘community of practice’ are not sufficient for understanding their experiences. I begin by exploring the ways that ethical understandings of craftsmanship have influenced scholarly approaches to craft, and how the CoP approach reinforces the exclusion of certain kinds of artisans. I then present the cases of

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two artisans to highlight how their perceptions of their work are not reflected in the ideals of craftsmanship or the CoP formulation.

Craftsmanship and the community of practice the way [the old cabinetmaker] manages his budget, his time or his body, his use of language and choice of clothing are fully present in his ethic of scrupulous, impeccable craftsmanship and in the aesthetic of work for work’s sake which leads him to measure the beauty of his products by the care and patience that have gone into them.7 This description by Pierre Bourdieu of the relationship between the cabinetmaker’s habitus and his artisanal skill would not appear out of place if it had been written a century earlier by William Morris or John Ruskin. These Arts and Crafts thinkers sought to convince the public of the ethical value of craft by arguing that they were a true expression of ‘man’s happiness in his labour’.8 While we may admire these thinkers for their desire for social justice, we need a broader and more critical view of the relationship between artisans and their works. What of the cabinetmakers who do not live their lives by an aesthetic of work for work’s sake, yet still make cabinets? It is not a coincidence that researchers of craft would be predisposed to find that skilled practices are intrinsically satisfying and engaging: as scholars we tend to be interested in those things that people themselves find interesting and worthwhile.9 As Soumhya Venkatesan observes, studies of skill are most frequently focused on those skills that are valued by artisans and the larger societies in which they work, noting that this has given scholarly understandings of artisanal work a particular flavour of engaged consciousness and deep meaningfulness.10 As researchers, we are also often drawn to topics that connect with our own personal interests and experiences. It is not surprising to discover that Trevor Marchand, who has produced fascinating ethnographies of building and carpentry in Yemen, Mali and the UK, has trained in architecture and carpentry.11 Or that Richard Sennett, whose book The Craftsman has had wide general appeal beyond the academy, has played the piano and the cello since childhood.12 It is not a stretch to see that because we find pleasure in skilled activity, we are interested in questions of skill itself and gravitate towards research participants who also take pleasure in their work. This synergy between researcher and participant has been extremely productive: apprenticeship and co-authorship have become important research strategies, part of what Tim Ingold describes as ‘knowing from the inside’.13 In working alongside our research participants, rather than just observing their

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tasks, ethnographers of craft have made important insights into the cognitive, didactic, embodied and moral processes through which objects and artisans come into being.14 This emphasis on ‘making’, rather than production, has been analytically as well as methodologically fruitful. It has allowed us to pry apart questions of materials from materiality; authorship from production; and the larger social experiences of artisanship from the chaîne opératoire.15 The downside to such an approach is that the majority of current research has been about people who want to cultivate their skills and who enjoy doing their work.16 For example, Sennett argues near the end of The Craftsman that nearly anyone can become a good craftsperson with sufficient work and attention, without ever asking in what circumstances people may not be able, or even want, to do so.17 For Sennett, the opposite of skill is not an absence of skill, but the coup de foudre, the sudden inspiration.18 This position is, in a sense, tautological, since both of these conditions assume an end-result of quality work and satisfaction for the maker (albeit by different paths); in choosing cases to study the nature of craftsmanship, Sennett only compares examples where craftsmanship is already evident to him. A similar ethical position to that of craftsmanship discourses is also at the heart of the diverse analytical approaches that are now captured under the term ‘community of practice’, or CoP.19 In the past thirty years, CoP has become a foundational concept through which scholars of craft understand the experience of mutual participation that develops among people as they learn, make and create together. As a theory of skill acquisition through collective experience, CoP is certainly not limited to the study of craft: it has been applied to such diverse groups of people as science teachers, public administrators and American ‘nerd girls’.20 Coined by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger in 1991, the term describes people who are engaged ‘in an activity system about which participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means for their lives and for their communities’.21 The utility of the concept for social theorists lies in the way it links an understanding of human relationships and sociality to a broadly conceived view of learning, one that extends well beyond formal classroom-like situations where individuals occupy clearly defined teaching and learning roles. Instead, it captures how people are brought together by a specific need, and how their work to resolve this need through collective learning creates bonds between them over time (causing them to become a ‘community’). The model then goes on to explore how these learning experiences and bonds of belonging dramatically influence the collective and individual practices of ‘community’ members.22 Although Lave and Wenger recognize that power and ‘conditions of legitimacy’ play a role in how communities of practice develop and change over time, as William Warner Wood has discussed, they have not investigated

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the implications of these for their model.23 The CoP approach identifies its subjects of investigation by looking at circumstances where the ‘community’ has already come into being, and works backwards to understand how they came together in the first place. In many ways, this is a necessity of the model itself, as it may be impossible to predict where and when such organic communities of learning will develop. However, as with Sennett’s understanding of craftsmanship, the result is a limited view of a given practice. The model cannot fully capture the experiences of those actors who are excluded from (or at least not wholly integrated into) the community of practice, since it is precisely shared learning and bonding that is the main interest of the CoP approach. Actors, practices, opinions and experiences that fall outside of these shared domains remain invisible. In the case of craftwork, the artisanal community of practice is identified by looking for those artisans who endorse or at least acknowledge the norms, standards, aesthetics and knowledge relating to production and marketing of that craft. Not all members of the community may meet its ideal standards, but they will acknowledge them, nonetheless. This delineation of the craft community may be sufficient in those artisanal fields where producers are primarily motivated by their personal interests, enthusiasm for, or ‘calling to’, the craft.24 However, in fields such as Oaxacan woodcarving, where most producers have become artisans, at least initially, out of economic necessity and lack of viable alternatives, it does not make sense to start from an assumption that all individuals working as artisans are accounted for by a CoP approach. In the remainder of this chapter, I present two individuals from my larger ethnographic research with Oaxacan woodcarvers. As should be clear, my intention is not to suggest that their experiences are somehow representative of artisans working in Oaxacan woodcarving or larger fields of Mexican craft production. Instead, I want to highlight how their structural positions and personal dispositions effectively make them invisible to analytic frameworks that imagine artisanship to be an ethical condition of being (someone who works with skill; a member of a community of practice) rather than just naming a person who makes things by hand. In drawing out these examples, I aim to show that such models of artisanship are not only analytically limiting but are also politically problematic, as those who do not already conform to archetypical ideas about artisans and craftwork become unrepresentable within them.

Working without skill in Oaxaca Oaxacan woodcarvings, also known as alebrijes, provide a particularly good opportunity to investigate artisanal practices beyond those driven by an

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ethics of skill and collective learning. This is because, unlike some other forms of craftwork that are consumed through globalized art markets, the woodcarvings cannot be directly connected to long-standing traditions of cultural production.25 Because of this, there are few fixed norms through which woodcarvings are made and there is no formal apprenticeship structure through which younger artisans learn their craft. The carvings are generally purchased by tourists, ethnic/folk art collectors and gallery owners from Mexico, Canada and the United States; the character of these markets means that Oaxacan woodcarving is for the most part aesthetically conservative.26 The village of San Martín Tilcajete, where I have conducted research since 2008, is one of three main communities in the Central Valleys region of Oaxaca where the woodcarvings are produced. San Martín is arguably now the most successful of the villages, yet only very few families have been able to consolidate their work into a measure of financial stability. Many must combine income from woodcarving with other activities, such as running small corner shops, driving taxis and working in the tourism service sector. While higher end producers are able to dedicate themselves exclusively to woodcarving, only one family has become truly economically secure through this work, and their success appears to their neighbours to be difficult, if not impossible, to replicate.27 While woodcarving may not offer real security for most residents, 60 per cent of the village’s households are involved in their production.28 This is not at all surprising given the lack of alternatives, a consequence of larger conditions of economic and social underdevelopment in the region: over 50 per cent of households in San Martín are economically dependent on remittances from migrants who work in the United States, usually without visas.29 For those who wish to stay in Oaxaca, woodcarving appears to be one of the few options available that does not have significant educational or material barriers to entry. The costs of tools and materials are generally low; machetes and knives are common implements in all rural Oaxacan homes; and the wood, paint and insecticides needed are readily available, costing only a few pesos per figure. As San Martín Tilcajete is a craft community recognized and supported by the Oaxacan state, all villagers in principle can access the financial and marketing support that the state offers, without ever having their work inspected or evaluated. I began to think about people who do unskilful work in the first few weeks of my research, when I was still getting to know the artisans and their families. I tried to make sense of the fact that some seemed disinterested in cultivating their artisanal skills. While this could simply be explained as a disheartening consequence of woodcarving being their only real economic option, it does not explain why many artisans who find themselves in difficult economic conditions remain interested in developing their skills and ‘take pride’ in their

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work. One evening I visited the home of Catalina García, whose family owned the most successful workshop in San Martín.30 I showed her some carvings I had bought throughout the day, and she picked up a small piece that had been made by Blanca Díaz, a woman whose workshop was close to the village’s main square. Looking at the piece, Catalina pursed her lips and said that she was dismayed that Blanca ‘works without skill’. This, she said, was not only bad for Blanca, but bad for everyone because it gave San Martín a bad name in the eyes of customers. Blanca’s work practices contrasted greatly with those of Catalina García and many of the other artisans in San Martín. Most of their workshops were quiet, orderly spaces where people concentrated on the tasks at hand. Although people often listened to raucous banda music on their radios, the football (soccer) was notably eschewed, as it was difficult to concentrate on the game and work at the same time. In contrast, Blanca’s workshop had a small television in the corner and throughout the day neighbours would pop in for a chat and Blanca would wander in and out to buy soda, to make phone calls or to just stand in the sun. Each morning, her husband would give her a box of carvings that were ready to be painted, and she would line up ten to fifteen of approximately the same size on her bench and choose three or four plastic bottles of acrylic paint from the shelf. Using one of these colours, she would paint all of the carvings with a base coat before returning to the beginning of the line to begin the decoration, choosing from the other colours at random as she went along, all the while keeping an eye on the telenovelas on the TV. As I did with other artisans whom I knew well, I would occasionally offer to help Blanca paint carvings as we talked, but on the third or fourth time I did so, she admonished me for being too slow, telling me that I wasted too much time on decorating. ‘Customers will buy these for fifty pesos, whether you spend five or fifteen minutes on them . . . it’s better to do them quickly and make more of them,’ she explained. I asked Blanca if it bothered her to make lower quality pieces. She paused, perhaps a little offended, and told me that of course sometimes she prefers to take her time and work on a large piece, but that making quick little pieces does not affect her abilities: ‘I know I can paint well if I want to, but sometimes I have to paint quickly!’ While this might sound like a classic explanation of an ‘economically rational’ actor, the truth was that Blanca’s workshop was always overflowing with finished pieces, and she never seemed under pressure to fulfil the orders that came in from wholesalers. Blanca was not really embarrassed or frustrated by working unskilfully and enjoyed the freedom, flexibility and pace that being an artisan in San Martín allowed her, especially compared to her previous work in a market stall in the nearby town of Ocotlán, which required her to rise early and work very hard all day. Blanca’s explanation of her work practices does not

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indicate that she was necessarily unskilled or desired to improve the quality of her work. Rather, Blanca chose to complete her work without using time or finesse, and she did not work to develop her skills further. Blanca’s perspective on her work can be usefully compared with the case of Juan, who was an employee in the Garcías’ workshop. Although he had worked for them for over four years, he had not developed his skills and had not moved on to the more difficult painting that his colleagues did. He preferred to do the preparation tasks of sanding and gluing. While this work was important to the production of the very expensive carvings made at the Garcías’, it was not considered skilled in the same way as the work done by the carvers and painters. The Garcías often expressed disappointment about Juan’s apparent complacency, especially since his father happened to be one of the first artisans in San Martín and was considered an expert carver. One evening, when visiting his family home, I asked him why he preferred preparation work when most of the other painters tried to avoid it. He told me that he just did not like painting that much, that he didn’t like how long it took, and he did not want the responsibility to decide how to paint the carvings. His mother Paula, who was cooking nearby scoffed, ‘You see, Alanna. It’s that my son is very lazy. He prefers to do nothing at all!’ While Paula characterized her son’s working habits as laziness, his own explanation indicates that actually he prefers the character of the work involved in sanding and preparation to that of painting. Like Blanca, he desired a working life that did not revolve around the deep engagement with materials and form that highly skilled painting requires. In fact, far from being lazy, Juan was keen to be involved in the more social side of the Garcías’ business; his decent level of spoken English allowed him to offer tours of the workshop when Miguel García was unavailable. He enjoyed chatting and interacting with tourists from all over the world and often charmed visitors into ordering carvings that were not yet even finished. One could say that he was working to cultivate his social or entrepreneurial skills in the place of his artisanal skills, but this was generally not recognized by others as a worthwhile activity, if it wasn’t accompanied by skilled artisanal work. Elsewhere, I have suggested that Blanca’s and Juan’s work practices evidence different ‘aesthetics of work’ that are at play within the woodcarving workshops of San MartínTilcajete.31 I argued that this is important to understand because it indicates that not all artisans desire or pursue the experience of ‘material engagement’ that Sennett and others identify as the affective core of craftsmanship. The recognition of skilful and unskilful work in San Martín Tilcajete can be seen to index different individuals’ ideas about the nature of desirable work itself. In other contexts, such differences may lead people to choose different career or vocational paths, perhaps eventually finding work that is more appropriate and satisfying to them. However, in San Martín,

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where livelihood choices are extremely limited, making woodcarvings with skill appears as the most secure form of work that can be straightforwardly achieved, and hence is understood by many as superior to other modes of working.32 Although Blanca and Juan found ways to work that were agreeable to their own dispositions within the market for woodcarvings, these decisions had implications for them. Blanca’s work did not attract higher-paying customers who looked for the particular qualities of ‘craftsmanship’ discussed above, and she was not able to cultivate connections with important patrons like gallery owners and government officials who hold significant influence in the art worlds of Mexican craftwork.33 Juan’s reluctance to develop his artisanal skills meant that he was unlikely to secure higher wages at the Garcías’ or be able to strike out on his own by taking over his father’s workshop. There were also political implications: in craft communities like San Martín, where access to outsiders and opportunities for promotion can affect the fortunes of most families, recognition in the markets for ethnic arts and crafts easily translates into authority and power at the village, family and interpersonal levels.34 While Oaxacan artisans’ assessments of what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ artisanal work makes sense from their local on-the-ground perspectives, we should be aware of reinforcing such judgements in our scholarship. Analytical frameworks that emerge from what I have argued are essentially ethical positions about the value of craft, are unlikely to take Blanca and Juan on their own terms. More critically, when we start from a position that craft is valuable because it is by its very nature something that is made with quality through shared skills and values, we dismiss Blanca and Juan and others like them from the category of ‘craftsperson’. This not only impoverishes our ability to understand the nature of craft and artisanship, but also profoundly devalues the work and lives of people who make their living through producing objects by hand for national and global markets well beyond their control. Although we as scholars of craft may be motivated by our own experiences and desires for skill and quality, we must pay more attention to whom gets left out – or pushed out – of our analytical frames. In paying closer attention to the politics of our own scholarly practices, we may be able to intervene in the political field of craft itself by making the practices of all artisans recognizable and valuable within a more inclusive perspective on ‘craftsmanship’.

Notes 1 I thank D Wood, Méadhbh McIvor, Daniela Peluso, Andrew Sanchez and Miranda Sheild-Johansson for their insightful comments on versions of this text.

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2 Clare Wilkinson Weber and Alicia Ory DeNicola, ‘Introduction: Taking Stock of Craft in Anthropology’, in Critical Craft: Technology, Globalization and Capitalism, ed. Clare Wilkinson-Weber and Alicia Ory DeNicola (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 1–16. 3 Heather Paxson, The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Susan Terrio, ‘Visions of Excess: Crafting Good Chocolate in France and the United States’, in Critical Craft, ed. Wilkinson-Weber and DeNicola, 135–51. 4 Frances Mascia-Lees, ‘American Beauty: The Middle Class Arts and Crafts Revival in the United States’, in Critical Craft, ed. Wilkinson-Weber and DeNicola, 57–77. 5 Eileen Boris, ‘Crafts Shop or Sweatshop? The Uses and Abuses of Craftsmanship in Twentieth Century America’, Journal of Design History 2, no. 2/3 (1989): 175–92. Etymologically, the -ship suffix derives from proto-German through Old English, and until the nineteenth century only denoted a condition of being (as in ‘apprenticeship’, the condition of being an apprentice), rather than any inherent qualities of the person; T. F. Hoad, ed., ‘-ship’, in The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 6 I conducted twenty months of research in San Martín Tilcajete, Oaxaca, Mexico from 2008–2009. This research was funded by the Emslie Horniman Fund from the Royal Anthropological Institute. Interviews quoted herein were recorded during that period. 7 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard College, and Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 173. 8 William Morris, ‘The Art of the People’, in On Art and Socialism, ed. Norman Kelvin (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999 [1884]), 31. 9 This is also in part the result of the languages we use: the contemporary meaning of the English word ‘craft’ cannot be easily divorced from the broadly Marxist principles set out by the Arts and Crafts movement in England and the United States. 10 Soumhya Venkatesan, ‘Learning to Weave, Weaving to Learn . . . What?’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16, no. S1 (2010): S158–S175, 173. For a detailed critique of the material engagement concept, see Tom Yarrow and Sian Jones, ‘“Stone Is Stone”: Engagement and Detachment in the Craft of Conservation Masonry’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20, no. 2 (2014): 256–75. 11 Trevor Marchand, Minaret Building and Apprenticeship in Yemen (Richmond: Curzon, 2001); Trevor Marchand, ‘Embodied Cognition and Communication: Studies with British Fine Woodworkers’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16, no. 1 (2010): S100–S120. 12 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Elizabeth Station, ‘Life in Practice’, The University of Chicago Magazine, November–December 2011. 13 Tim Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2013).

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14 Marchand, ‘Embodied Cognition’; Erin O’Connor, ‘Embodied Knowledge: The Expert of Meaning and the Struggle Towards Proficiency in Glassblowing’, Ethnography 6, no. 2 (2005): 183–204; Venkatesan, ‘Learning to Weave’. 15 Alanna Cant, ‘“Making” Labour in Mexican Artisanal Workshops’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 24, no. S1 (2018): 61–74; Roy Dilley, ‘The Visibility and Invisibility of Production among Senegalese Craftsmen’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10, no. 4 (2004): 797–813; Michael Herzfeld, The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Tim Ingold, ‘Materials Against Materiality’, Archaeological Dialogues 14, no. 1 (2007): 1–16; Mira Mohsini, ‘Crafting Muslim Artisans: Agency and Exclusion in India’s Urban Crafts Communities’, in Critical Craft, ed. Wilkinson-Weber and DeNicola, 239–58. 16 For a further critique of the ‘making’ approach, see Cant, ‘“Making” Labour’. 17 Sennett, The Craftsman, 268. 18 Ibid., 37. 19 Andrew Cox, ‘What Are Communities of Practice? A Comparative Review of Four Seminal Works’, Journal of Information Science 31, no. 6 (2005): 527–40. 20 Rebecca Schneider, ‘Science Teacher Educators as a Community of Practice’, Journal of Science Teacher Education 18, no. 5 (2007): 693–697; Amy Smith, ‘Knowledge by Association: Communities of Practice in Public Management’, Public Administration Quarterly 40, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 655–89; Mary Bucholtz, ‘“Why Be Normal?": Language and Identity Practices in a Community of Nerd Girls’, Language in Society 28, no. 2 (June 1999): 203–23. 21 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 22 Ibid. 23 W. Warner Wood, Made in Mexico: Zapotec Weavers and the Global Ethnic Art Market (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 16–17. Wood goes on to argue that the model can be bolstered by drawing on Bourdieu’s work on ‘fields’ of social production, an approach I have found very useful in my own work. 24 For an interesting example of this, see Dawn Nafus and Richard Beckwith, ‘Number in Craft: Situated Numbering Practices in Do-It-Yourself Sensor Systems’, in Critical Craft, ed. Wilkinson-Weber and DeNicola, 115–34. 25 Michael Chibnik, Crafting Tradition: The Making and Marketing of Oaxacan Wood Carvings (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003). 26 Alanna Cant, The Value of Aesthetics: Oaxacan Woodcarvers in Global Economies of Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019). 27 Ibid. 28 Figure based on a survey conducted March to April 2008. 29 Jeffrey Cohen, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004); Serena Eréndira Serrano Oswald, ‘Migration, Gender and Woodcarving in San Martín Tilcajete’, in Migration,

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Gender and Social Justice: Perspectives on Human Insecurity, ed. ThanhDam Truong, Des Gasper, Jeff Handmaker and Sylvia I. Bergh (Heidelberg, New York and London: Springer, 2014), 177–92. 30 All personal names are pseudonyms. 31 Cant, The Value of Aesthetics, 50–67. 32 Ibid. This perspective is reinforced by markets that place value on particular aesthetics and artistic conventions, such as signatures. See Cant, ‘“Making” Labour’. 33 See Chibnik, Crafting Tradition and Wood, Made in Mexico. 34 Cant, The Value of Aesthetics, 68–84, 85–129.

7 From ‘making flowers’ to imagining futures Rohingya refugee women innovate a heritage craft Lurdes Macedo, David Palazón, Shahirah Majumdar and Verity Marques

Postcolonial contradictions and humanitarian work

T

he contradictions of the postcolonial world have been intensively discussed by intellectuals and scholars,1 but rarely by those who face the everyday challenges resulting from the postcolonial legacy, especially in their work. Humanitarian and development officers are among those on the ground facing the daily challenges of overcoming these contradictions in order to successfully implement policies and programmes. However, they are often not connected to contemporary academic postcolonial thought, which represents a lost opportunity in that its main authors believe that the theory itself can contribute to practical political change. It is possible that the academic discussions are not sufficiently adapted to match these workers’ needs. Nevertheless, it would be helpful to take into account some of the key ideas delivered by the most influential postcolonial thinkers should we want

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to clarify the representation systems in which humanitarian and development workers operate. It was Spivak2 who called our attention to the inevitability of these systems of representation being characterized by a double bond – that of a Eurocentric arrogance and an unexamined nativism. This is why the author previously emphasized the problem of the voiceless in the contemporary world in her discussion ‘Can the Subaltern speak?’. In this foundational text, Spivak3 demonstrated how supposedly well-intentioned people, in disseminating the causes of the voiceless independently, ultimately appropriated their voices instead of giving ownership of the narrative to the voiceless themselves. This demonstration was in line with Said4 who pointed out that the power to narrate, or to prevent other narratives from forming and arising, is a weapon for imperialism in cultural terms, and is one of the main connections between culture and imperialism. The alternative path necessarily entails the deconstruction of the mainstream discourse which has legitimized the incessant reproduction of ‘sanctioned ignorance’.5 For this very reason, Spivak6 went on to state that care in deconstructing this discourse must be surrounded by a critical framework that allows us to understand that ‘it is not a mere tautology to say that the colonial or postcolonial subaltern is defined as the being on the other side of difference, or an epistemic fracture, even from other groupings among the colonised’.7 On the other hand, Spivak8 noted that in the contemporary world, the dominant culture simultaneously promotes the idea of an ancient Third World filled with distant cultures, explored but with intact heritages waiting to be recovered, constituting the emergence of the ‘South’ as proof of transnational cultural exchange. However, that emergence must be put into perspective in multiple ways. In fact, we should be aware of Bhabha’s9 formulations of stereotypes and discrimination inherited from colonial discourse. These continue to constitute the main discursive strategy of the ideological construction of alterity, since they impose themselves as a form of knowledge and identification of the ‘already known’10 that must be ‘anxiously repeated’.11 In producing probabilistic truths or predictions, stereotypes are always in excess of what can be empirically proved or explained by logic.12 Hence, stereotypes, when configuring a set of unwavering and simplified beliefs about the attributes of each other’s groups of belonging,13 present the danger of compromising structural changes. Departing from these key thoughts, we propose to discuss empowerment and ownership strategies and processes with Rohingya refugee women which have been undertaken by a team from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. These strategies and processes are resulting in practical political change, ameliorating the lives of these

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women as refugees living in an untenable political situation that is far from being resolved.

Rohingya and their current cultural condition First, it is necessary to introduce the Rohingya and their current situation in order to clarify the context and the object of the research-action we intend to describe in the following pages. In postcolonial Myanmar, the Rohingya are a persecuted minority of the conservative Sunni branch of Islam located within the Rakhine state, an area shared with a Buddhist majority. In August 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in what has been described as ‘the largest refugee migration the region has ever seen’.14 They were stripped of their material and symbolic belongings. Their traditional villages were burnt and their livelihoods erased, resulting in a decimated Rohingya material culture. The Rohingya were resettled in refugee camps in Bangladesh, often separated from their family groups (gusshi) and communities (shomaz), social units which form the basis of their sense of belonging and social standing.15 As a result, their traditional systems of social organization and community welfare were damaged. Despite efforts made by United Nations agencies and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to return dignity to their lives, the artificial context of the camps makes it challenging for the Rohingya to maintain their traditions and keep their knowledge alive. Cultural practices grounded in the rural environment of Rakhine are difficult to translate to the dense, urban sprawl of the camps without degrees of adaptation or innovation. Di Giovanni observes that cycles of creative expression are associated with events and, therefore, the analysis of the ‘intersections between political experience and aesthetic creation in contemporary forms of collective action’16 must be encouraged. The author acknowledges that these intersections are not new, since artistic manifestations are ‘historically and symbolically associated with activism, protest, the breakdown of collective processes of self-organisation, denunciation, and the claim of rights’.17 Thus, innovation to Rohingya traditional crafts must be analysed in terms of political effectiveness as well as aesthetic language. Accordingly, we should consider craftivism as an analytical category, even if stability and consensus is lacking in this concept, both in the social sciences and arts.18 Supported by collaborative practices, craftivism allows the analysis of craft expressions articulated with experiences lived in processes of oppression and with experiences of empowerment in contemporary societies.19 In this line of thought, Farzana20 argued that Rohingya refugees21 express their identity

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through their narratives and their cultural assets. Aesthetic expressions such as songs (taranas) and drawings were ‘produced by ordinary refugees as natural expressions of mind and self; therefore, these are highly significant in illustrating their sense of identity and belonging, and in expressing a different form of resistance, without direct confrontation or protest, against the discrimination they have experienced’.22 The need for creative mediums to express belonging and identity is confirmed by a 2018 assessment by the IOM’s Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) unit, which found that more than 50 per cent of the Rohingya refugee respondents identified an ‘identity crisis’23 as having the largest impact on their well-being at the community level. A project called the Cultural Memory Centre (CMC) was thus conceived by the IOM to address this need. Focused on cultural memory and identity, the CMC is organized around two streams: the preservation of Rohingya cultural heritage through inventorying artefacts of tangible and intangible heritage, and the training, development and resourcing of Rohingya cultural practitioners to support the community to sustain their traditions and knowledge across the journey of displacement. Innovation is vital to this second stream of work. By enabling Rohingya cultural practitioners to marry the existing vocabulary of the Rohingya culture-sphere with new materials, techniques and categories of subject matter, innovation opens up space for the community to express their identity and experience in a politically impactful and aesthetically powerful way. Thus, by facilitating the preservation of the Rohingya cultural identity through a craftivist approach, the CMC may provide a platform for Rohingya self-advocacy.

Rohingya women: voiceless among the voiceless According to available accounts, most Rohingya women in Myanmar were restricted to the home and domestic side of life.They maintained the household, cared for the children and elderly, prepared food, worked subsistence farms, raised livestock on their properties and tended gardens. Coyle, et al.24 describe how, for the sake of the family’s social standing (izzot), Rohingya women were expected to maintain some form of purdah, or seclusion, to ‘veil’ them from men outside the family network: ‘Though the Rohingya community traditionally did not follow a strict shariah-based social governance system, elements of it were observed, particularly relating to women. A woman’s izzot was linked to her adherence to purdah a social practice of women’s seclusion to “private” spaces.’25 While still in Myanmar, some Rohingya women did generate income through piecemeal tailoring or embroidery, or as teachers or volunteers employed by development organizations. The vast majority of

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Rohingya families, however, would have prevented their women from working or moving freely outside the private space of the domestic sphere, especially in cases where such work would require them to interact with male strangers. If rural life, combined with the Myanmar Government’s restrictions on Rohingya people’s movement, education and socioeconomic opportunities, can be said to have rendered Rohingya people ‘voiceless’, it follows that Rohingya women’s exclusion from public life and regular employment rendered them doubly vulnerable. While Rohingya women’s agency in the domestic sphere in Myanmar must be further studied, they lacked equal power and ‘voice’, even within the private, bounded space of the family. Conditions of displacement have challenged these gendered notions of ‘work’ in the Rohingya community. In the absence of work opportunities for men in the camps (the Government of Bangladesh prohibits refugee employment, except in cash-for-work activities), some Rohingya women are taking on the traditional male provider role through paid participation in Women and Girl Friendly Space (WGFS)26 activities, livelihood projects (tailoring, stitching, crafting, etc.), or as ‘cash-for-work’ volunteers working with humanitarian agencies. In a focus group discussion (FGD) with the ten women engaged in a paid embroidery project by the CMC, evidence was found that these new roles may be positively shifting the way the women are viewed and treated within their families, as well as their self-concepts. The aforementioned transformation in gender roles can be discussed considering Butler’s thoughts27 on gender being performative. For Butler, no identity exists behind the acts that supposedly express gender, and these acts constitute, rather than express, the illusion of the stable gender identity. In this sense, many of the Rohingya women in the camps are facing the challenge of emancipating themselves through changing performances that resemble male gender roles. The social and political consequences of this inadvertent emancipation resulting from forced migration may become an issue – positive or negative – for future researchers.

‘Making flowers’: embroidery in Rohingya culture Called fultola, the craft of embroidery is translated as ‘making flowers’ in the Rohingya language. Fultola historically falls within the Rohingya women’s domestic sphere, with Rohingya women using traditional motifs, usually flowers, to embellish pillowcases, headscarves and blouses. These were gifted during culturally significant events such as weddings or births. A skilled embroiderer was praised for her skill and might have accepted commissions

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from other families. S., a twenty-five-year-old Rohingya woman engaged by the CMC, said in an interview with CMC project staff that she used to sell three sets of pillowcases per month while living in Myanmar, spending her earnings on her husband and children. Of the twenty households in her immediate neighbourhood in Myanmar, she was one of just three women to earn an income through embroidery. Fultola is one of the few income streams available to Rohingya women, as the work can be done at home or in women-only spaces such as the NGO-run WGFS in the refugee camps. In interviews, Rohingya women have reported their engagement in skills-training embroidery projects run by humanitarian or development actors both before and during their displacement. Thus, as a socially sanctioned livelihood activity for Rohingya women with a firmly established place in Rohingya cultural heritage, the craft is a culturally appropriate means for Rohingya women to review and express their personal and collective identities. The CMC embroidery project was launched in April 2019 with a series of storytelling workshops held with Rohingya men and women. Participants shared stories and memories, which were collected, categorized and highlighted for visual details which could be translated into imagery for a ‘storytelling tapestry’. The embroidery itself was undertaken at a WGFS, women-only spaces that foster storytelling, experimentation and solidarity. The project’s participants had previously only worked within the traditional botanical vocabulary of fultola. Here, they were asked to embroider entire scenes of domestic and communal life – such as children on swings and playing, men praying together at the mosque, women tending farms and milling rice, and general scenes depicting their homes, the landscape and Myanmar life. This experimentation led to the beginnings of the development of a narrative and reinforced the value of their story. It might also be argued that the introduction of a broader range of embroidery motifs assisted in ‘empowering’ the women to shift from a feminine aesthetic to one that implied the political past and present. As a pilot project, the tapestry was the first attempt to introduce narrative storytelling into the previously limited language of fultola. It is important to note that, for the Rohingya, storytelling is the domain of the oral, rarely captured in visual or written forms, as the Rohingya language lacks a widely recognized script, and 66 per cent of the refugee population in Cox’s Bazar cannot read, according to the 2019 Information Needs Assessment by the media organization, Internews.28 In the Rohingya world, storytelling unfolds ephemerally, through folk tales told to children by their grandmothers at bedtime, through gossip in the women’s quarters in the quiet afternoons, in men’s conversations in roadside coffee stalls and among fishermen yarning on the shore after bringing boats in from the water. In the conditions of

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displacement, these storytelling traditions are at risk of being lost, increasing the urgency to find new ways of telling cultural stories. Thus, merging the craft of embroidery with narrative storytelling is a critical innovation within the Rohingya culture-sphere, preserving a heritage craft and elevating it beyond decorative ‘women’s work’ into a powerful medium for memorializing the stories of the Rohingya people and communicating them to the watching world.

The tapestries The next phase of the project was a series of workshops encompassing a range of subject matter and thematic content related to cultural and personal identity. Creation of a tapestry titled Dream Garden followed immediately after the storytelling tapestry. Consisting of individual panels embroidered with flower and garden wildlife motifs, the Dream Garden memorializes the Rohingya women’s gardens in the rural Rakhine state. The women reported that creating the Dream Garden tapestry was a happy and nostalgic process. The tapestry represented the memory of better times and celebrated their traditional connection with nature. The women also embroidered a greater variety of flowers than they traditionally would have, demonstrating their developed skills through the quality of their work. Camp Life is a beautified portrayal of life in the camp and has a distinct theme and style from the previous tapestry. It aimed to expand the women’s embroidery skills to include observational life in the camp. The Camp Life tapestry uses a bright leaf-green cloth as a background and depicts winding streets with houses set on either side. The streets are punctuated with a variety of tree species and solar panel poles. It includes what the community holds dear or deems important (Figure 7.1). The tapestry is stitched with vivid threads and represents an ideal version of the camp in that the details of the scenes are not replicas of what would be found in the camp. Instead, the tapestry hints at a desire to live in a greener space, with trees and traditional houses set at a distance from one another, conveying a sense of joy and aspiration. The Camp Life tapestry exhibits further developed embroidery skills and a unified narrative, at the same time as commenting on the refugees’ present conditions. For the next project phase, CMC facilitators assembled a group of ten Rohingya women and girls, ranging in age from 16 to 28, to train and resource as cultural practitioners and ‘speakers’ of the Rohingya experience. They were selected based on skill and experience. Several had learned to embroider during training programmes in Myanmar, others from older sisters

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FIGURE 7.1  Camp Life, 2020, courtesy of IOM. Embroidery artworks by Rohingya women in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp (Bangladesh) © IOM 2019/2020. or mothers, and one woman had paid a female embroidery master in her home town in Rakhine for lessons. Four of the women reported selling their work on commission to neighbours and family. However, none of the women had worked outside the standard fultola vernacular of decorative floral motifs used to adorn pillowcases, orna (headscarves) and bazu (blouses). The notion of storytelling or capturing personal experience through embroidery was new to them. Over a five-week period, the group of ten women produced four embroidery collections, each consisting of ten individual pieces, representing specific memories and aspirations. The group met three times a week in a WGFS in Camp 18, with sessions facilitated by one female CMC staff member assisted by one female Rohingya volunteer acting as a translator and cultural mediator. Participants drafted ideas in their sketchbooks,29 transferred the final sketches to cloth using carbon paper and finally embroidered them using the thread and stitching technique of their choice. The four collections are titled: Henna Hands, My House in Myanmar, My Favourite Dress and Dream Jewels. Each collection is a literal depiction of an object or practice of cultural significance. Henna Hands memorializes the Rohingya women’s practice of applying henna in intricate designs for festivals and weddings. My House in Myanmar memorializes the traditional-style homes where they lived. My

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Favourite Dress and Dream Jewels depict significant articles of Rohingya women’s attire, both real and imagined. The women narrated memories during the workshops and, during the process of reproducing these memories through needle and thread, reported positive feelings, including a sense of restoration or peace. In an interview,30 embroidery project participant, twenty-two-year-old Z., connected her My House in Myanmar tapestry with both her individual memory and aspiration for the future: ‘Once, when I was ill, my parents took me to see a doctor in downtown Buthidaung where there were many beautiful buildings. I used to dream of those buildings. One day, after going back to Burma and when I have money, I will build my dream building.’ Dreams Without Canvas continued with the arrival of Farzana Ahmed, a contemporary Bangladeshi artist and teacher specializing in portraiture. Ahmed brought a more experimental and conceptual aspect to the project, moving beyond reproductive representation towards exploring emotional landscapes. In an interview with the authors, she said, ‘My goal is to bring the inner feelings to the surface through art.’31 Ahmed designed a ten-week programme introducing visual references from the world of modern art (for example, Matisse cut outs, portraits), new surfaces, textures and techniques, and the thematic territory of portraiture. The ten weeks were bookended with portrait assignments to exhibit the artists’ development over the course of the programme. Ahmed’s first project, titled Under My Skin, radically disrupted the conventions of fultola. Instead of flowers, the women were asked to sketch and embroider faces, embellishing them with beads, lace, patchwork and appliqué. Ahmed modelled the innovations through sketching collaboratively with the participants and talking them through choices of colour and materials. The results showed that Rohingya women’s technical mastery of the embroidery craft, merged with symbolic and emotive imagery, could be fresh and startling. The images ‘spoke’ in new and different ways, communicating dimensions of Rohingya identity and experience undetected in the previous tapestries. After the radical innovations of the first portrait assignment, Dreams Without Canvas proceeded by breaking down portraiture and narrative storytelling into basic elements such as scene, setting, mood and character. For the assignment titled How I Am Feeling Today, participants sketched scenes representing their mood upon entering the WGFS, then embroidered them on colourful bazu (blouses). Twenty-five-year-old S.A. chose an image reminiscent of her self-portrait from the first assignment, but with an entirely different mood, meaning and purpose. S.A.’s Under My Skin portrait depicts a veiled Rohingya woman in heavily worked black thread on undyed cotton cloth, with only her eyes visible under a dense headscarf of jet-black beads. A

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five-pointed flower and a trim of gold spangles at the borders of her veil offer some relief to the starkness of the image, but the overall effect is of a woman trapped and afraid. She is disembodied and without context, her gaze floating out towards nothing. S.A.’s self-portrait for How I Am Feeling Today renders a similarly veiled woman in purple thread on vivid magenta cloth. Of her face, only eyes are visible. However, her whole body is rendered here. Her hands and feet are exposed, her left hand holding a pink umbrella aloft and her right hand holding her bag of embroidery supplies. A decorative border encircles the image. In her interview with the authors, S.A. said, ‘I drew myself coming to the [WGFS] with my umbrella and embroidery box. With my umbrella, I feel that the neighbourhood people can’t see me, so I can go about my business more freely. In Burma, the rule was that women had to carry umbrella, gloves and socks’32 (Figure 7.2). The portrait represents the freedom with which S.A. moves around the refugee camp. Of the ten women engaged by the CMC for Dreams Without Canvas, S.A. is the only woman who is the head of her household. After two unsuccessful marriages (she left her first husband whom she had married in Myanmar; her second husband was a member of the host community

FIGURE 7.2  Under My Skin: Self-Portrait by SA, 2020, courtesy of Md Rahul Karim/IOM. Embroidery artworks by Rohingya women in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp (Bangladesh) © IOM 2019/2020.

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in Cox’s Bazar who left her for another wife), S.A. provides for herself, her mother, two younger brothers and fifteen-month-old daughter through her embroidery project earnings. Without a male guardian (her father is deceased and her brothers are much younger than her), S.A. has been forced to step into a traditionally male role. The proceeds from her embroidery work allow S.A. a degree of self-reliance and independence from the men in her community – rare among Rohingya women – and the bazu scene reveals her pride in this. She chose bright colours for the portrait: purple is her favourite colour. Alone of the women and girls of the group, she boldly chose to place the embroidery on the back of the bazu. While the circle around the portrait indicates the bounded nature of her world, it also may represent a sense of wholeness and belonging. The border completes and contextualizes the image; it does not bleed into the surrounding space. A photo of S.A. in her bazu calls to mind men and women in emblazoned sports or membership jackets. For her final portrait assignment, S.A. and the other embroidery participants drew and embroidered portraits of each other. Participants chose their subjects and were given free rein to depict them as they liked. Beads, sequins, lace, pompoms, cotton yarn and other decorative materials were made available.

FIGURE 7.3  Friendship: R by SA, 2020, courtesy of Shahirah Majumdar/IOM. Embroidery artworks by Rohingya women in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp (Bangladesh) © IOM 2019/2020.

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S.A. chose to embroider her friend and fellow embroidery participant, R. Here, S.A. again utilizes her favourite colour, purple. R. is depicted in full purple robes and a black headscarf with spangled silver trim – but she has eschewed the face veil. The beaded eyes are wide and bright, holding the viewer in full gaze, and a bright red mouth smiles. S.A. uses many of the same materials as in her Under My Skin portrait, but the effect is altogether different, revealing controlled use of materials, techniques and storytelling objectives. S.A. says, ‘I did not know R. before beginning the embroidery workshops, but now she is like a sister to me.’33 S.A.’s portrait of R. communicates the joyful notion of sisterhood, which has been so vital for creating a sense of solidarity and belonging for the refugee women living in the Rohingya camps (Figure 7.3).

Conclusion The embroidery projects evolved from more reproductive designs, as in the first project’s tapestry where participants reproduced scenes from drawings through embroidery, to the development of embroidery skills. This learning was expanded to observation and imagination for their designs, as in the second Dream Garden project. The culmination was more challenging, incorporating interpretive designs with a wider range of techniques and materials. The evolution is one of growth from replication to imaginative selfexpression. The women interviewed at the end of the first and second projects reported improved confidence and esteem of their own talents. Additionally, the collaborative nature of the embroidery sessions provided the opportunity for the women to forge new bonds, galvanizing the process of creating a ‘new shomaz’34 in Bangladesh. In this way, they may revive the unity which characterizes their traditional ways of social organization and develop a new sense of belonging. In an FGD held at the end of Dreams Without Canvas, the women spoke about their husbands’ new-found support for their work. Two participants said their husbands helped them with their embroidery. Another spoke of her husband asking her to teach him fultola so that they could double their household income. Several other women spoke of husbands and other family members helping with household chores or avoiding disturbing them during certain hours so that they could complete their embroidery assignments. Thus, the act of embroidery becomes not only one of catharsis, but also one of empowerment and individual assertion. The women participating in these embroidery projects have undergone a process of growth and discovery, both in terms of the craft of embroidery as well as their identity. Within the safety of the WGFS, embroidery has offered a platform for the women to discover and

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express their individual and collective identities, memories and aspirations. Employing a cliché, the personal is political and for the Rohingya women the CMC’s embroidery projects have enabled that, wherever it may lead. Despite fultola falling within the domain of women, these women have used it to ‘speak’ essential stories and experiences at risk of being lost in the conditions of displacement. By appropriating the craft to reminisce about the past, process the present and reimagine a possible future for themselves and their community, the women symbolically challenge voicelessness – both their own and that of the larger Rohingya community. Embroidery becomes, for them, an effective tool for personal and communal resistance. And for academic researchers, it has been shown as an effective tool for deconstructing stereotypes, the discourse of ‘the other’ and the postcolonial contradictions.

Notes 1 H. K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2012 [1994]); E. W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993); G. C. Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 2 Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. 3 G. C. Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Colonial Discourse and PostColonial Theory: A Reader, ed. P. Williams and L. Chrisman (London: Routledge, 2015 [1994]), 66–111. 4 Said, Culture and Imperialism. 5 Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, 21. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 309. 8 Ibid. 9 Bhabha, The Location of Culture. 10 Ibid., 105. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 R. J. Fisher and H. C. Kelman, ‘Perceptions in Conflict’, in Intergroup Conflicts and Their Resolution: A Social Psychological Perspective, ed. D. BarTal (New York: Psychology Press, 2011), 61–81. 14 International Organization for Migration, The Rohingya Crisis: Two Years Out (Cox’s Bazar, BD: IOM, 2019), 14. 15 D. Coyle, A. K. Rahim and M. A. Jainul, Clan, Community, Nation: Belonging Among Rohingya Living in Makeshift Camps (Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh: IOM, 2020).

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16 J. R. Di Giovanni, ‘Artes de abrir espaço. Apontamentos para a análise de práticas em trânsito entre arte e ativismo’ [Arts to Make Space. Notes for the Analysis of Practices in Transit Between Art and Activism], Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia 4, no. 2 (2015): 13–27, 15. Authors’ translation. 17 Ibid., 14. 18 P. Raposo, ‘Artivismo’: articulando dissidências, criando insurgências’ [‘Artivism’: Articulating Dissidents, Creating Insurgencies], Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia 4, no. 2 (2015): 3–12. 19 N. S. Love and M. Mattern, ‘Art, Culture, Democracy’, in Doing Democracy. Activist Art and Cultural Politics, ed. N. S. Love and M. Mattern (New York: State University of New York Press, 2014), 3–28. 20 K. F. Farzana, ‘Life along the Naf Border: Identity Politics of the Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh’, in Myanmar Mountain and Maritime Borderscapes: Local Practices, Boundary-Making and Figured Worlds, ed. S. Oh (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2016); K. F. Farzana, Memories of Burmese Rohingya Refugees: Contested Identity and Belonging (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 21 It should be stressed that there were previous Rohingya refugee flows from Myanmar to Bangladesh before 2017, although less intense and less crowded than the 2017 influx. 22 Farzana, ‘Life along the Naf Border’, 290. 23 International Organization for Migrants, Rapid Mental Health and Psychosocial Needs (Cox’s Bazaar, BD: IOM, March 2018), 12 (no pagination). 24 Coyle et al., Clan, Community, Nation. 25 Ibid., 12. 26 In the camp context, Women and Girl Friendly Spaces serve as ‘safe spaces’ for Rohingya women and girls to share experiences, feelings, and stories, and to learn new skills. For most of these women, the WGFS are the only such spaces deemed by male family members to be private enough for them to visit and participate in livelihood, education and other activities. 27 J. Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 3rd edn (New York: Routledge Classics, 2006). 28 Internews. Information Needs Assessment: Rohingya and Host Communities, Cox’s Bazaar Bangladesh (Dhaka, BD: Internews, 2019). 29 The CMC project facilitators helped the project participants develop drawing skills over the course of the project, as sketching was new for most. 30 Author interview with embroidery group participant. November 2019. 31 Farzana Ahmed, artist. Interview with the authors. December 2019. 32 Author interview with embroidery participant. February 2020. 33 Ibid. 34 Coyle et al., Clan, Community, Nation.

8 Liminality The work of Monica Mercedes Martinez, PJ Anderson and Habiba El-Sayed Heidi McKenzie

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he pervasiveness of mainstream White racial superiority in North America today exists in the wake of the continent’s history: the colonization and genocide of its Indigenous peoples; slavery and its aftermath; and the subsequent exclusionary Whites only migration policies imposed by European settlers and lawmakers until the mid to late 1960s. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 put an end to Whites only immigration in the United States,1 and the new immigration policies of 1967 changed the faces of Canadians by opening up its borders to immigrants of colour.2 As South African artist, William Kentridge, inscribes so decisively in his self-reflexive animated flipbook that addresses race and apartheid, Second Hand Reading,3 there is ‘a constructed invisibility’ around being seen and not being seen. Canadian writer, curator and educator, Julie Hollenbach, contends that craft in Canada and the United States is dominated by the White working and middle-class.4 Furthermore, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Colour) are scarce if not absent from the contemporary community by virtue of the fact that historically there has been an emphasis on excellence, genius and Eurocentric modernism.5 This bias continues to permeate systemic pathways to mainstream success in the arts world, and by extension within

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the multivalent arenas of craft. A consequence of this systemic imbalance of power is that ‘objective qualified success’ elides craft made by non-White makers.6 Hollenbach points to the fact that the virtual erasure of BIPOC craft artisans and/or practitioners in the contemporary craft canon is due in part to the lack of critical analysis that investigates the intersection of the craftsperson’s identity with their medium.7 This, in turn, creates a cognitive dissonance between the reality of the fine craft movement and what many gatekeepers at the apex of the system (curators, gallerists, etc.) perceive to be an equal playing field. I would argue that this imbalance of power has catalysed many contemporary artists and craft practitioners to politicize their art in relation to their racialized identity. Mixed-race artists inhabit two or more cultural identities. By virtue of their hybridity, they position themselves at once inside and outside of their collective national narrative. In 1993, University of Toronto geographer Gillian Rose coined the phrase ‘paradoxical space’ to define the inherent dualities at the crux of mixed-race identity. According to Rose, paradoxical spaces ‘imply radically heterogeneous geometries’ that are ‘lived, experienced and felt’.8 Within a racialized context, that is, the every day, these spaces move beyond spaces of resistance and create ‘entirely different geometries through which we can think power, knowledge, space and identity in critical, and hopefully, liberatory ways’.9 Rose’s metaphor suggests the potential to challenge the public imaginaries of the mixed-race individual that are inextricably bound to oppressive historically based stigma. Paradoxical space moves beyond spaces of resistance and creates the possibility of shifting the paradigm by mapping a future where the mixed-race individual is not positioned as out of place, but rather, constitutive of their own spatialities. As a second-generation Canadian and fine craft artist of mixed heritage, at mid-life, I am coming to terms with a personal history of racialization that was ‘normalized’ to such an extent that it took decades to register in my consciousness. My Irish–American mother and Indo-Trinidadian father were early pioneers in mixed-race marriage in the 1950s, at a time when miscegenation was still illegal in many states in the United States. I grew up on the east coast of Canada in the 1970s, a beige kid in the otherwise monolithically White capital city of Fredericton, New Brunswick. I researched multiculturalism during my undergraduate degree in Toronto – then lauded as the most multicultural city in the world – and later dissected systemic racism in arts policy in graduate school in the early 1990s; twenty years later I curated my MFA thesis around performing mixed-race identity and examined the intersubjectivity of being seen and yet not being seen at face value. I launched my own fine craft career in 2014. That same year I heard the African American ‘art star’, Theaster Gates, at the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Conference in Milwaukee. Despite my seemingly heightened

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awareness of race politics, it was not until I heard Gates ask an audience of over five thousand ceramic practitioners to self-identify as Black or persons of colour, that I truly embodied what it meant to be ‘othered’. A mere forty people stood up. A landslide of emotions tumbled through my body. I was awash in the fresh wound of knowing I was on the margins. This chapter is devoted to making place and holding space for the works of three emergent female Canadian fine craft artists, all of whom draw on their varied hybrid backgrounds and perform their racialized identities through the lens of craft practice. Monica Mercedes Martinez is of mixed Chilean heritage. Her multi-staged, transcontinental process-based performative work engages in acts of resistance that simultaneously address the atrocities of Chile’s dictatorial military regime under Pinochet,10 and the ritual practices of the Inca and other Indigenous peoples who lived on the land. PJ Anderson is an emerging mixed-race Jamaican/Métis potter who draws upon both sides of her ancestors’ creative practices. As a conceptual artist, she incorporates symbols and ideas that society deems taboo or unacceptable as a form of protest into her finely crafted burnished vessels. Habiba El-Sayed’s mixed Egyptian and Guyanese heritage informs her largely performative, sensory-based work. Her practice is focused on dispelling myths around Islamophobia post 9/11 and bluntly calls out the uncomfortableness of residual and persistent racial microaggressions.

Monica Mercedes Martinez Monica Mercedes Martinez locates herself as a Canadian, Prairie-raised, transplanted Chilean immigrant whose heritage is part Indigenous South American and part European. Her practice is propelled by her quest to unravel seminal questions such as ‘How does a person with a multi-faceted ethnic identity interpret the colonization of the Americas? … Am I the slave or the slave owner, heathen or saint, explorer or exile, conqueror or conquered?’11 Her practice reflects her belief that the medium itself is inextricably intertwined with human history. She grapples with the effects of cultural colonization on personal identity. ‘At its core, my work is a search for identity, for a cultural, spiritual, racial, or political identity that speaks for all the parts of me: the woman, Chilean immigrant, Canadian citizen, and contemporary artist. My artworks have all become vehicles for my attempts to develop a meaningful premise for the roots of my own identity.’12 I first encountered Martinez’s work at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery (CCGG) in Waterloo, Ontario, in the summer of 2019. I was faced with the remnants of a live performance piece she enacted during the opening

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ceremonies for En Route: Sculptural Ceramics and Glass Emerging from Manitoba, co-curated by Grace Nickel, Associate Professor of Ceramics, University of Manitoba, and former CCGG curator, Sheila McMath. What I witnessed was a human-scaled cage fabricated of chicken coop fencing, with dried up pieces of red unfired clay pressed into the enclosure from the inside out. The work is entitled containher (2019). Martinez was excited to use native red clay in a traditional gallery environment within a non-historical context, where it takes up space and cannot be ignored. For Martinez, terracotta is a symbol of rebellion against the value placed on the perfect whiteness of porcelain. ‘I use red clay because it stains, because it is considered by some to be base, dirty, and common. I feel that by performing with raw, red clay in places like the Clay and Glass, I can display the raw, messy, hidden labour of making in a gallery full of perfectly finished artworks.’13 The act of simultaneously making the past and the future visible is what underlies the violent process of cultural transformation in Martinez’s work. Preeminent American performance studies and Spanish academic, Diana Taylor, theorizes that the mixed-race person can act as an ‘intermediary’ to unravel the way in which images of cultural mixing carry their own histories and bring forward these complex histories.14 Within the context of Latin America, Taylor positions the mixed-race Latina/Caucasian artist, the mestizaje, as assuming the role of the intermediary – one embodying the process of transculturation. The term transculturation was coined by Fernando Ortiz in the 1940s to counter the then pervasive anthropological concept of acculturation, in which it was assumed that colonized people adapted to and were absorbed by the more dominant culture of the colonizer.15 In contrast to this paradigm of cultural loss, transculturation emphasizes the mixing of cultures in which the simultaneous violent displacement of the colonized’s original culture and the imposition of a dominant culture of colonization leads to the creation of a new and distinct hybrid culture.16 Taylor underscores the fact that the intermediary represents more than a racial mix: ‘she performs the continuity among past, present, and future and brings the memory of the past into the present as she makes visible the future’.17 Martinez, acting as Taylor’s intermediary, regards her work as ‘visual conversations’ intended to encourage dialogue and reflection on how the past continues to manipulate the power structures that rule the world by using the bias of memory to subconsciously control our views on racial heritage, gender, cultural concepts of beauty and the hierarchies of art.18 Martinez herself reflects, ‘The conversations I’ve had with the curious, the confused and the outright hostile people who observe my work are essential because, to me, art is a living thing that should make you question. When I develop new work, these conversations revolve in my mind.’19 Martinez strives to disturb, disrupt, enlighten and shift prevailing stigma.

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For Martinez, the clash between porcelain and terracotta used simultaneously raises questions of classism, of maker status and of the value of material. Even though the porcelain clay body is formulated to withstand the effects of higher heat, it bends or cracks with the melting and bloating of the terracotta. The heat of the kiln pushes the lower temperature clay to respond to its unusual environment by flowing around, over or through the other elements in the piece until the materials fuse into one. The application of heat over time ensures that objects can no longer be separated into their components; time morphs the objects into new entities altogether. Martinez first started using the two clays fired together for her composite wall-mounted series of ceramic masks, Castas (2011). The porcelain and the terracotta were combined to fight against each other in the kiln in various proportions. This tension between the disparate clays viscerally personifies Martinez’s mestizaje identity, thus creating a powerful allegory: the clay alters, as did European cultures through their interactions with subjugated Indigenous peoples. This resulted in the new mestizaje racial categories of contemporary Latin America.20 In 2012 Martinez created a series of three hundred ceramic bones. These pieces were made as an homage to her mother’s journey of exile out of Chile’s military dictatorship in 1974. Martinez was six months old when her mother carried her on foot over the mountains into Argentina. Martinez always meant for this piece to be ephemeral. She imagined that someday, maybe decades from the time of their creation, she would return the bones to the homeland from whence they were conceived. Four years later, Martinez joined the collective, Constelaciones, comprised of five artists.21 It was through this collective that her vision of returning the clay to its destined resting place became a reality. A crew of thirteen, including the artists, a driver, a cinematographer and five witnesses, made the journey from Canada to Calama, a small mining town on the edge of the Atacama Desert in Chile. Return Atacama (2016) was performed as a journey, ‘an invocation of radical generosity, an opening of arms in which form meets form, place meets place, time meets time’.22 The ‘bones’ were carried into the Desert and ultimately piled on the ground to be consumed by the sand. Over the years, and still to this day, the women of Calama have searched that same Desert for traces of the bones of their loved ones who were killed and buried in mass graves by the Pinochet regime. The ceramic component of Return Atacama is much like Castas, a mix of terracotta and porcelain, fired at different temperatures so that the clays react with and against each other. Terracotta was wrapped around porcelain ‘bones’ of various sizes, then fired at various temperatures creating hundreds of one-of-a-kind forms. Martinez’s ceramic forms may be interpreted as sculptures woven from stratified layers of Chilean history, diasporic and nomadic trajectories. The act of strewing them across the shifting sand

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FIGURE 8.1 Monica Mercedes Martinez. Return Atacama, 2016 (as part of the collective Constelaciones). Performance still. Photo: Cassie Scott. releases the artist from the weight, despair and isolation of their creation (Figure 8.1). Taylor primarily addresses the ‘both/and’ inter-subjectivity of the mestizaje in the context of the Latino-American hemisphere. She notes, however, that this theory can be extended to other mixed-race cultures, introducing the notion of ‘neither/nor inter-subjectivity’.23 Within Canada’s multicultural context, and the melting-pot of the United States, there are added layers of complexity for the intermediary to negotiate. Both ‘both/and’ and ‘neither/ nor’ implicate a double-coded consciousness that moves beyond a binary fragmented sense of identity.

PJ Anderson PJ Anderson reads Black at face value, but she lays claim to both of her ethnic roots in equal measure in her work. She was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her father immigrated to Canada from Jamaica and met and married her Métis mother whose ancestry is part Indigenous and part British, from nineteenth-century Hudson Bay Company merchants. Even though there has

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been a break in the generational passing down of the handmade from mother or mother-in-law to daughter in Anderson’s own family, she literally enmeshes her hybrid Métis/Afro-Caribbean identity into her work. Taylor points out that contemporary Black cultural theorists, similar to their mixed-race counterparts, conceive of a theory of subjectivity as ‘decentered and uprooted in conjunction with theories stemming from their postcolonial and diasporic experience’.24 Anderson’s work reflects the longing for connection to cultural resources that were lost to the colonial machine: ‘Hundreds of years removed from the involuntary migration of my Jamaican and Aboriginal peoples, I still feel a strong kinship to their traditional crafts of basketry and ceramics.’25 Anderson is a coil builder – a tradition she was drawn to, having been steered to the works of Afro-Kenyan British-based ceramic artist, Magdolene Adendo, by her University of Manitoba mentor, Grace Nickel. When Anderson discovered a plethora of works by non-White, nonWestern ceramic artists, most of whom were coil builders, she committed herself fully to the medium and vocation. Anderson politicizes her work through the extended metaphor of weaponization. Here, the reference is not literal; it is meant to speak to the ugliness transmuted to seemingly innocuous things, where the media and society have altered our relationship with mere things making them into objects of fear and terror. For Anderson, her weaponization series explores the power dynamics between those who have and those who have less.26 In 2009 Anderson began her first series of weaponizations by creating traditional water vessels with monstrous inaccessible razor-edged blades at their spouts, rendering them both unapproachable and unusable. They contain the water, but the water is not available to be poured out for human consumption. The work emerged in response to the growing visibility of social injustice regarding the right to safe drinking water on many First Nations reserves in Canada. She was influenced by the media coverage that profiled the Attawapiskat First Nations’ crises in Northern Ontario, as well as those of her mother’s family’s reserve, Peguis, in Central Manitoba. Anderson queries the power dynamics at play: ‘Is the power held by the Indigenous communities without access to clean affordable water or, is it held by the international conglomerates that are vying to buy Canadian water and sell it back at ludicrously inflated prices?’27 This body of work is coil-built, burnished to a high polish with a smooth stone, bisque-fired, and subsequently smoke-fired with organic matter, often using bison dung, a traditional source of fuel. The black vessels stand tall, proud, defiant and ‘weaponized’. Anderson has recently started to literally weave stories into her pots. In 2009, she was unable to find Canadian Indigenous potters to work with as a student, so she chose to apprentice with Indigenous basket weavers. Weaving is also a traditional craft media in many African traditions, and so it

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felt like a natural fit for Anderson to incorporate weaving with coil-building. She stitches symbols onto the pots that are intended to disturb and provoke. A black hoodie on the collar of a pot symbolizes the hopelessness of police brutality and racial profiling of Black and Indigenous youth alike. Anderson notes with incredulity that Blacks are 40 per cent more likely to be harmed by police than any other person in Toronto. In the United States, police are more likely to shoot, without cause, a brown or black person wearing a hoodie. A hoodie is just a sweater with a hood, but worn by a teenager, a Black or Indigenous youth, it marks them as a target for police brutality. Anderson has travelled to work and learn from Indigenous potters as an artist in residence in South Africa, and most recently in Santa Fe, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. She was in El Paso in August 2019 when a gunman openfired at a local Walmart, discriminately aiming for brown bodies who might be Hispanic and/or of Mexican origin. Twenty-two young people were murdered, another twenty-four injured. Anderson was fifteen minutes away at the time, taking a workshop on Indigenous ceramic techniques, when her cellphone alert went off. The next day, many parents went to the site to try and find information about children who had not returned home. They were rounded up by police and taken away to be processed and their status as legal or illegal

FIGURE 8.2  PJ Anderson. Glorification #3 (black), 2019. Earthenware, terra sigillata, graphite, earthenware glaze. Photo: PJ Anderson.

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migrants assessed. This lived experience spawned the Glorification series within Anderson’s ongoing conceptual exploration of weaponization. Her witnessing of nonchalance in people around her further fuelled her sense of alienation and frustration. Anderson created beautiful pots with highly realistic handguns rising out of the vessels to represent the glorification of guns as a means to a racist’s end game (Figure 8.2). Anderson points to the fact that we are living and creating in a world where even the right to use a public washroom has become contentious, due to gender and identity politics. She sees no end in sight with respect to her weaponization series. She reflects on how the power dynamic between the haves and the have-nots will continue to manipulate the threat narrative. For Anderson, fear in its visceral form, will continue to be present in contemporary society, thus providing her with a continuous stream of symbols, ideas and concepts to turn into ‘weapons’ through art.

Habiba El-Sayed Habiba El-Sayed describes her sense of cultural identity as ‘ambiguous’ and holds her ‘Canadianness’ as a ‘beacon for [her] many diasporas’.28 From this vantage, she aligns herself with Taylor’s double-coded consciousness. She is a first-generation Canadian of immigrant parents: her Egyptian-born father left her Guyanese-born mother when she was ten years old. She performs her Muslim, hybrid identity in order to come to terms with her own sense of loss and longing. She notes that ‘perhaps my Egyptian identity is precisely my lack of it . . . ever-changing, developing and negotiating with my Canadian identity’.29 In Would I Have Called You Teta? (2017), El-Sayed asks the question of a grandmother whom she will never meet, whose food she will never taste. In this performance-based work, she re-enacts a childhood memory of preparing ma’amoul with her father. These are small date-filled shortbread cookies typically found in Middle Eastern cuisine. She sourced the actual moulds used for making the cookies, and enacts the making of them with unfired porcelain, devoid of scent, colour and the essential qualities that allow each of us as both viewers and witnesses to connect to our pasts (Figure 8.3). El-Sayed relies on the sensory aspect of the ma’amoul to re-imagine a place where, had her father not left, she might have known her Egyptian grandmother, and experienced the ritual of making and consuming the Arabic cookies with a significant relative whom she would have called Teta. This re-imagining draws on Marcel Proust’s writings on remembrance, in which food is not only able to prompt otherwise unreachable memories, but also

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FIGURE 8.3 Habiba El-Sayed. Would I Have Called You Teta?, 2017. Live performance, unfired slipcast porcelain, tea, found objects. Photo: Aniqa Tabassum. unlocks ancillary recollections.30 In this way, the scent of food actually allows one to traverse time. Nostalgia presents itself as a prominent player in the food-memory associative identity relationship. El-Sayed poignantly cautions that the romanticization of nostalgia may become problematic with respect to the preservation of cultural identity, as nostalgia by-passes the struggle and sacrifice often coupled with migration. These elements are essential parts of El-Sayed’s diasporic identity.31 El-Sayed actively engages decolonization in her work Pushback (2017). This durational performative piece involves pushing 800 pounds of raw terracotta through the main gates of the Halifax Public Gardens – a space El-Sayed describes as ‘drenched in colonialism’.32 The clay is soft and malleable, akin to her own flesh, but the bars of the gates do not allow her to pass through. The clay ultimately slumps into a heap, some of it having taken on the imprint of the British insignia of the gates. El-Sayed was attracted to working with the duality inherent in gates: they at once provide an entry point and block passage; their iron bars are permeable yet confining. This duality serves as a metaphor for the duality of suppression and openness that El-Sayed lives as a Muslim woman of colour in Canada. She plumbs the depths of the sheer exhaustion of the weight of apology that Western society has seemingly placed on all Muslims in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001.33 The work reflects the brokenness of the Muslim community in North America with which she identifies. On a more universal scale, El-Sayed aligns

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herself with the BIPOC community whose voices are often marginalized. She feels that as a visible minority, people often feign a false acceptance, when in reality they are judging her, literally at face value. Pushback is an expression of frustration in the face of systemic racism and injustice. Taylor notes, ‘in the culturally and socially constructed world of performance, the past, the present, the future, and “real,” and the “imagined” become common referents for performers and audiences’.34 Taylor’s allusion to the shifting spectres of presence that loop back and incorporate traces of the past within the present is particularly relevant to El-Sayed’s work. Destruction of a Chaise Longue (2019) directly references the Orientalist painting, Reclining Odalisque,35 by the French painter Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. In the nineteenth century, Europeans bastardized the term odalisque and it has now become synonymous with a Muslim harem’s concubine. Historic artistic representations of the odalisque played a role in spawning the stereotype of the submissive Muslim woman. Benjamin-Constant’s painting strips the Muslim woman of not only her clothing, but by casting a heavy shadow over her eyes, she is stripped of her dignity and agency. She is posed to objectify her body for the pleasure of men’s viewing. El-Sayed feels that this voyeurism in the odalisque painting is akin to a prison: freezing the woman for an eternity in an uncomfortable and awkward position, immortalized for the male gaze. In Destruction of a Chaise Longue El-Sayed inserts her own body as a way to further illustrate the repetitive quotidian physical and emotional labour enacted by Muslim women. She poses wearing her hijab, on a chaise longue made entirely of clay. She uses her body to lean, push and press into the chair until it ultimately collapses. El-Sayed alters Benjamin-Constant’s painting by removing the odalisque figure in Photoshop and replacing her with a pixelated void. She projects this image onto herself on the chaise longue and onto a screen behind her. The projection is animated, and the void creeps larger until the body of the odalisque becomes indiscernible. For El-Sayed this annihilation of the image through a digital ‘cutting and pasting’ of the female figure carries with it a sense of empowerment. ‘If our bodies are objectified, we will take up space. We will control where we are, what happens to our bodies and who tells our stories.’36 Ultimately, the work aims to challenge the colonial White male gaze that seeks to objectify, fetishize and/or suppress Muslim women.37

Conclusion The conceptualization of mixed race is a complex terrain that ushers in issues of intellectual genealogies and the contestation of theoretical terms that ascribe dimensions of racial and cultural mixing such as biracialism,

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crossbreeding, hybridity, passing and mestizaje. Each of the artists discussed in this chapter trouble the social construction and cultural perceptions of their respective racial binaries through their craft practice. The spaces they inhabit are necessarily liminal due to their respective ancestors’ historical colonization and their own internalized quotidian marginalization. Their art is politicized by virtue of their lived experiences in relation to their racialized identities. Yet, they are not the oppressed, they are the truth-tellers. There is a paradox within the liminality of the mixed-race artist precisely because their specific vantage offers them the possibility to shift external perceptions, stereotypes and stigma.

Notes 1 Gabriel J. Chin, ‘The Civil Rights Revolution Comes to Immigration Law: A New Look at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965’, North Carolina Law Review 75 (1996): 1. https​:/​/pd​​fs​.se​​manti​​cscho​​lar​.o​​rg​/1b​​3b​/7a​​6ecb6​​ 4de7a​​efa11​​6ba7a​​19e1​5​​b36be​​8f8c.​​pdf 2 Paula Simons, ‘On Point: Fifty Years Ago, Canada Changed Its Immigration Rules and in Doing so Changed the Face of This Country’, Edmonton Journal, 29 June 2017. https​:/​/ed​​monto​​njour​​nal​.c​​om​/ne​​ws​/in​​sight​​/on​-p​​oint-​​fifty​​-year​​s​ -ago​​-cana​​da​-ch​​anged​​-its-​​immig​​ratio​​n​-rul​​es​-an​​d​-in-​​doing​​-so​-c​​ha​nge​​d​-the​​-face​​ -of​-t​​his​-c​​ountr​y 3 William Kentridge, Second-Hand Reading, Film 6:55 (Cape Town, SA: A4 Arts Foundation, 2014). 4 Julie Hollenbach, ‘Moving Beyond a Modern Craft: Thoughts on White Entitlement and Cultural Appropriation in Professional Craft in Canada’, Studio Magazine 14, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2019). https​:/​/ww​​w​.stu​​dioma​​gazin​​e​.ca/​​ artic​​les​/2​​019​/m​​oving​​-beyo​​nd​-​a-​​moder​​n​-cra​​ft 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1993), 144. 9 Ibid. 10 The military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet was an authoritarian military regime that ruled Chile for seventeen years, between 11 September 1973 and 11 March 1990. The regime left over 3,000 dead or missing, tortured tens of thousands of prisoners, and drove an estimated 200,000 Chileans into exile. 11 Monica Mercedes Martinez, ‘As We See Ourselves, So Shall We Be Seen: Identity and the Artist’s Practice’, Master of Fine Art thesis, University of Manitoba School of Art, 22, ii.

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12 Ibid., 1. 13 Monica Mercedes Martinez in email correspondence with the author, 7 October 2019. 14 Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (London: Duke University Press, 2003), 87. 15 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995), 102–3. 16 Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, 104. 17 Ibid., 100. 18 Monica Mercedes Martinez, Artist Statement, 2019. 19 Monica Martinez in email correspondence with the author, October 2019. 20 Ibid. 21 Monica Mercedes Martinez, Roewan Crowe, Doris Difarnecio, Christina Hajjar, and Helene Vosters; the witnesses to the journey and the performance were Jarvis Brownlie, Cassie Scott, Shannon Bell, Kimberley Wilde, Smaro Kambourelli, and Dot Tuer; the cinematographer, Lex Taylor, documented the performance; and the driver was Marcelo Valdez Perez. 22 Monica Mercedes Martinez, Return Atacama, Artist Statement, 2016. 23 Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, 96. 24 Ibid., 102. 25 PJ Anderson, ‘Intertwined: Like Kin’, Artist Statement, Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, 2019. 26 PJ Anderson in conversation with the author, 1 November 2019. 27 PJ Anderson, ‘Unconventional Weaponizations’, Artist Statement, 2019. 28 Habiba El-Sayed, ‘Food, Cultural Identity and the Romanticized Memory’, Unpublished essay. NSCADU, Halifax 2015, 1. 29 Ibid., 8. 30 Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957), 53. 31 El-Sayed, ‘Food, Cultural Identity and the Romanticized Memory’, 7. 32 Habiba El-Sayed, Artist Statement, 2017. 33 As cited by the artist during a panel discussion, ‘The Art of Otherness’. National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Conference, Pittsburgh, March 2018. 34 Alberto Guevara, ‘Diana Taylor: The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 30, no. 60 (2005): 239–40. 35 Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, Reclining Odalisque, circa 1870. Oil on canvas 115 x 149 cm. Ger Eenens Collection The Netherlands. 36 Habiba El-Sayed, Artist Statement, 2019. 37 Ibid.

9 Jewellery is political Ethical jewellery practice Elizabeth Shaw

T

he close relationship between jewellery and the wearer is understood though perhaps not often articulated beyond the discussions of jewellers, archaeologists and anthropologists. Jewellery is what we as humans choose to attach to ourselves, but it is more than a physical connection: it becomes an extension of our personality and identity. It is most often an extension that is visible to others; this visibility makes jewellery readable by others. Crafts writer and curator Kevin Murray posited, ‘What does politics have to do with jewelry? At its most obvious, jewelry operates as a status symbol.’1 For example the wearing of a wedding ring, or the removal of one, is a status symbol that is widely recognized. With the rise of mass production, the distribution of and access to commercially produced jewellery has become more widespread, but along with the rise of disposable fashion, disposable jewellery has also proliferated. It is clear that how the raw materials are sourced and the jewellery is produced can be anything but ethical. While it might seem ethical to buy jewellery from developing countries, it is important to note that mass production in jewellery isn’t always mechanized: it can include hand production by craftspeople in countries with low wages and poor working conditions. In contemporary society jewellery is often part of fast fashion, a seasonal changeable aesthetic accessory, something that can be, and often is, valued only momentarily. Certainly, this jewellery still has a role as a status symbol, for keeping up to date with current fashions and being on trend.

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There are many facets to what makes for political jewellery: this essay will look at two. Firstly, I will look at how jewellery with a seemingly non-political aesthetic can send a political message. I will then go on to discuss the political nature of the materials that jewellery is made from.

Political messages in jewellery As a young teenager at a high school with a strict dress code I learnt that the most anonymous, understated jewellery can be provocatively political. To challenge a rule I didn’t respect, I pierced one ear and wore a small silver stud. The school specified that a pair of simple studs or sleeper earrings were the only earrings allowed. It took a while for the teachers to notice, but when they did, I was given a detention as punishment for my breach of the school uniform rules and told to get my other ear pierced or to remove my one earring. Instead I pierced the same ear a second time and in keeping with the school dress code, I made sure I was wearing a pair of simple studs. This teenage challenge to the interpretation of rules proved a powerful irritant for my teachers. I was given more detentions but also kept wearing my pair of simple studs. To this day the asymmetry of my earring placement continues to unsettle people. My teenage experience taught me that it is possible to keep within the societal norms and wear jewellery that shares a political message. Protest badges are an obvious example, but there are nuanced and, at times, ambiguous ways jewellery has been and continues to be used to carry a political message. In the early 1900s, the Suffragettes campaigning for women’s political rights adopted the colours of white, green and purple. They wore especially designed brooches to show solidarity, to indicate their involvement and to help identify each other. Madeleine K. Albright was the first woman to hold the position of American Secretary of State. She embraced the societal expectation that as a woman she would wear jewellery and did so with clear political intent. Significantly Albright wore specific brooches to meetings to ‘express her aims of negotiations’.2 Political scientist Alain L. Sanders quoted Albright as saying, ‘Everyone will just have to read my pins.’3 An example Sanders cites is that Albright wore two brooches, an eagle and a top hat, both symbols of American power and glory when she met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow in February 1997. As another example Sanders states, ‘In 1994, when reports circulated in the Iraqi press calling Albright a serpent, she decided to wear the snake pin—in lieu of a name tag—when meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.’4 In 2009 Albright published a book aptly titled Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box.

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In response to a reader’s question, ‘What fashion lessons can we learn from Trump’s visit?’5 Hadley Freeman wrote an article for The Guardian provocatively titled ‘Was the Queen sending coded messages to Donald Trump via her brooches? Absolutely.’6 Freeman reported that Queen Elizabeth II was observed to have worn a brooch, received as a gift from the former United States President Obama and his wife, to a meeting with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. At a second meeting she wore a snowflake brooch, a gift from Canada, read as a reference to Trump’s prior use of ‘snowflake’ as a derogatory term to refer to those who disagree with him. For a third meeting the Queen wore a brooch the Queen Mother wore to the funeral of King George VI, which Freeman observes is not a brooch associated with happiness and joy. In late September 2019 Lady Hale, President of the British Supreme Court, announced the much-awaited verdict that Prime Minister ‘Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was “void and of no effect”’.7 The brooch she was wearing also gained wide attention. Scarlett Conlon writing in the fashion section of The Guardian reported that the spider brooch had become a ‘fashion phenomenon’8. Similarly, fashion historian Amber Butchart writing for Frieze Magazine observed that ‘it was her spider brooch that stole the spotlight’ and sparked discussion about ‘what the symbolism could mean’.9 Of course, journalists focusing on jewellery help build awareness and create demand. In a different way of signalling, the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has been widely reported to wear clothes and jewellery that are ethical or sustainable in their origins. Her jewellery choices don’t feature the graphic imagery like Hale and Albright’s brooches do, but the impact of her choices nonetheless makes a clear political statement. She is known to wear jewellery by Pippa Small, a United Kingdom-based jewellery firm that practices ‘fair trade and sustainable employment’.10 Pippa Small, quoted by journalist Emily Nash, has said, ‘Ethical jewellery has become a conversation and I think the Duchess wearing it over the last year, without having to say anything, has brought that subject to a public who weren’t aware.’11 Wearing jewellery with political intention remains relevant and it seems a public figure would be foolish to think otherwise.

Jewellery materials The Museum of London holds a collection of Suffragette brooches, which more than a century after their use provide a material record of this influential political movement. But what happens to all of the jewellery that isn’t collected by museums? The materials that jewellery is made from have the very real potential to outlive not just the period of use, but also the life of the

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maker and the owner. Just think of the recovered jewels that have provided archaeologists and the public alike with insights into ancient civilizations. This longevity of materials applies today to conventionally precious metals and gems and also to less commercially precious and comparatively modern materials. For jewellery made from silver or gold the greatest risk to longevity is that it will be melted down for reuse. The ease of melting and reusing precious metals is a well-established part of the jewellery trade. However, not all of the jewellery of today is made from materials that are as easy to recycle or reuse as silver and gold. Materials like plastic and base metals also have the potential to outlive the maker and the wearer but are far less likely to be recycled or reused. The low economic value of these materials means that jewellery made from them is very likely to end up as rubbish. Not only can jewellery carry a political message, but the materials it is made from have political implications. Every jeweller who designs or makes pieces from materials that cannot, in the future, be easily retrieved for reuse is making a statement and contributing to material evidence that is likely to last as a physical record for centuries to come. Jewellery is a carrier of stories and associations and while it can quite often have a commodity value, its value for the owner can extend beyond the commercial potential of its material make-up. For example, the value of a wedding ring or inherited jewellery is likely to be more aligned to what it symbolizes than its potential to be exchanged for cash. Yet a lot of the jewellery produced today is not intended or even destined to be worn long enough for a wearer to form a lasting association. The rate at which fashion jewellery is being produced and disposed of resembles the disposability of fast fashion. The Fashion Revolution12 is active in raising awareness of the hidden impacts of fast fashion, from materials sourcing to manufacture, distribution and the masses of waste at the end of life. Fashion jewellery also contributes to the overall proliferation of material objects (stuff) and this reality has not gone unnoticed. Anthropologist Daniel Miller refers to ‘modern stuff’ as being ‘commodities: the deluge that followed from the industrial and consumer revolutions’.13 Miller’s choice of the word ‘deluge’ is appropriate: another relevant related term is flood. The value of an item as a commodity, its ‘commodity candidacy’, is specific to its exchangeability within a society.14 The production costs of fashion jewellery are low and its commodity candidacy or fashion currency is intended to be short lived. The purchaser is expected to respond to changing trends necessitating the next purchase. This production cycle rarely includes consideration of the human and environmental costs. Design researcher Matthew Kiem, acknowledging the influence of theorist Tony Fry, has stated ‘our current condition . . . seeks to depress the value of labour in order to

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produce too many things that are impossible to fully consume, and are therefore irrevocably destined for wastage’.15

Jewellery and fashion The Fashion Revolution was formed by fashion designers Carry Somers and Orsola de Castro in response to the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh. The structurally faulty factory was reduced to rubble in minutes; those working in the building could not escape. The final death toll was reported as 1,134.16 The shocking incident exposed the ugly truth of the appalling standards in the workplace where fashion clothing was being made. This was a damning example of mass production being outsourced to the services of people in a country where wages and worker protections were low. An extraordinary revelation after the event was that many of the clothes were being made for big international brands, and some claimed that they had no idea that Rana Plaza was the location of their production. The subsequent media scrutiny exposed that fashion supply chains were complex and confusing tangled webs; greater transparency was needed. This was a challenge to the status quo. Co-founder de Castro refers to the political nature of the Fashion Revolution’s initiatives: ’The fashion industry was built on secrecy and elitism; it was opaque. Transparency is disruptive . . . and a useful weapon of change.’17 The Fashion Revolution is concerned with the whole life cycle of clothing, from raw materials and employment conditions of workers involved in clothing manufacture to the eventual disposal. It is effective in using social media to promote its activities to engage and inform the wider public. It has been active in exposing the human and environmental costs of fast fashion. The jewellery industry has also been included in its initiatives and efforts for improving fashion industry standards. The Fashion Revolution’s annual social media campaign, ‘Who Made My Clothes?’18 marks the anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse. The campaign calls on people to post an image of themselves showing the brand label of their clothes tagged #whomademyclothes. In response, workers at all levels of clothing production are asked to post #imadeyourclothes. They have also been directing ‘Who Made My Jewellery?’ in recognition of the close relationship between fashion and jewellery. There are multiple other industry initiatives within and aligned to the field of jewellery. These are variously aiming to improve the environmental and cultural standards of sourcing raw materials, transparency in the supply chain and production processes. As with the Fashion Revolution’s activities, the jewellery industry’s initiatives are being disruptive. Their activities are

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necessarily political, drawing attention to practices that are usually hidden or far removed from the end product. They advocate and set standards for better practice by exposing the human and environmental costs (blood diamonds, child miners, cyanide poisoning of water sources, environmental degradation) and developing and promoting alternatives. This is by no means a definitive list of such organizations: Alliance for Responsible Mining, Jewelry Industry Summit, Artisanal Gold Council, Diamond Development Initiative, Earthworks, Ethical Metalsmiths, IMPACT, Swiss Better Gold Association, Fairtrade International, Fair Luxury, Common Objective. Many of these organizations are focused on setting and improving standards for the sourcing and processing of new raw materials, precious metals and gemstones. Some are concerned also about manufacturing practices. There are not many initiatives focusing on the deluge of fashion jewellery and what happens to it at the end of its commodity life. I will introduce two jewellery initiatives that do. These community educational research projects have developed as a way of both exposing and testing ways to tackle the problem of unsustainable consumerism. Murray has noted that ‘climate change has served to raise parallel concerns about consumerism as an unsustainable basis on which to maintain societies. In positioning craft as an alternative to the rapid turnover of fashion and technology, it maintains its role as a counterpoint to dominant trends in modernity.’19 The Radical Jewelry Makeover (RJM)20 and JUNK – rubbish to gold (JUNK)21 are craftbased initiatives that involve students, professional jewellers and the public in activities that draw attention to and suggest methods of dealing with jewellery at the end of its commodity life.

Radical Jewelry Makeover It is not surprising, given the speculative and community base of these initiatives, that each was developed and hosted in a university. Both RJM and JUNK involve making new jewellery, sourcing the materials from donated jewellery. Most of the donated jewellery is mass-produced, while the jewellers involved in the research programmes are art students and professional studio jewellers. Curator at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Peter Hughes, has suggested that ‘effective reuse of redundant objects cannot be achieved through mass-production and requires an imaginative, craft oriented engagement with the things themselves’.22 These two initiatives are dependent on the individual creativity of the participants to use their craft skills to rethink the use of the materials at hand. The RJM was developed by Susie Ganch and Christina Miller for Ethical Metalsmiths and was first delivered at the Virginia Commonwealth University,

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United States, in 2007.23 Ultimately RJM involves making new jewellery from old jewellery which in itself is not a new idea. Rather, it is how the RJM introduces this idea and how it uses it as an educational tool that makes it significant. The programme involves a public call asking the community to search their homes, their drawers and their storage for jewellery they no longer want and are willing to donate; the RJM calls this ‘community mining’. It draws attention to the large quantity of materials suited to reuse hidden in households. It also draws the attention of the public to the project. This is one of the ways it extends its educational role beyond the jewellery studio. The donated material invariably includes items of jewellery made from traditional easy-to-reuse materials, precious metals and gemstones, which is not the case for the donations to JUNK. The RJM is focused on closing the loop, following Braungart and McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle theory, in which the donated jewellery becomes the ‘technical nutrients’ which can be used to make new jewellery, with the design allowing for the components in the future to again be retrieved as ‘technical nutrients’.24 The intention is that, long term, the demand to extract raw materials will diminish. In the short term the RJM introduces participants to ways of working to ensure the pieces of jewellery made in the programme are robust and suited to long term use, while allowing for easy retrieval of components as ‘technical nutrients’ at the end of their use. In every iteration of the RJM (there have now been fourteen events and six satellite smaller ones), the wider community has proven keen to support the project and has donated generously. The donors are forewarned that their jewellery will be deconstructed and altered beyond recognition. The donated jewellery and associated stories are collected and sorted. The stories supplied are revealing: the donated pieces can have deep sentimental value as well as high material value, but equally some items have never been worn and are in no way significant to the donor. The sorting process involves university students and professional jewellers who assess each donation identifying the material make-up of each item. Is it gold, silver, base metal, plastic, bone, diamond, shell, unknown? Does the piece have symbolic value that could be reused for narrative content such as a graphic element? The sorting process helps build the participants’ understanding of materials, their strengths and weaknesses and suitability for reuse. Ultimately the donations are the materials that the participating jewellers will use to make new work. Those involved are briefed about the considerations of the materials on hand. They are taught how to test metal qualities, how to make ingots, how to tell if a stone is real or glass or plastic; they are given tips about ways to work with unfamiliar materials including safety considerations. The jewellers are guided to ensure the works they create in the RJM are constructed in a way that adds value to the individual elements used and to

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make future material retrieval more likely. For example, bezel setting a plastic bead in a silver earring adds value to the plastic bead, and in the future all components should be easy to separate with minimal environmental impact. However, fusing brass and gold together to make a ring would mean the hypoallergenic qualities of the gold would be compromised by the more reactive bronze, making the ring less wearable, and any future retrieval would require a full refining process. This is a fundamental idea about the ongoing life of materials already in the system and one that participants are encouraged to also consider in relation to their usual practice. The project closes with a selling exhibition of the works produced. Donors are given credit towards a purchase, and the profit from sales is shared between the jeweller and Ethical Metalsmiths. This is an event that again draws the public into the ideas behind the RJM, encouraging them to think about how materials pass through communities. Consistently, the sense of community formed in the programme is an important outcome. Through being exposed to the large quantity of materials, participants are challenged to consider their own studio practices through the lens of the RJM.

JUNK – rubbish to gold JUNK is a participatory project co-created by Jivan Astfalk, Laura BradshawHeap and Rachel Darbourne and was held at the School of Jewellery, Birmingham City University in 2015.25 The idea was ‘to collect unsellable JUNK jewellery from UK and Irish-based charity shops and bring them together with a number of jewellers and makers who would gift their time and skills to convert this raw material into new objects while in full view of the public’.26 According to Bradshaw-Heap, the jewellery that charities deemed unsuited for sale was ‘damaged or broken, simply over-worn or no longer in fashion’.27 These were definitely items destined to follow the more common store to landfill cycle. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has noted that ‘the commodity candidacy of things is less temporal than a conceptual feature, and it refers to the standards and criteria (symbolic, classificatory, and moral) that define the exchangeability of things in any particular social and historical context’.28 The context that led to the JUNK initiative is that in Western culture a measure of wealth is ‘how many objects people are able to discard’.29 The rate at which things are discarded has led to the deluge of ‘stuff’ that charity shops are receiving. Like the RJM model, the participating jewellers were working with donated jewellery, but in this case the jewellery was not from individual donors so was not accompanied by stories and it was also made of extremely low value materials. The JUNK project drew attention to the large amount of donations

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charities receive that they can’t resell. This is an issue that is not unique to charity shops in the UK and Ireland. According to a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ‘Australian charities are paying $13 million a year to send unusable donations to landfill.’30 These are items that charities deem to have no commodity candidacy. The team of jewellers involved in the JUNK project were challenged to make pieces from a large amount of base metal and plastic donations diverted from landfill. Their involvement was live streamed extending the audience internationally. JUNK’s co-creators stated: ‘During a public performance thirty-one jewellers ‘gifted’ their skills, (de)constructing and (re)constructing pieces selected from a mountain of JUNK creating reimagined artworks for our exhibitions and online auctions.’31 The profits from the sale of the works were split among the charities that had provided their unwanted donations. The project was well documented and the image of the large pile of materials was effective in communicating the scale of the problem. A lot of the materials used in JUNK were ones that are not easy to reuse, unlike silver or gold that can be melted and reshaped. The jewellery being worked with was made from materials that many of the jewellers were unfamiliar with, materials that in our society aren’t valued for their potential reuse. While in the RJM sustainable and environmentally friendly studio practices and the future life of the materials are the focus, in JUNK this was not the priority. While both projects were initiated by contemporary jewellers as opposed to commercial producers, most of the materials involved in the RJM and JUNK are of mass-produced commercial origin. These projects draw attention to how a piece of jewellery that once was personal and meaningful can also become unwanted ‘stuff’. As a jeweller this is surprisingly confrontational to me. The process of handcrafting creates a connection between the maker, the materials and the finished piece of jewellery. It is expected and hoped that in turn the wearer will develop a similar lasting relationship with the piece of jewellery. This is in keeping with Hughes’ description of ‘emotionally durable design’ as ‘an approach that seeks to prevent redundancy not through mere physical durability that has proven ineffective, but by designing objects whose lives are prolonged because people become emotionally attached to them’.32

Conclusion In the early years of my studio practice I stated, ‘I like working with materials that are going to last . . . I like the idea of making jewellery and tableware that will be used for generations.’33 Working at the time with only precious metals,

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I was correct in thinking my works had the potential to last generations. However, my experiences since then and exposure to the RJMs and JUNK suggest that my idea that all of the pieces I make would remain relevant in people’s lives and be passed on seems less likely and inappropriate. Kiem, discussing Tony Fry’s theory of Sustainment, states, ‘Fry uses the concept of Sustainment to refer to a state in which the total inertia of human sociotechnical existence, including cultures and economies, act to secure rather than damage the possibility of long term futures.’34 Kiem has observed that, by allowing us to talk in terms of the ability of individuals, groups, and their relation to the built world, ‘sustain-ability’ assists us in thinking beyond the mere technical specifications of objects, and onto questions of how an endemic condition of cultural unsustainability is symbolically and materially constituted, and what kind of designing and making may begin to counter this condition.35 Contemporary jewellers know that jewellery is not just a commodity, it is a vehicle for many ideas. Public figures demonstrate that jewellery remains relevant as a means of communication and can be worn with political intent, but the politics of jewellery go further. Jewellery can also be interpreted on a structural level through, for example, the ethics of its supply chains and its contribution to a culture of overconsumption. Through projects like the RJM and JUNK, contemporary jewellers are beginning to expose and address problems in the current system of fashion jewellery and the use of unsustainable materials and processes in the wider field of jewellery. There is room for more initiatives.

Notes 1 K. Murray, ‘The Political Challenge to Contemporary Jewelry’, in Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective, ed. D. Skinner (New York, NY: LARK, 2013), 240–5. 2 Helen Williams Drutt and W. Steiner, Brooching It Diplomatically: A Tribute to Madeleine K. Albright (Philadelphia, PA: arnoldsche Art Publishers, 1998), 9. 3 Alain L. Sanders and J. Goldstein, ‘Brooching the Subject Diplomatically’, TIME Magazine 149, no. 12 (1997): 36. 4 Ibid. 5 H. Freeman, ‘Was the Queen Sending Coded Messages to Donald Trump Via Her Brooches? Absolutely’, The Guardian, Wednesday, 18 July 2018. https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/fa​​shion​​/2018​​/jul/​​18​/wa​​s​-the​​-quee​​n​-sen​​ding-​​ coded​​-mess​​ages-​​to​-do​​nald-​​trump​​-via-​​​her​-b​​rooch​​es​-ab​​solut​​ely.

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6 Ibid. 7 S. Conlon, ‘How Lady Hale’s Giant Spider Brooch Sent the Web into a Spin’, The Guardian, Sunday, 29 September 2019 (modified Monday, 30 September 2019). https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/fa​​shion​​/2019​​/sep/​​28​/la​​dy​-ha​​le​-sp​​ider-​​ brooc​​h​-lau​​​nches​​-glob​​al​-tr​​end. 8 Ibid. 9 A. Butchart, ‘Lady Hale’s Spider and the Political History of the Brooch’, Frieze Magazine, 3 October 2019. https​:/​/fr​​ieze.​​com​/a​​rticl​​e​/lad​​y​-hal​​es​-sp​​ider-​​ and​-p​​oliti​​cal​​-h​​istor​​y​-bro​​och 10 E. Nash, ‘This Is the Incredibly Moving Impact of Duchess Meghan’s Ethical Jewellery Choices’, HELLO! 12 August 2019. https​:/​/ca​​.hell​​omaga​​zine.​​com​ /f​​ashio​​n​/roy​​al​-st​​yle​/2​​01908​​12763​​87​/me​​ghan-​​markl​​e​-eth​​ical-​​jewel​​lery-​​​pippa​​ -smal​​l​-int​​ervie​​w/ 11 Ibid. 12 https​:/​/ww​​w​.fas​​hionr​​evolu​​tion.​​org​/a​​bout/​​get​​-i​​nvolv​​ed/ 13 D. Miller, Stuff (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2010), 63. 14 A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 2–63, 14. 15 M. Kiem, ‘Theorising a Transformative Agenda for Craft’, craft + design inquiry 3 (2011): 33–48, 38. 16 T. Hoskins, ‘Reliving the Rana Plaza Factory Collapse: A History of Cities in 50 Buildings, Day 22’, The Guardian, Thursday, 23 April 2015. https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​ guard​​ian​.c​​om​/ci​​ties/​​2015/​​apr​/2​​3​/ran​​a​-pla​​za​-fa​​ctory​​-coll​​apse-​​histo​​r y​-​ci​​ties-​​50​ -bu​​ildin​​gs. 17 S. Ditty, Fashion Transparency Index 2019: Fashion Revolution, 87. https​:/​/is​​ suu​.c​​om​/fa​​shion​​revol​​ution​​/docs​​/fash​​ion​_t​​ransp​​arenc​​​y​_ind​​ex​_20​​19. 18 https​:/​/ww​​w​.fas​​hionr​​evolu​​tion.​​org​/a​​bout/​​get​​-i​​nvolv​​ed/ 19 K. Murray, ‘Editorial - Introduction to Sustainability Issue’, craft + design enquiry 3 (2011): 1–5, 3. 20 RJM I: Richmond, VA, February 2007. rad​ical​jewe​lrym​akeover​​.org. https​:/​/ ww​​w​.rad​​icalj​​ewelr​​ymake​​over.​​org​/r​​​ichmo​​nd. 21 Laura Bradshaw-Heap, Rachel Darbourne and J. Astfalk, JUNK: rubbish to gold, 2016. https​:/​/is​​suu​.c​​om​/ru​​bbish​​togol​​d​/doc​​s​/hig​​h​_res​​_junk​​_pos​t​​er​_ve​​r2​ _01​. 22 P. Hughes, ‘Towards a Post-Consumer Subjectivity: A Future for the Crafts in the Twenty First Century?’, craft + design enquiry 3 (2011): 7–17, 16. 23 RJM I: Richmond, VA, February 2007. 24 Michael Braungart and W. McDonough, Cradle to Cradle (London: Vintage Books, 2009), 9. 25 Laura Bradshaw-Heap, Rachel Darbourne and J. Astfalk, JUNK: rubbish to gold. 26 Jivan Astfalck, Ibid.

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27 Ibid. 28 Appadurai, ‘Introduction’, 13–14. 29 M. Thompson, Rubbish Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 2. 30 B. Kleyn, ‘Lifeline Urges People Not to Dump Clothing Outside Bins After Charities Inundated’, 15 January 2019. https​:/​/ww​​w​.abc​​.net.​​au​/ne​​ws​/20​​19​-01​​ -14​/c​​harit​​ies​-n​​ot​-ac​​cepti​​ng​-do​​natio​​ns​-as​​-bin​s​​-over​​flow/​​10713​​158. 31 Jivan Astfalck, Rachel Darbourne and L. Bradshaw-Heap, ‘Beyond Junk: The Complex Art of Value-Hacking’, Making Futures 5 (2018). https​:/​/dr​​ive​.g​​oogle​​ .com/​​file/​​d​/1XW​​Ex44i​​bUj7z​​6QnH3​​-18OH​​LnXWj​​​qBEIx​​/view​. 32 Hughes, ‘Towards a Post-Consumer Subjectivity’. 33 Arts Queensland and MAD Ethos, MAD Ethos: Marketing Australian Design, Design in the Third Dimension (Toowong, QLD: Arts Queensland, 1996). 34 Kiem, ‘Theorising a Transformative Agenda for Craft’, 36. 35 Ibid., 35–6.

10 Networks of economic kinship in Aotearoa New Zealand craft markets Fiona P. McDonald

Introduction

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early every day for ten years, I have checked social media in the morning. As part of this quiet ritual, I travel through the digital vortex of Facebook and more recently have included Instagram in this process because the people I engage with are continually expanding their digital reach and upping their hashtag game. In this daily exercise, I routinely check the craft pages I follow and groups that have accumulated my ‘likes’ over the years: profiles of makers (some of whom are now friends) to see either what markets they are attending or new ideas they are working on; groups I have joined (at least those that still remain active); and events all centering around contemporary craft and craft markets in Aotearoa New Zealand. In this daily ritual, I am undertaking three things. First, I am selfishly sating my sensory desire to see recent works created by artists and crafters that I first met when I began fieldwork in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2011. Second, I am responding to emergent modalities provided by the possibility of digital ethnography and participant observation that connect this project to recent movements for distributed research beyond physical field sites into public virtual landscapes.1 And third, I have been witness to the profound economic agency of women in craft markets where an argument is to be made for their omission from almost all economic theorizing2 and where economic kinship ties are evident in their daily lives.

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Understanding the politics of craft often starts with a personal anecdote that captures what one might call an ‘aha’ moment. As an anthropologist, I find it deeply tempting to frame this whole chapter as an aha account that traces back to my own realization of economic ‘craft-scapes’ as they unfolded before me in Aotearoa New Zealand and are now evident in digital worlds. After nearly a decade of reflection, observation and engagement with in-person and virtual craft markets and forums, this chapter emerges from rigorous reflexivity of memories, field notes and a personal image archive to present a critical discussion of the dynamic politics of craft markets in Aotearoa New Zealand. This chapter actively takes up the understanding that a craft object itself has the potential to be deeply political and consequently an enchanting thing, as the late anthropologist Alfred Gell argued about the power of material objects.3 From what an object represents (be it iconography, symbolism, language and beyond) to the strategic choice of materials that it is made from, craft has been an enduring site of investigation for anthropologists concerned mostly with tourism and local consumption practices.4 My goal in this chapter is not to define craft in Aotearoa New Zealand, but rather accept that objects made and sold at in-person craft markets and in online markets are self-defined by their makers as craft. Taking from anthropologist Nicholas Thomas’s directive that just as it is not an anthropologist’s place to judge the qualities of what makes a work of art a work of art,5 it is also not my place to label anyone as a maker or a crafter.6 Rather, I look to those who self-identify their work as craft when selling online, and further take their work, vetted as handmade, as the requisite for participation in craft markets in Aotearoa New Zealand. And in doing so I can turn my focus upon the localization of emergent and sustained craft markets and the women whose social connections are bound together in a shared effort (either overt or covert) to foster a transformative economic, and thereby political, space. With emerging venues for craft markets in person and online as sites for social networks, the definition of what is craft and who makes craft is absolutely ever-shifting in Aotearoa New Zealand. And while the art of craft, and the objects themselves, are well argued to be political,7 what has been under-examined is the politics of craft markets as sites of agency for women in generating what I propose is something beyond social networking and rather is akin to a form of economic kinship.8 Kinship here is a ‘system of meaning and power’ created within a culture to determine connection to another person and in so doing ‘define[s] their mutual expectations, rights, and responsibilities’.9 Pushing this further, and perhaps more aligned with what is known as chosen or fictive kinships, I argue that in the context of women engaging in craft markets from a fiscal perspective, they form a sort of economic kinship with others who have built and maintained in-person and online craft markets, and who share mutual

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connections and reciprocal economic labour responsibilities that are explored throughout this chapter. Coming to know networks of women in Aotearoa New Zealand is not new to me. In 2005, through sheer coincidence, I met five women in their early eighties, all war brides who had been meeting bi-weekly as part of the Albany Spinners and Weavers Guild in the hinterland of Auckland. In the journey of coming to know them as friends, what transpired was a happenstance ethnography, or rather An Unexpected History Lesson: Meeting European ‘Colonial Girls’ through Knitting, Weaving, Spinning, and Cups of Tea.10 It is a project that tells the story of women, networks, survival, war brides, teachers, mothers, wives, entrepreneurs and friends through material culture.11

Setting the scene for craft markets and kinship ties Nestled deep within the South Pacific, Aotearoa New Zealand is a small island nation that boasts a current (2020) national population of approximately 4.9 million residents.12 Prior to European contact in the eighteenth century, Māori were the original inhabitants. And post-colonization, large and small European settlement communities began to take root with the insurgence of immigrant populations from Britain. The continuing diversity of the national population includes citizens from immigrant populations across the South Pacific as well as European New Zealanders and Māori populations. The settler colonial history of the nation has, in its short existence, been fraught with tension, bloodshed and misinterpretations of treaty agreements over land and sovereignty. The founding colonial document, the Treaty of Waitangi, was signed in 1840 between Māori chiefs and the Crown.13 Prior to the Treaty, all lands on the three main islands (including foreshore and seabed) were owned by Māori iwi (tribes). At this time, woollen blankets were one of the many items traded for land and since then have had a strong presence in Aotearoa New Zealand’s material history. In 1887, the New Zealand Woollen Manufacturing Company was established and eventually, in 1904, renamed as the Onehunga Woollen Mills, given its location in one of the suburbs of the Auckland isthmus. According to historian Heather Nicholson in The Loving Stitch: A History of Knitting and Spinning in New Zealand, ‘textile manufacture began in New Zealand as a cottage industry’.14 Several other mills eventually popped up throughout the country and produced mostly plaid-patterned blankets.15 It is these blankets and their distinctive patterns that have been transformed into craft and items of commerce and that evoke an emotional connection between maker and

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buyer. This is one of the first aspects of what I argue is entangled in economic networks and kinship.

Networks In 2011, I conducted field work in order to understand the various physical and aesthetic transformations of woollen blankets into works of contemporary art, craft and Indigenous regalia in various parts of North America and Aotearoa New Zealand.16 Through this investigation, I followed the blankets into art galleries, museums, studios, archives, homes and craft markets. The blankets I traced around the globe were the same objects traded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by fur traders in North America, used in treaty negotiations, gifted as wedding treasures in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s throughout the white settler nations (a.k.a. the Commonwealth), and produced originally in the United Kingdom by the Weavers of Witney from the seventeenth century. Eventually they were fabricated through replication of technology in settler states in colonized territory where small woollen mills were set up, and around which settler communities grew. These blankets are the hard-edged colonial objects with their own legacies of trauma for Indigenous communities. And in the craft markets of Aotearoa New Zealand, these woollen blankets, that once covered beds across the Islands only to vanish into the backs of cupboards when synthetic duvets or ‘doonas’ and candlewick bedcovers were introduced in the 1950s, remain popular today. As I note in ‘Charting Material Memories’, But while the woollen blanket was removed from its everyday use, it was not displaced [from] people’s memories. [. . .]. [Today], those working with woollen blankets [. . .] were young children at this time and who remember the woollen blankets on their bed. This group, known more broadly as Gen Xers, are the demographic of people born between 1965-1981 and comprise the group of women I [. . .] came to know in Aotearoa New Zealand [in craft markets], as well as the demographic of those, mostly women again, who attended and purchased goods from various types of craft markets.17 Now, in the craft markets, the transformed blankets and their makers have found new political lives, or social lives if we draw on the critical work of anthropologist Arjun Appadurai whose seminal work on globalization argues that objects, like people, possess social lives as they move (or are moved), and through which they gain value and meaning.18 In the various stalls of craft markets, the politics of the blanket became tangible, creative and

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FIGURE 10.1  Hayley Lowe Designs, 2011. Photo by Fiona P. McDonald. consumable. The objects into which the blankets have been transfigured are remarkable and to varying degrees serve alternative utilitarian functions that reflect the persistence and durability of the blankets’ material properties. The list below (in alphabetical order, and by no means exhaustive) is indicative of the many items Gen X women in Aotearoa New Zealand have created from blankets for commercial ends from 2011 to the present (Figure 10.1). ●●

Baby blankets (patch-worked and quilted)

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Book covers and notebooks

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Brooches (in various shapes, mostly flowers and Hei Tiki19 forms)

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Bunting (decorative flags and garlands)

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Children’s clothes

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Christmas ornaments (tree decorations)

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Clothes-peg angels

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Coats (short and long in various styles) and vests

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Coffee-cup sleeves, protectors

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Coffins

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Cushions (various sizes)

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Door stops (weighted)/draft blockers

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Dresses (adult)

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Eyeglass cases

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Hot water bottle covers

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iPad and laptop covers and cases

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Jewellery cases

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Kids’ tunic dresses

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Lamp shades

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Ottomans/footstools

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Pencil cases

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Pot holders and oven mitts

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Purses (clutches)

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Scarves

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Sewing pincushions

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Tea-cosies

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Teddy bears

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Tooth fairy holders

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Toys in various shapes (Hei Tiki, foxes, Scottie dogs, squirrels, elephants, whales, giraffes, robots, mice, matryoshka [Russian stacking] dolls)

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Wall hangings

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Wheat bags (heating bags)

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Wristbands and bracelets

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Documenting the various forms woollen blankets have taken within the context of craft is secondary to my focus in this chapter. That is because the blankets led me to see that there were remarkable social networks tied to economic kinship. After visiting each market, I learned more about the makers’ larger cosmological frames and the complex social networks that exist in craft markets. Being present to observe the sale of blanket-made items often created additional depth in understanding how the transformation

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of materials is part of the consumption process, a process whereby the maker is a magician, turning a blanket into a technology of enchantment that allows people to be mystified by and drowned in nostalgia.20 But in this draw to the political content of the craft object given the colonial history of the woollen blanket, as any anthropologist knows, we must look at the broader social context that objects move in and through (again, gesturing to the work of Appadurai) in order to explore beyond the enchantment of the object and the performative behaviour of consumption. In this instance, it is the physical space of craft markets scattered through large and small communities in the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand where my focus now rests.

Craft markets in Aotearoa New Zealand When you witness someone utilizing or purchasing a woollen blanket that is transformed into an object at a craft market, it is a window into an intimate sensory moment where the craft object evokes memories, nostalgia and a connection to the maker. I observed many of these rich moments throughout my fieldwork, which subsequently led to conversations and interviews where the role materials play in eliciting various regimes of knowledge – touch, smell, sight and memory – were entangled in a commercial transaction. More importantly, these moments allowed me entry into the studios, kitchens and social worlds of the women selling their work at craft markets and their own ‘social community of craft’.21 One of the characteristics of this community and their work that drives an economy is that of the handmade. The values associated with handmade objects evoke a sense of authenticity for many consumers.22 Joseph McBrinn’s work on craft offers a very succinct reflection on the idea of the handmade in craft. ‘The signification of craft evolved as handmade objects became imbued with symbolic meanings of authenticity, tradition, and heritage, and became seen as agents of transformation, changing everyday commodities into signs of modernity.’23 This is an essential element of what is now called the ‘maker movement’.24 This movement, while it has been compared to the historic Arts and Crafts movement of the nineteenth century, stakes its success on the fact that the artisanal products are of high quality manufacture, and the makers forge networks in which to sell these objects through sites and market communities such as Facebook, ETSY, Felt​.co​​.nz and others.25 An object’s handmade-ness in local craft markets and fairs across the North Island, as I observed, is often one of the criteria a seller must meet in order to be able to sell their work. I attended several such markets in rotation such

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FIGURE 10.2 Left: Devonport Craft Market. Right: Coatesville Craft Market. 2011. Photos by Fiona P. McDonald. as Crafternoon Tea, Kraftbomb (identified at that time as one of the ‘edgier’ markets), Devonport Craft Market, Craft 2.0, Coatesville Market and others (Figure 10.2). When observing blankets as wall hangings, toys and purses I also took note of the costs, with an eye to the economics of markets. On average the cushions ranged in price from NZ$15 to $150, while smaller items like purses were between NZ$10 to $25. Toys and teddy bears ranged between NZ$20 to $50, and small tree ornaments were around NZ$5 to $15. Walking through handmade craft markets was continually an act of tracking economic markets in flux based on the basic mechanics of supply and demand.

Networks of encounter (spaces of production, distribution and consumption) The craft market or craft fair is one of the most discerning social spaces as it is ‘the ground of cultural creativity’.26 The craft market is truly a rich social context where local cultural aesthetics are formed, transformed, transmitted and ‘downloaded’,27 and where the maker movement, in part, takes place. After my first time in the field in Aotearoa New Zealand, I spent several months systematically tracking where and when craft markets took place and who organizes them, and diligently attended every possible market on its rotating schedule. It was at the craft markets where I first understood how and where social relations coalesce.28 The relationship between those working in the arena of craft items became more visible as I tracked the networks that made up the craft matrix of Aotearoa New Zealand. The network of craft is rich with linkages, social specificities, protocols and relationships. It has become a space for ‘sharing knowledge [that] creat[es] new types of makers [that] fuel new communities of practice’.29

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In my experience in Aotearoa New Zealand, craft markets are organized regionally and have a central focus on sellers whose work is classified as handmade. These sellers and makers form a discrete group of individuals. Women are at the forefront of contemporary craft markets in Aotearoa New Zealand. Beyond organizing, the women are also the main sellers and consumers. Women entrepreneurs reflect an economic and social reality of craft in the country. As I repeatedly observed, women working with craft, especially craft that involves textiles, make up a distinct community of practice (CoP) within these markets. As related anthropological studies on CoPs have shown,30 they emerge from a shared interest. In the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, this is a shared interest in generating profit from craft by way of small home-based businesses that allow women to be primary caregivers, as well as contribute to family resources as income earners. Here we have the essence of kinship: a chosen kinship and social network with reciprocity, responsibility and value. Additionally, these kinship groups participate in articulating their cultural values and showcasing their skills and labour at the same time as fulfilling their economic needs. As with all kinship groups that are not biological, ‘communities of practice are formed when social units are united by common areas of concerns or interests, interact regularly, share a common vocabulary, and, even without acknowledging it, learn with and from one another in the process’.31 Therefore, I push beyond a CoP here to call this truly what it is, economic kinship. What makes this aspect of their economic group political is that it is created, sustained and invested in predominantly by women. This is a women’s only economy. The demographic of makers who participate in selling goods at these markets forms a well-networked group of savvy, compassionate, collegial and generous women. Several times it was indicated that, with increasing numbers of women starting up home businesses with the aim of selling at local markets, more competition was evident than in previous years. But competition was not expressed to me as a negative, but rather as a way to become more focused on selling efforts. The composition of these flexible kinship groups consists of women who fall within an age demographic of thirty to fifty years, and often disclose their role as mothers. Some women I met, at times, would self-identify as ‘mumpreneurs’. However, I found this term became a somewhat polarizing label among women who operate small homebased businesses while simultaneously raising a family and contributing to the household income. There was not enough opportunity in the field to further explore what percentage of women actually applied this as an identity marker consistently. And over the past decade, the term has egregiously fallen out of fashion completely online. The demographic of consumers purchasing goods at craft markets, through my observation only, is members of their peer-group,

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who likely have disposable income and who share an interest in supporting handmade goods and seeking objects of nostalgia. As Dennis Stevens notes, While these fairs reflect some characteristics of traditional craft fairs, the difference is that vendors are mainly Gen Xers who are commercially savvy, art-educated, conscious of good design, and who seek to transform what was once considered mere feminine and domestic forms of creativity and decoration into something new. In these fairs, it seems that DIY craft as a subculture has an interest in capitalizing on the subversive allure of hipness in an effort to subvert hegemonic systems of taste and consumption.32 To this I would add that playing to a local aesthetic that is informed by nostalgia and the articulation of a national identity through the use of specific materials and symbols is just good business! Within Aotearoa New Zealand, being handmade and made in the country are two important classifications on any manufactured item. At several stalls within craft markets (that clearly base participation on handmaking) and at retail shops that sell handmade goods, makers often exhibited small signs indicating their pledge to a handmade ethic and movement. Through investigating the history of ‘I TOOK THE HANDMADE PLEDGE’, a movement spearheaded by

FIGURE 10.3  ‘I TOOK THE HANDMADE PLEDGE’, 2011. Devonport, Auckland. Photo by Fiona P. McDonald.

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a consortium of organizations mostly within the United States guided in large part by the online global marketplace of craft known as ETSY​.co​m, it appears to be promoted mostly during the December festive season to encourage support of independent makers (Figure 10.3). However, in Aotearoa New Zealand, promoting participation in the handmade pledge campaign had, at one time, an additional economic signification to reflect national values of ‘home grown’ products in light of other formalized national evaluation systems that promote the manufacture of goods and products within Aotearoa New Zealand.33

Economic kinship – online Through the resurgence of craft markets in the past decade, give or take a year or two in this timeline, flexible economic kinship relations have become more networked through social media. There also exists an online niche market for the sale of handmade craft items in Aotearoa New Zealand. Many makers operate their own websites and mediate sales and giveaways online through personal websites and Facebook. However, a central site such as Felt​.co​​.nz offers its services as an online marketplace that takes its inspiration from sites like ETSY​.co​m. ‘There is no single type of online culture, more of a multiplicity of sub-cultures, dependent on the aims or agenda of participants.’34 This is exactly what Bruno Latour argued when he wrote that any ‘good ANT [Actor Network Theory] account is a narrative or a description or a proposition where all of the actors do something and don’t just sit there. [. . .] As soon as actors are treated not as intermediaries but as mediators, they render the movement of the social visible to the reader.’35 The social activity that takes place beyond the formal market setting, a central ‘sphere of activity’ found in community centres and church halls, extends into coffee groups and virtual networks of online communities.36 Over the years, there have been several of these groups that capture what one could call ‘online labour’,37 concerning the sales of handmade goods that run parallel to the in-person craft markets. The networks of professional support that play out on Facebook and Instagram, as I have observed, have increased due to the services provided by social media platforms to enhance sales and social connections. And here we do not have competition with the in-person market, but rather an extension of capitalist efforts by the economic kinship groups to create online markets. To draw out an example, a central group that once operated on a national level, but is now defunct, was the New Zealand Handmade38 organization (as of May 2020, their last post was from 12 October 2014). In its heyday, the

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organization identified its ambition as supporting ‘independent craftspeople designing and producing New Zealand made, quality goods. We incorporate a diverse range of New Zealand designers, artisans, and craftspeople. Our goal is to promote members [sic] handcrafted work both within New Zealand and internationally and to create a vibrant creative community.’39 With regular posts on their blog at that time, they featured local craft businesses by ‘bloghopping’, and via weekly or bi-weekly email announcements to members enrolled on their listserv. With the establishment of Felt​.co​​.nz in 2007 by Lucy Arnold, a site committed to social enterprise and local economies and makers, a space was created where individuals can feature their own works and engage in online marketing by linking to their profile, and by association be read as professional sellers thanks to the website’s intuitive and user-friendly design.40 In my process of learning how women connect with each other to form economic kinship, I found that they were establishing groups to exchange information about sales, strategies, highs and lows in their sales, etc., but this was all done less formally and on a more regional level where smaller organizations mobilize both in person and online. Again, in this context, their economy was strengthened by mutual support, shared responsibilities and embracing competition to grow in order to ensure sustainability. During my time in Auckland, I became involved with one such collective of makers called the Auckland Homebase Business Hookup Group (AHBBHG). It was a closed group on Facebook, and they communicated issues online in advance of meetings that were organized at a local café in a suburb of Auckland. These meetings took place during the day (various times) either weekly or bi-weekly depending upon participant schedules and availability, and never in conflict with a weekend market. Women-only gatherings like this, mostly mothers, at cafés, allowed them to bring their children to what is, for home-based business owners, a version of a business meeting. The members actively participated in every meeting, and their conversations often carried on with members at markets where they sold their works at independent tables/stalls. Having sat in on several AHBBHG meetings, joined their Facebook community, observed them at markets, and carried out one-on-one interviews with many of the women, it became apparent that central to their network was friendship, camaraderie and trust – the core elements of chosen kinship. The semi-structured meetings at coffee shops, interrupted by children’s needs or ringing mobile phones concerning orders for products, followed an agenda set in advance. The participants addressed current issues or concerns that small business owners have about items such as web design, Facebook sales, EFTPOS terminals (debit machines), laws, branding and identity placement, as well as craft stall design and layout. Their mutual support, by

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talking through issues like growing their business, in some cases, beyond the kitchen table, allowed members to identify with struggles their fellow makers were experiencing such as lack of spousal support. Invited speakers were welcomed to share their expertise, and members took turns to share their own strengths in some of the aforementioned areas. Some members work within the same medium selling similar products, while others are completely new to advancing what is often called an amateur hobby of ‘prosperous excess’ into a professionalized economic business.41

Conclusion Economic kinship groups, like the ones discussed above, play out online and in craft markets. They are political by not being political, which means that their unified actions create a counter-culture of consumption that challenges globalization and fosters buying local and valuing the handmade. In their shared efforts, values, reciprocal exchanges and responsibilities, the women in the kinship groups show how local networks emerge, are sustained, and become central to the everyday life of the makers. These networks demonstrate how technology, politics and personality participate in their formation of economic structures, the articulation of national and personal essences, and the complex matrix, rather than continuum, of handmade values and craft. My experiences both in person and online have been sustained for a decade and, as such, made visible that objects in craft markets may be political in the message they convey about sovereignty or identity, as well as identify how objects enchant the consumer and create a connection to the maker. Extending from this is the dynamics of the creation of spaces for consumption – that is, craft markets – that become the vehicle and catalyst through which female crafters build small businesses, forge economic kinships and make themselves a visible resource and political force to be reckoned with.

Notes 1 Sarah Pink, ‘Doing Ethnography Remotely’, interviewed by Dr. Sylvia Yanagisako, Center for Global Ethnography, Stanford University, 18 May 2020. https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​time_​​conti​​nue​=2​​21​&v=​​​z_​_t7​​WkQ2c​ 4 &feature=emb_logo; Gerald Samuel Collins and Matthew Slover Durington, Networked Anthropology: A Primer for Ethnographers (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015); Sarah Pink, Heather Horst, John Postill, Larissa Hjorth, Tania Lewis and Jo Tacchi, Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices (Los

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Angeles: Sage Publications Limited, 2016); Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rossa, ‘#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States’, American Ethnologist 42, no. 1 (February 2015): 4–17; Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography (London: Sage Publications Limited, 2007); Daniel Miller and Don Slater, The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (London: Berg, 2000); Jacquelyn Burkell, Alexandre Fortier, Lorraine Yeung, Cheryl Wong and Jennifer Lynn Simpson, ‘Facebook: Public Space, or Private Space?’ Information, Communication & Society 17, no. 8 (2014): 974–85; Leah Lievrouw, Alternative and Activist New Media (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2011). 2 Victoria Bateman, The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2019). 3 Alfred Gell, ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’, in The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams, ed. Eric Hirsch (Oxford: Berg, 1999), 159–86; Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 4 Ruth Phillips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998). 5 Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Gell, Art and Agency. 6 Craft historian Lacey Jane Roberts argues that ‘[s]o many types of practices and makers exist who are claiming craft – the terrain is so deeply rich and endlessly shifting – that critical craft discourse is positioned to redefine material and visual culture’. Lacey Jane Roberts, ‘Put Your Thing Down, Flip It, and Reverse It: Reimagining Craft Identities Using Tactics of Queer Theory’, in Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, ed. Maria Elena Buszek (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 243–59, 249. 7 Maria Elena Buszek, ed., Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through Craft (London: Berg, 2007); Glenn Adamson, The Craft Reader (London: Berg, 2010); including fellow authors of this volume. 8 Sylvia Yanagisako, ‘Family Firms as Kinship Enterprises’, Economics Discussion Papers, No. 2019–12, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (February 2019). http:​/​/www​​.econ​​omics​​-ejou​​rnal.​​org​/e​​conom​​ics​/d​​iscus​​sionp​​ ap​ers​​/2019​​-12; Kenneth Guest, Essentials of Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age, 2nd edn (Toronto: W.W. Norton and Company, 2018). 9 Guest, Essentials of Cultural Anthropology, 234. 10 Fiona P. McDonald, ‘An Unexpected History Lesson: Meeting European “Colonial Girls” through Knitting, Weaving, Spinning, and Cups of Tea’, in Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840-1950, ed. Michelle Smith and Kristine Moruzi (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014), 228–44. 11 Ibid. 12 Stats New Zealand/Taturanga Aotearoa. http:​/​/arc​​hive.​​stats​​.govt​​.nz​/t​​ools_​​and​ _s​​ervic​​es​/po​​pulat​​i​on​_c​​lock.​​aspx

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13 Anne Salmond, Between Worlds: Early Exchanges Between Maori and Europeans 1773-1815 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997); Claudia Orange, The Story of a Treaty (Wellington, NZ: Bridget Williams Books, 1989); Mason Durie, Ngā Tai Matatū: Tides of Māori Endurance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 14 Heather Nicholson, The Loving Stitch: A History of Knitting and Spinning in New Zealand. (Auckland: University of Auckland Press, 1998), 178. 15 For a full history of the mills, see Fiona P. McDonald, ‘Charting Material Memories: A Visual and Material Ethnography of the Transformations of Woollen Blankets in Contemporary Art, Craft, and Indigenous Regalia in Canada, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the United States’ (PhD diss., University College London, 2014). 16 Ibid.; Fiona P. McDonald, ‘The Woollen Blanket and Its Imagined Value(s): Material Transformations of Woollen Blankets in Contemporary Art’, in The Social Life of Materials, ed. Adam Drazin and Susanne Küchler (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 245–64. 17 McDonald, ‘Charting Material Memories’, 171. 18 Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in a Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 19 Māori god, or the first-born man in the Māori world. 20 Gell, Art and Agency. 21 Dennis Stevens, ‘Validity is in the Eye of the Beholder: Mapping Craft Communities of Practice’, in Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, ed. Maria Elena Buszek (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 43–58, 53. 22 Joseph McBrinn, ‘Handmade Identity: Crafting Design in Ireland from Partition to the Troubles’, in NeoCraft: Modernity and the Crafts, ed. Sandra Alfoldy (Halifax, NS: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 2007), 121–36, 122; Adamson, Thinking Through Craft, 24; Adamson, The Craft Reader. 23 McBrinn, ‘Handmade Identity’, 122. 24 On the industrially manufactured and the handmade, Jacques Manquet’s ideas are relevant. He writes: ‘Industrial fabrication does not affect the aesthetic potentialities of objects; they are not disqualified from having an aesthetic value because they are mass-produced. But the technique of production – hand or machine – affects their forms. Handmade objects usually fail to achieve sharpness of lines, symmetry of shapes, regularity of textures, and uniformity in hues and brightness to the same degree that machine-processed objects do. This kind of formal perfection conveys meanings to the beholder other than what the handmade form conveys.’ Jacques Jerome Pierre Manquet, The Aesthetic Experience: An Anthropologist Looks at the Visual Arts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 196. 25 The Economist, ‘Artisanal Capitalism: The Art and Craft of Business’, The Economist, 4 January 2014. http:​/​/www​​.econ​​omist​​.com/​​node/​​21592​​65​6​/p​​rint 26 Renato Rosaldo, Smadar Lavie and Kirin Narayan, ‘Introduction: Creativity in Anthropology’, in Creativity/Anthropology, ed. Smadar Lavie, Kirin Narayan and Renato Rosaldo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 1–8, 3.

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27 Owe Ronström, ‘A Different Land: Heritage Production in the Island of Gotland’, Shima 2, no. 2 (2008): 1–18, 1. 28 Gell, Art and Agency. 29 Daniel Charny, Victoria and Albert Museum, Crafts Council (Great Britain), Power of Making: The Importance of Being Skilled (London: V & A Publishing, 2011), 7. 30 Roy Wagner, The Invention of Culture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975). 31 Stevens, ‘Validity Is in the Eye of the Beholder’, 46. 32 Ibid., 52. 33 A national interest in producing and promoting products as ‘made in New Zealand’ has a larger commercial history that is now formally integrated into the arts sector as well. Starting in 1988, the Buy New Zealand Made campaign was launched to promote the desire of consumers in Aotearoa New Zealand to purchase and export New Zealand made goods. Identified by the small kiwi bird within a triangular shape (for various forms of the logo, visit: https​:/​/ww​​w​.buy​​nz​.or​​g​.nz/​​Categ​​ory​?A​​ction​​=View​​&Cate​​​gory_​​id​ =13​​57), makers, manufacturers, and business retailers must register with the organisation in order to have their products formally branded with the Buy New Zealand Made logo. It appears that the companies participating in this registered programme tend to operate larger scale productions when compared to home-based small businesses producing crafts such as the ones that sell at local handmade craft markets. While this is more relevant to critical and ongoing work on Indigenous intellectual property, the Toi Iho Kaitiaki Incorporated (TIKI) is a membership programme for artists that was ‘instituted [and incorporated in 2010 after an alliance with Creative New Zealand] to advance the authenticity and quality of Māori arts. Artistic works that carry the Toi Iho brand are approved by TIKI as genuinely Maori Made.’ http://www​.toiiho​.co​.nz/ 34 Joanne Turney, The Culture of Knitting (Oxford: Berg, 2009), 149. 35 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 128. 36 Fred Myers, ‘Introduction: The Empire of Things’, in The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture, ed. Fred R. Myers (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2001), 3–61, 32. 37 Daniel Miller, Tales from Facebook (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2011), 21. 38 New Zealand Handmade. http://www​.newzealandhandmade​.co​.nz/ 39 Looking at the lens of history, I wish to insert some insight about a critical online survey New Zealand Handmade conducted in 2012. Eager to support the local maker movement in Aotearoa New Zealand, the online survey used Survey Expression Software to ask questions about makers, buyers, and online networks. The survey was organized into three parts: (1) General – gathered demographic data such as age, gender, income, and participation with handmade goods (that is buyer or seller), as well as assessing what sort of handmade goods are made or bought; (2) Markets, Fairs, Fetes, etc. – queried participants about their spending patterns and participation

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at markets both locally and online; and (3) Online Purchasing – aimed at collecting data about ‘online labour’ and sales techniques. While it is not acceptable or accurate to draw any definitive conclusions from a survey with such a low number of respondents as this one, it is interesting to note some of the information sought as part of the survey. Therefore, percentages are only presented here as they are documented by the survey. The results of the New Zealand Handmade – Craft Buyers Survey were made available to sellers so that they could avail themselves of insight into buyer trends and preferences for costs, transaction types (cash verses credit cards), as well as online giveaways. Again, with such a low number of respondents to the survey I feel that it is the makers and sellers who observed more accurately the buying trends at the markets. To my knowledge no similar survey has been conducted to date. I might speculate that this is often because individuals can track their own stats via personal website traffic, social media data, sales via online markets such as Felt​.co​.​nz. 40 https://felt​.co​.nz​/about​-felt 41 Adamson goes on to suggest ‘amateurism can be the very definition of unconscious cultural practice’ where ‘it can also prompt anxieties of the most self-conscious kind’ (Adamson, Thinking Through Craft, 141).

11 It goes without saying Craft talks politics D Wood

Politics is the domain in which the members of a society decide in what kind of society they want to live. Politics thus goes far beyond political parties. Care for the public domain, though a profoundly political commitment, is at the same time transpolitical insofar it exceeds – or better should exceed – the interests of the government in turn.1 This quotation by Gui Bonsiepe expands politics from the arena of government and power to the realm of ‘the people’. For the purposes of this chapter – and book – the focus is the realm of craftspeople. Bonsiepe states that ‘care for the public domain’ is a political commitment; craft’s care for the public domain includes ethical procurement of resources and disposal of waste, smallscale enterprise, connection with community and quality of manufacture and materials to ensure longevity. And for a small number of craftspeople, issues in the public domain are the catalyst for their making. Some craft practitioners, while caring about the world in which they live, are reluctant to attach the word ‘political’ to their work. They would rather – for reasons discussed later in the essay – call it rhetorical, a more benign designation, even though an analysis of rhetorical yields a concurrence with transpolitical. Van Hilliard describes rhetorical art as ‘art that is centered in social action, employs culture-specific forms as its text, and seeks to transform

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a previous social order’.2 He says that rhetorical art addresses ideology more than aesthetics, concerns society more than the self and envisions artist and audience in a transformative conversation. It uses recognizable accessible forms that are given new meanings. As an example of rhetorical art, Hilliard discusses the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Envisaged and begun in 1987 in San Francisco, it was intended to bring attention to the numbers of young white homosexual men who were succumbing to a rampantly spreading illness identified as HIV/AIDS. As the Quilt grew, attracting divergent communities and stitched memorials dedicated to nonwhites, women and haemophiliacs, the rhetoric changed. The quilt was seen as a didactic device to educate voters and politicians; the display of almost 2000 panels, in October 1987, in Washington signified the extent of the national crisis; and by 2016, when the quilt comprised 52,000 panels created by more than 100,000 individuals,3 it spoke about the ongoing deaths due to HIV/AIDs. Adopting embellished fabric as the vehicle to honour the deceased aligns with Julia Bryan-Wilson’s view: ‘Textile handicraft has played a significant role both in the consolidation of national identities, especially in moments of turmoil or upheaval, and in agitational actions and anti-authoritarian protest cultures…’4 I would argue that the textile genre is, by far, the most prolific transmitter of political messages,5 but what about other craft media? Are practitioners in clay, glass, metal and wood similarly inspired by issues and events in society to indicate their ‘care for the public domain’? This chapter surveys the work of contemporary Western craft artists who dedicate some or all of their oeuvre to themes that are rhetorical or political. Since Hilliard’s ‘rhetorical art’ and Bonsiepe’s ‘politics’ both aim to transform society, the choice of label is, itself, a political act. Some of the artists begin creating from the economic, social or environmental subjects around them; others are provoked by a specific context or event. And whereas some makers express a political ethos in abstract terms, I have taken the position of highlighting work that is unambiguous about its message. In establishing groupings for the work, I could have used a specific political focus – the environment and climate change; social justice; war; unsettlement6 of peoples and cultures; identity. However, because some artists address multiple issues, I have chosen to categorize via ‘the medium serves the message’. This choice admittedly leaves out practitioners who employ new materials and technologies. Needless to say, my selections are subjective and representative, not exhaustive.

Clay The Smithsonian American Art Museum has one of the finest collections of craft in the United States. Its 2019 exhibition, Connections: Contemporary

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Craft at the Renwick Gallery,7 displaying over eighty objects, included several that contain political content. One is Viktor Schreckengost’s Apocalypse '42. The glazed terracotta sculpture was created not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and consists of a disconcerted horse whose riders are Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito and a figure of Death: it refers to the rise of fascism worldwide. Schreckengost justified the comic style for the sculpture: ‘I’ve always felt that you can say more with one vivid cartoon than you can with a lot of heavy words.’8 His sentiments are echoed by many of the makers engaged in rhetorical – tacitly persuasive – art. While Apocalypse '42 commented on a simultaneous situation, two Canadian ceramic artists look to historic pottery as inspiration for contemporary work. Laurent Craste references the nineteenth century, specifically the periods of French revolution. He pays homage to forms of Sèvres porcelain and alters them to remind viewers of the depravity, torture and poverty that existed at the same time as kings enjoyed chocolat chaud from fine china. In Iconocraste à la barre à clou,9 a crowbar is buried in a perfect Sèvres vase. The vase is white with gold motifs, in contrast to the steel of the mass-produced hardware store crowbar; the form envelops the forceful blow. Craste was born in France and moved to Quebec where he studied ceramics, engaging with and respecting its traditions. His work questions that tradition through a lens of revisionist history. About Craste’s ceramics, Pascale Beaudet states: ‘The object of the artist’s reflections is, ultimately, the vast repertoire of abuse that human beings invent to torment their enemies and themselves.’10 Lindsay Montgomery delves deeper into history, examining Italian Renaissance pottery traditions.11 In sixteenth century Urbino, Italy, istoriato was a style of decoration whereby mythical, historical or biblical subjects were painted onto majolica pottery. The images reflected the concerns of the time. Montgomery’s Company of Wolves Charger refers to Gaston Phébus’s Livre de la chasse (Book of the Hunt)12 which was a guide for hunters written and illustrated in 1387. The press-moulded earthenware plate is ‘decorated’ with an imaginary natural setting in which wolves do what they do – kill and eat wildlife. Montgomery uses the Medieval reference for her Neo-Istoriato, posing a question about modern ecology: is elimination of flora and fauna that interfere with our lifestyle justifiable?13 The theme of animal rights links past and present. War has permeated the art canon throughout history. While the various modes of depiction were created for a variety of reasons – celebration of victory, memorialization, rehabilitation, glorification – a few, like Picasso’s Guernica, acknowledge the horrors of war. The ceramics of Ehren Tool are among the latter. Tool served in the United States Marine Corps for over five years, doing duties in Iraq and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War of 1991.14 When he left the military, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to study art and

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earned an MFA from the University of California Berkeley. Tool blames Ben Sakoguchi,15 his painting and drawing instructor, for the route his art has taken. Sakoguchi told Tool, ‘All art’s political. Period.’ Tool’s wife calls his ceramics ‘war awareness art’.16 He makes cups – only cups – and each one bears an image relating to war. It could be a skeleton, weapons, insignia of a particular battalion, a flag or gas mask. Some are graphically horrific with cringe-inducing blood-and-guts, displaying the reality of war for the men and women who are sent to battlefields. Tool has also destroyed his art. As a graduate student he made 393 cups to represent the number of American combat deaths in the first year of the Iraq war.17 He decorated, fired and glazed the cups and then turned on a videotape as he shot them with a pellet gun. The video commemorates the lives that were snuffed out. Tool has made 21,000 cups and given every one away in the twenty years he has made them.18 Most go to veterans and their families, refugees and parents whose children have died by violent means. Some recipients are willing to drink from the cups whereas others display them on the mantel. Tool thrives on the stories that the cups provoke – he believes that is their most important role. He says, ‘My grandfather didn’t talk about his war and my father didn’t talk about his war until I came back from my war.’19 Ehren Tool’s ceramics create a conversation about a topic steeped in the politics of government, religion, capitalism and peace.

Glass Andrew Page, the editor of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly, observed: ‘Those artists working with the medium of glass must often overcome the preconception that their work is first and foremost materials-based, and that it is therefore not concerned with larger conceptual or political issues.’20 One of the conceptual artists to whom he was referring is William Morris. Morris did not, to my knowledge, profess overt political intentions during his twentyfive-year career, yet his work was deliberately about ‘harmony between humanity and nature’, bonding us to ‘a world that is often forgotten, ignored and abused’.21 His respect for the animal kingdom plus reverence for ancient Indigenous peoples resulted in sculpture and vessels that are invested with a haunting sense of the extinction of creatures and civilisations and what humankind continues to destroy. Morris’s imagery influenced many young makers who assisted him in his studio. Raven Skyriver was introduced to Morris and worked with him from 2003 to 2007.22 His art is almost exclusively about marine life: sperm whale,

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otter, sea turtle, seahorse and abalone shell are among his subjects. Robert O’Connell, writing in American Craft, stated: ‘Skyriver’s work may be a celebration first, but it also acts as a kind of warning, a reminder of what could be lost if we don’t protect the environment.’23 While this message is not explicit in Skyriver’s carefully detailed sculpture, the artist says he would be willing to address environmental issues head-on if he were offered a museum show. As Skyriver realistically points out, ‘I think it’s [environmental change] a little harder sell, as far as the galleries are concerned.’24 Installations of commonplace objects in glass might seem like simply virtuoso technique, but Wendy Fairclough’s pieces are not to be taken at face value. She says: ‘a lot of my work has a social or political inspiration or subtle comment’.25 Bringing It Home 20 March 2003 consists of an array of black blown glass oil cans that reference the American invasion of Iraq. Fairclough states that Bringing It Home ‘arose from my confusion and questioning of our disgust at the invasion and knowing oil and petrol were big motivators, yet using it in our daily lives guiltlessly’.26 Amber Palace Jaipur was created as a tribute to Indian women cementing a plaza at the Amber Palace, while tourists of various nationalities walked blithely past.27 The replicated women’s tools in concrete and cast lead crystal contrast with a small form in amber glass that echoes the curves in the arches of the Palace. This and subsequent pieces highlight the commonalities between religions, races and cultures. Cultural and social issues motivate Jaime Guerrero. He grew up in East Los Angeles, an area known historically for crime and gangs. This background, including his Mexican heritage, has fuelled his glass production. He says, ‘My work embraces the notion that art can influence social change. It is important to bring awareness to the moral inequities that exist in society today.’28 Guerrero starkly addresses inequities in his latest project, Cuando el Río Suena (When the River Sounds), which opened at the Pittsburgh Glass Center in October 2019. The exhibition was the result of a nine-month residency at the Center and focused on the plight of Central American children attempting to cross the border into the United States. Guerrero has rendered the Honduran child pictured with Donald Trump on the cover of Time (2 July 2019) in blown opaque glass. She is life size, crying, looking up.29 Her stance, clothes and shoes are replicated as accurately as possible in the medium. The exhibition also depicts other glass children whose experiences represent crossing the border, detainment and separation. The rendering of the figures in glass speaks of the universal fragility of children; their opacity makes them visible and invisible – they exist, yet the lack of distinctive hair colour, skin tone and fabric pattern generates the forgettability that happens when the media leaves the story behind. In addition, four angels, who were modelled on actual children who died in border related circumstances,30 emphasize the immorality of immigration policies worldwide.

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Metal Soft power is a phrase originating in diplomacy whereby cultural and economic means, rather than war, are used to obtain preferred outcomes. In 2019 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art gave the phrase to an exhibition that explored ‘the ways in which artists deploy art to explore their roles as citizens and social actors’.31 Metalsmithing might conjure images that are anything but soft, yet the hammer and forge are not averse to rhetorical message-making. Chastity belts were historically commissioned by fathers and husbands who wanted to maintain control over the sexual organs of their women. This control was managed by a lock whose key was retained by a man or, in more stringent circumstances, the belt was welded shut. Women also wore the belts to prevent rape.32 In 2002, the sculptor and jeweller, Ira Sherman, began a series of beautifully crafted chastity belts called Impenetrable Devices. They are made of stainless steel and other metals as well as gems. Sherman interviewed rape victims and learned that their overwhelming desire was that perpetrators be caught and punished. As a result he created an Injector Anti-Rape Device that incorporated pneumatic syringes that injected dye and a sedative so that the rapist would be marked as well as disabled. Regarding sexual assault, Sherman stated: ‘There’s so many – if you add molestation, incest, prison rapes, general public – I don’t think anyone is immune to knowing somebody [who has been assaulted]. Then there are all the attacks which aren’t reported.’33 Initially the belts brought unwanted notoriety, but Sherman decided to take advantage of his ‘fame’. He launched a Chastity Couture Collection that addressed the needs of both women and men for protection against unwelcome sexual attention. Each commissioned piece has a key which, unlike belts in the past, is retained by the wearer or shared with select persons. The Collection models reported that the safety and security of a chastity belt empowered them. Stacey Lee Webber is reluctant to attach political themes to her metalwork because she does not want to be seen as judging nor does she want to be judged for anything other than her craft.34 Webber is known for her transformation of discarded coins into objects and jewellery. The underlying theme of this work is the labour and time that ‘blue collar’ employment requires. Webber’s Craftsmen Series consists of the tools of the trade – electric drill and Skilsaw complete with cords, plane, ladder, screwdrivers, plumber’s wrench, metal snips – executed in American pennies and quarters. These handsome and painstakingly made objects could be seen as kitsch, in the sense of popular art. However, they are rife with symbolism as can be seen in Shovels, another item in the 2019 Smithsonian Connections exhibition. Shovels consists of a flat and a digging shovel, each with long handles. They are made of pennies as is the floor at their base. The references are to

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manual labour and its denigration and disappearance in a technology-revering culture; the wages that manual labour was and is paid; and the perceived valuelessness of manual labour and the valuelessness of the penny – countries including Canada, Australia, Belgium and South Africa have discontinued its use as currency. Shovels is also about ‘The Craft of Digging’35 and the loss of traditional crafts that were once valued for survival. Nicholas Bell, former curator at the Smithsonian, comments: ‘There are different ways to think about craft as a political response. You can look at Stacey Lee Webber’s work with coins, how she’s making all these tools out of pennies and adding a great commentary on labor in the process.’36 Another artist addressing labour is John Bisbee. His exhibition, American Steel, appeared at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in 2018. In this ‘aggressive spectacle; my patriotic and poetic re-examination of America’,37 Bisbee reimagines his modus operandi. Prior to 2018 Bisbee’s work was abstract but when ‘Donald Trump came down the escalator’,38 he knew he had to engage with narrative. American Steel is the result. Bisbee’s assemblages are entirely made of nails of all kinds and sizes – bent, twisted and welded. When asked if he considers himself a craftsman, Bisbee replied that he is an artist.39 In his view, craft is functional, but he cannot ignore the fact that his practice is akin to that of a blacksmith. In addition, Bisbee says that the nails are ‘lovingly crafted’.40 American Steel consists of multiple parts. Trumpence – humorous wordplay that is absent from Bisbee’s abstract work – comments on the soundtracks coming from the Oval Office by means of a replication of a vintage gramophone horn.41 On the adjacent wall, American Bits is a map of the United States made of nail heads resembling coins. The coins are held together by magnets, that is positive and negative poles. Metaphorically, when the negative force is activated some elements drift to the floor and outside the US boundaries, in the same way that manufacturing has moved offshore or ‘fallen’ into the dust. Likewise, the title, American Steel, is written in script by linked chain (made of nails) to refer to the steel industry – its abandoned tools and detritus litter the floor beneath. Carl Little described the exhibition: ‘This smorgasbord of hammered and welded nail-work represents a bravado take on the times, at once flippant, political, and provocative. It invokes our state of disunion …’42 John Bisbee feels that his foray into overt political themes has been so satisfying and inspiring that he will abandon the nonrepresentational.

Wood In 1974 Enzo Mari, an Italian industrial designer whose designs appear in galleries and high-end design stores, published Autoprogettazione (Proposal

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for Self-Design). It contained designs for practical furniture that could be made with rough timber and nails. Mari was specific about the book’s intended audience: ‘An elementary technique so that every person may face contemporary production with a critical capacity (anybody, excepting the industry and merchants, may use these designs to produce them).’43 He believed that, ideologically, design treats all people equally.44 Mari’s democratization of wooden furniture is timely in the wake of poverty, the proliferation of refugee camps and the urge to do-it-yourself. In 2014 Mari granted CUCULA – Refugees Company for Craft and Design – the rights to use Autoprogettazione to teach refugees how to design and build furniture. Examples made with recycled wood from refugee camp huts and planks from refugee boats45 reflect the increasing political displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. Ian Norbury is a British woodcarver whose work relies on past motifs to tell a current narrative. Using a variety of woods with the addition of other materials, he is known for his figures, such as the Fool who appears in Shakespeare, commedia dell‘arte and Tarot cards. Norbury depicts a vain Fool whose complicity with the ubiquitous fashion and beauty industry requires him to check for wrinkles in a hand mirror.46 A nude African woman, carved in walnut, whose arms are chained to her neck, is accompanied by Norbury’s view of colonialism: ‘year in, year out, we hear of hideous violence, the death of millions from war and famine, corruption and tyranny that would not be tolerated almost anywhere else in the world. And most of it is caused by western exploitation and greed.’47 Another craftsman who addresses Africa is Kim Schmahmann. His Deconstructing Colonialism comes with an artist statement: ‘This table tells the story of colonialism and how it has tried over centuries to suppress ethnic cultures by overlaying a level of “civilizing” authority and aesthetic.’48 Schmahmann was born in South Africa and describes his privileged upbringing with no knowledge of the culture of the Xhosa people and, therefore, their dignity. The table, which took several years to make because of its meticulous joinery and marquetry, is composed of elements – top, undercarriage, legs, drawers – that each refer to an aspect of apartheid. Schmahmann’s Apart-Hate: A People Divider is dedicated to the women who survived and resisted South African apartheid. The free-standing room divider is made up of three interconnected panels: one devoted to the foundations of the apartheid system; a second referring to the documentation that pervaded daily life under the regime; and the third highlighting the racial classification system that required Blacks and Coloureds to carry passbooks. The extensive iconography of the marquetry and collages is detailed in a pamphlet created by Schmahmann. Apart-Hate is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

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Textiles Political textile art has been created throughout recorded history, including The Bayeux Tapestry/ Embroidery, propaganda about the Norman defeat of the Anglo-Saxons in 1066; embroidery (1569) by Mary Queen of Scots – a political rival of Elizabeth I – containing a message to the Duke of Norfolk alluding to the barren-ness of Elizabeth while Mary was fruitful;49 the marching banners of the Suffragettes (c. 1908);50 and the flower-power jeans of free love and liberation in the 1960s and 1970s. The recognition of these female-dominated arts waxed and waned over time; now, according to Kirsty Robertson, ‘textiles are again at the forefront of a politicized praxis, ranging from anarchist knitters braving the tear gas at mass protests to a widespread resurgence of knitting in public, and from global anti-sweatshop actions to artists using handwork, often knitting or embroidery, to push the boundaries of global art’.51 Since textiles, more than any other medium, are a vehicle for social action, they are the anchor for this perspective on contemporary craft. Space permits me to name only a few of the artists engaged in ‘politicized praxis’: Lisa Anne Auerbach’s knitted panels and garments; Abdul Abdullah’s fabric panels; Nick Cave’s Soundsuits; Sonya Clark’s Unraveling and Unraveled [Confederate Flag]; Josh Fraught’s hand-woven textiles and other fibre media; Shan Goshorn’s baskets; Noelle Hamlyn’s After the Icon series and Lifers, Repurposed Suit Jackets Tailored over Found Life Jackets52; Barb Hunt’s antipersonnel – knitted miniature pink landmines; Ramekon O’Arwisters’s Cheesecake and Crochet Jams; and Elaine Reichek’s knitting and samplers. This list does not include quiltmakers, whose threads and fabrics have served political communication since the early nineteenth century.53 So I end this survey, as I began, with quilts. My recognition of political craft began in 2003 when I gave a presentation at the Wild by Design [Quilt] Symposium, University of Nebraska Lincoln. Entitled ‘Quilts that Care’,54 the lecture showed the work of ten makers whose quilts conveyed a rhetorical message. My choice of Barbara Todd as one of those artists was because of her Security Blanket series. During the 1990s the series was mounted in cities across Canada and I remember it still for its appropriate synthesis of medium and narrative, bold and retentioninducing graphic design, dark humour and timelessness. It was significant in my evolution as an artist and undoubtedly fostered my interest in craft for conveying political content. Todd admits to a ‘poetic and politicized sensibility’.55 Security Blanket: A Child’s Quilt was prompted by the birth of her first son. The central image is ‘Little Boy’, the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. The irony of the subject matter is complemented by its construction using woollen suiting fabric,

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the substance of supposedly protective patriarchal military uniforms. The combination of the warmth and care of female handiwork with the dominant masculine motifs of our civilization demonstrate the dichotomy between domestic security and military security. Todd’s extraordinarily potent and long-lasting message – these quilts date from 1989 to 1995 – is all the more pertinent now. Terese Agnew’s Practice Bomber Range in the Mississippi Flyway56 deploys the same subject matter and medium as Security Blanket, yet the creator seduces the viewer with pattern, colour and texture in advance of the narrative. This quilt, at first glance, is an aerial view of a rolling landscape of ploughed fields and the tops of trees; the surface is machine embroidered to enhance the greens, golds and browns of agriculture and nature. But, in the centre of the quilt is a square that contains the arcs of a radar pattern that a bomber would use to home in on its target. Suddenly the narrative changes from bucolic serenity to frightening degradation as one imagines what could come next. Agnew says, ‘Craft has a long history of addressing political issues from a unique vantage point. Because it comes from traditional mediums, anyone who nods to the tradition and breaks out of it, at the same time, conjures up a kind of thunderbolt due to the contrast between the two things.’57 Portrait of a Textile Worker58 is Agnew’s most well-known quilt. It is a benign portrait of an Asian woman operating an industrial sewing machine. This time the colours are muted, sepia-toned to replicate Charles Kernaghan’s original black and white photo.59 Agnew reflected that while brands in the fashion industry are primarily designers’ names – Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Victoria Beckham, Burberry – the offshore garment makers are utterly unknown. Paradoxically the quilt is made of thousands of garment labels, thereby connecting designer and maker. Furthermore, the quilt connects maker and user as the labels were cut from clothes in wardrobes around the world and sent to Agnew. Portrait of a Textile Worker predates the 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh in which over 1,134 people died. The quilt’s political relevance increased as factory owners were forced to upgrade working conditions.60 Agnew’s quilts take up to three years to make; their size is approximately 2.4 metres (8 feet) wide by 1.8 metres (6 feet) high; after placement of fabrics, appliqué and machine embroidery, Agnew hand-quilts the layers. She says that when she came out of art school, the work she saw in museums and galleries was vacuous. Agnew decided she wanted to say something that might make a difference61 and has used the medium of quilts since 1993. Her current one, Forest Floor in Spring, is a lament for the beauty of natural creation and the tiniest things we are losing in the wake of environmental degradation.

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Conclusion When I asked Rachel David, a blacksmith, if her work was overtly political, she said ‘no’. It is imbued with her passion for environmental and social justice, yet she’s addressing those issues in the abstract. She said, ‘I’ve toned it down on my website and feel embarrassed that my politics are not compatible with some people wanting fine forged ironwork.’62 John Bisbee’s American Steel, scheduled to be exhibited at another venue following its Maine debut, was cancelled due to its overt political content.63 Abdul Abdullah’s fabric hangings depicting soldiers were removed from an exhibition after objections by politicians and the Returned and Services League Australia.64 While craftspeople may want to express their care for what’s happening in society and the environment, they have to make a living and remain safe. The dilemma of our times is that critical issues need attention, but activism and morality are divisive and dangerous. Care for the public domain, according to Bonsiepe, provokes political action. Terese Agnew expresses the maker’s view: ‘It’s one thing to be yelling in a demonstration and it’s an entirely other thing to be reminding people of why they’re protesting. You’re protesting, always, because you love something, because you care about something. It’s not because you hate, it’s because you love.’65 Craft is political in its care about the cosmos and its creatures.

Notes 1 Gui Bonsiepe, Some Virtues of Design, November 1998. www​.guibonsiepe​ .com › pdffiles › virtues, 13. 2 Van Hilliard, ‘Census, Consensus and the Commodification of Form: The NAMES Project Quilt’, in Quilt Culture: Tracing the Pattern, ed. Cheryl B. Torsney and Judy Elsley (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 112–24, 112. 3 NAMES Project Foundation, ‘Quilt Facts’, http: aidsquilt​.o​rg 4 Julia Bryan-Wilson, Fray: Art & Textile Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 12. 5 See craftivism discussed in the Introduction. Also Leslie Camhi, ‘Some of the Most Provocative Political Art Is Made with Fibers’, New York Times, 14 March 2018. https​:/​/ww​​w​.nyt​​imes.​​com​/2​​018​/0​​3​/14/​​t​-mag​​azine​​/art/​​fiber​​ -knit​​ting-​​weavi​​​ng​-po​​litic​​s​.htm​l 6 Unsettlement is defined in the Introduction. It also refers to foreboding about problems such as geopolitical instability, intercultural conflict, inequalities, technological change, and, most recently, pandemics, compounded by the inconsistency of information about these issues. Tony Fry, Remaking Cities: An Introduction to Urban Retrofitting (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 40–4.

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7 Smithsonian American Art Museum. https​:/​/am​​erica​​nart.​​si​.ed​​u​/exh​​ibiti​​ons​/c​​ onnec​​​tions​​-2019​ 8 Smithsonian American Art Museum. https​:/​/am​​erica​​nart.​​si​.ed​​u​/art​​work/​​ apoca​​lypse​​​-42​-2​​1944 9 Iconocraste is a play on the word iconoclast (in French: person who destroys work of art) and the artist’s name. https​:/​/ww​​w​.lau​​rentc​​raste​​.com/​​abuse​​s​? lig​​htbox​​=data​​It​em-​​k350b​​0vk 10 Pascale Beaudet, ‘Laurent Craste: Disjunctions’, Ceramics: Art & Perception 106 (October 2017): 6–11, 8. 11 D Wood, ‘Istoriato Reborn: The Narratives of Lindsay Montgomery’, Ceramics Monthly (March 2019): 38–41. 12 Melanie Egan, Aberrant Tales: Lindsay Montgomery (Toronto: Harbourfront Centre, 2016). 13 See The Biggest Little Farm, Director John Chester, 2019. The film addresses the issue of coyotes and other biological ‘predators’ in the maintenance of a sustainable farm. 14 FaceTime interview with Ehren Tool, 29 October 2019. 15 Sakoguchi was himself inspired by his experience of war in that he was interned in the US as a Japanese American citizen during WWII. bensakoguchi​.c​om 16 FaceTime interview with Ehren Tool, 29 October 2019. 17 Bonnie Azab Powell, ‘From Jarhead to Bowl Maker: Grad Student Ehren Tool’s Art of War’, UC Berkeley News, 27 October 2004. 18 C. J. Chivers, ‘The Price of the Artist’s Work? A Conversation About the Horrors of War’, The New York Times Magazine, 1 May 2019. 19 FaceTime interview with Ehren Tool, 29 October 2019. 20 Andrew Page, ‘A History of Sculptural Expression in Glass’, in Contemporary Glass, ed. Blanche Craig (London: Black Dog Publishing Ltd., 2008), 10–15, 15. 21 William Morris, ‘Bio’. https://www​.wmorris​.com​/artist​/bio/ 22 Raven Skyriver, ‘Bio’. http://www​.ravenskyriver​.com​/bio 23 Robert O’Connell, ‘Aquaman’, American Craft, April–May 2019: 45–9, 49. 24 Ibid. 25 Wendy Fairclough, Email to author, 3 December 2019. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Jaime Guerrero, Press Release, 25 July 2019. http:​/​/www​​.guer​​rerog​​lass.​​com​ /w​​p​-con​​tent/​​uploa​​d​s​/20​​19​/07​/ Guerr​​ero​-P​​ress-​​Relea​​se​-Cu​​andoE​​lRioS​​uena​2​​ 019​.p​​df 29 The original photo shows the child looking up while her mother is being patted down by a US Border Patrol agent. Although the child was not being separated from her mother the situation was exploited to highlight the plight of immigrant children detained apart from their parents.

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30 Jaime Guerrero, FaceTime interview with the author, 24 October 2019. 31 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. https​:/​/ww​​w​.sfm​​oma​.o​​rg​/ex​​hibit​​ion​/s​​​ oft​-p​​ower/​ 32 Suzanne Ramljak, On Body and Soul: Contemporary Armor to Amulets (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2014), 14. 33 Pollo del Mar, ‘Artist’s Metal Chastity Designs Shine Fashion Show Spotlight on Sexual Assault’, Huffpost Contributor, 16 February 2017. https​:/​/ww​​w​.huf​​ fpost​​.com/​​entry​​/arti​​sts​-m​​etal-​​chast​​ity​-d​​esign​​s​-shi​​ne​-fa​​shion​​-show​​_b​_58​​a5​ 757​​8e4b0​​fa149​​f9ac1​​ee 34 Stacey Lee Webber, Email to author, 4 December 2019. 35 ‘The Craft of Digging’ is a chapter in Alexander Langlands, Cræft: How Traditional Crafts Are About More Than Just Making (London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 2017). 36 Smithsonian American Art Museum, ‘“40 Under 40”: Sneak Peak with Artist Stacey Lee Webber’. https​:/​/am​​erica​​nart.​​si​.ed​​u​/vid​​eos​/4​​0​-und​​er​-40​​-snea​​k​-pea​​k​-art​​ist​-s​​tacey​​​-lee-​​ webbe​​r​-154​​253 37 johnbisbee​.c​om 38 John Bisbee, FaceTime interview with the author, 25 October 2019. 39 Ibid. 40 News Center Maine, ‘Sculptor John Bisbee Is Back with Nails and a Message’. https://youtu​.be​/x​-GbZLzTakw 41 For example: ‘The White House Has Requested That Congress Appropriate $33.4 Million to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the Orderly Closure of the Agency’. National Endowment for the Humanities, ‘Press Release: NEH Statement on Proposed FY 2021 Budget’, 10 February 2020. https​:/​/ww​​w​.neh​​.gov/​​news/​​neh​-s​​tatem​​ent​-p​​ropos​​ed​-fy​​​-2021​​-budg​​et 42 Carl Little, ‘John Bisbee’s Fearless American Steel’, Hyperallergic, 16 September 2018. https​:/​/hy​​peral​​lergi​​c​.com​​/4602​​26​/jo​​hn​-bi​​sbee-​​ameri​​can​ -s​​teel-​​cente​​r​-for​​-main​​e​​-con​​tempo​​rary-​​art/ 43 Giuseppi Lotti, ‘Enzo Mari, or On Critical Design/Enzo Mare, o del progetto critico’, Firenze Architettura 19, no. 1 (2015): 150–7, 154. 44 David Ryan, ‘Enzo Mari and the Process of Design’, Design Issues 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1997): 29–36, 34. 45 Emma Tucker, ‘Enzo Mari Grants Berlin Refugee Organisation Rights to Reproduce His Furniture’, de zeen, 16 November 2015, dezeen​.c​om 46 Titled Because he’s worth it. Ian Norbury, The Art of Ian Norbury: Sculptures in Wood (East Petersburg, PA: Fox Chapel Publishing, 2004), 26–7. 47 Titled Africa. Ibid., 14–15. 48 Kim Schmahmann. https​:/​/ki​​mschm​​ahman​​n​.com​​/home​​/deco​​nstru​​cting​​-colo​​ niali​​sm/​?e​​t​_fb=​​​1​&Pag​​eSpee​​d​=off​ 49 The embroidery contains the Latin phrase, ‘Virtue flourishes by wounding’. Roszika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery in the Making of the Feminine (London: Women’s Press, 1984), 77.

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50 Sarah Sexton, ‘Subversive Suffrage Stitches’, The Quilter, no. 154 (Spring 2018): 26–9. 51 Kirsty Robertson, ‘Rebellious Doilies and Subversive Stitches: Writing a Craftivist History’, in Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, ed. Maria Elena Buszek (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 184–203. 52 Artist and the Viewer, ‘Interview with Artist Noelle Hamlyn’, 13 October 2019. https​:/​/th​​earti​​stand​​thevi​​ewer.​​com​/i​​nterv​​iew​-w​​ith​-a​​rtist​​-noel​​​le​-ha​​mlyn-​​2/ 53 Karla Friedlich, ‘Quilts of Conscience’, The Clarion (Spring 1991): 47–54. Friedlich quotes the inscription on a cradle quilt at a Ladies Anti-Slavery Fair in 1836: ‘Mother! When around your child/ You clasp your arms in love,/ and when with grateful joy you raise/ Your eyes to God above – /Think of the Negro mother / When her child is torn away – /Sold for a little slave – oh then, /For that poor mother pray!’, 47. 54 For an edited version of the presentation, D Wood, ‘Medium for a Message’, Textile Perspectives (Summer 2004): 4–5. 55 Barbara Todd. http://www​.barbaratodd​.com​/about/ 56 Terese Agnew. https​:/​/am​​erica​​nart.​​si​.ed​​u​/art​​work/​​pract​​ice​-b​​omber​​-rang​​e​-mis​​ sissi​​p​pi​-f​​l yway​​-7189​7 57 Terese Agnew. Skype interview with the author, 21 October 2019. 58 Terese Agnew. http://www​.tardart​.com​/html​/ptw​.php 59 pbs​.or​g, ‘Charles Kernaghan on Portrait of a Textile Worker’, PBS Series, Craft in America: Threads, 11 May 2012. 60 Michael Safi and Dominic Rushe, ‘Rana Plaza, Five Years On: Safety of Workers Hangs in Balance in Bangladesh’, The Guardian, 24 April 2018. https​ :/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/gl​​obal-​​devel​​opmen​​t​/201​​8​/apr​​/24​/b​​angla​​deshi​​-poli​​ce​ -ta​​rget-​​garme​​nt​-wo​​rkers​​-unio​​n​​-ran​​a​-pla​​za​-fi​​ve​-ye​​ars​-o​n 61 Terese Agnew. Skype interview with the author, 21 October 2019. 62 Rachel David. Email with author, 1 December 2019. 63 John Bisbee. FaceTime interview with the author, 25 October 2019. 64 Holly Richardson, ‘Violent Salt Artist Abdul Abdullah Enrages RSL, George Christensen with Depictions of Soldiers’, ABC News, 8 December 2019. https​:/​/ww​​w​.abc​​.net.​​au​/ne​​ws​/20​​19​-12​​-09​/o​​utrag​​e​-sol​​dier-​​artwo​​rk​-vi​​olent​​-sa​lt​​ -mack​​ay​/11​​74668​0 65 Terese Agnew. Skype interview with the author, 21 October 2019.

PART 3

Craft World View

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12 Crafts as the political Perspectives on crafts from design of the Global South Fernando A. Álvarez R.1

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eoliberal capitalism, sheltered under professions such as archaeology, anthropology and design, among others, has imprisoned crafts amidst a frantic sales strategy based on the blurry notion of identity as market exoticism.2 Following this vein, Latin America has increasing numbers of neoartisans. According to the census of Colombia’s Statistical Information System for Artisanal Activity (SIEAA), the National Department of Statistics (DANE) and the National Learning Service (SENA),3 numbers rose from 12,000 artisans in 2015–2016 to over 25,000 in 2019. What these numbers probably fail to show is the uprooting of artisans from their cultural context. Industrialization and exploitation in the service of commerce are current strategies,4 identified in this article as ‘commodification of the culture of communities’. The creative economy (orange economy) is the name currently given to this and other strategies of neoliberal capitalism, and it has monetized the cultural sphere. The relaunching of crafts as the regional brand, national/country brand, or denomination of origin is proof that this factor is critical in the quest for recognition.5 Below is an attempt to present an alternative point of view for crafts. This perspective on crafts originates from design of the South, more precisely revisiting ancient cosmology (Pachasophy) as an ontological and ethical approach to recognize the Andean praxis that has been hidden by economic and political dynamics.

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Why are crafts political? Craftsmanship holds an ontological relationship with Pachamama and with the community: that which in the West is called nature or environment is known as Pachamama by Indigenous Andean people; it is Mother Earth since she is deemed an entity, a living being.6 The enduring sense of strong relationality7 is political: that is to say, a connection with the Mother provides spirituality and materiality, as well as with the community which, by means of crafts, acts to care for its material and symbolic surroundings. For clarification, crafts are a politics of caretaking the ongoing conditions of life, and the social and symbolic linkage to Pachamama. In this sense, craft practices and trades are an integral praxis of relationality in the service of sustainment. That being said, this article clearly departs from crafts as co-opted by the cultural industry and merchandise pertaining to the capitalist economy.

Crafts and Pachamama That which is known nowadays as crafts (handcrafts, artisanal handicraft or handmade, artisanry, handcrafting, crafting, handcraftsmanship and handcrafting) did not originally have this name, or perhaps other names. The crafts developed with women/men’s abilities along with their symbolic and material productions, and have been called industries and technologies as archaeologists, among other scientists, have understood ancient activities (for instance: lithic industries8). Traditional crafts can be more precisely considered embedded in the everyday practices of practical and symbolic making for the conditions of survival worldwide. In the Andes they were and still are seen as evidence of the bonds with Mother Earth especially among cultural groups. As a cultural and convivial means of making,9 craft has not only turned into a symbol of ancient cultures, but also a shaper of material surroundings and social relations. Concretely, craft also plays an ontological role in the formation of makers and users: this is at the core of its political and symbolic function. While this ‘organic’ understanding of craft is under threat from Western consumerism (which mostly views crafts as an exoticism10), maintaining this function is the essence of its politics. As such, craft creates, circulates and recreates the worlds of meanings carried with each process, artefact and social use. In other words, in the crafts, practice is established as a ritual tie with Pachamama, who supplies her raw materials, and as the ethos of the maker who configures and reconfigures social relations and material products.11 When an artisan or craftsman takes what Pachamama provides for them, the Andean runa (man) performs a transaction. Artisans from the Andes, the Amazon and

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those from the coast are well aware of preventing any imbalance to occur with Pachamama, Saywas (powers) or Chakanas (bridges: hanaq pacha, to the worlds above; uray pacha, to the worlds below; kay pacha, to here and now). This political linkage with Mother (Pacha) is called Reciprocity.12 These actions are political since, for the sake of reciprocity, men/women request permission (licenciaykiwan) and also pay homage, send messages, provide payments and gifts (t´inkay) to the supplier (Pacha) to restore or renew their connections. This engagement is very different from just extraction of materials from the environment. Thus, this political dimension is inherent in crafts and directive of the activity through which handmade and symbolic artefacts are conceived, designed and built. Craft possesses a political dimension that is the basis of a praxis13 whose aim is to serve and take care of the other; social tissues are structured and the natural ones renewed, not only in connection with work, but also during social use. Consequently, a reference is made to ethics as: what is ‘good’, what gives back, what helps, re-establishes and harmonizes life for others, which bears a pan-Andean connection with wellness (Sumak-kausay in Quechuan; Suma-qamaña in Aymara; and the South American idea of way of life).14 Besides, it is crafts that renew and recreate the symbolic, aesthetic and social tissue by means of everyday or ritual use. As a result, not only does the praxis of artisans or craftsmen interpret the values within the community but also serves to maintain and protect them. Rituals, belongings, tools and everything that has to do with both the community and Mother Earth are a contained praxis of political actions. To clarify: the political here does not refer to the management of power, control, rules and laws, nor even does it refer to the governing or managing of life or bodies (bio-politics) in the natural world (the other beings and materials of such beings, so often set apart by Western man). Instead, the political does refer to an orientation towards service, the tissue of relationality and the caretaking of others,15 and to the reinterpretation of feeling (aesthetic modes of relating), to sensitivities and to wise, technical and symbolic actions.16 This article also acknowledges that the cultural artefacts or products given birth within the core of crafts are also, in general, technological tools for coexistence. Ivan Illich stated that the tools for conviviality are such, as long as men and women have control especially over the political forces that may be unleashed by such tools.17 On that account, social, productive and symbolic forces are contained within the crafts and social artefacts (material or immaterial). In this vein, the tools as tissue (allwiy) represent the values, symbols and ideals of the well-being (Sumak-kausay) of the community. Furthermore, Raymond Panikkar18 established that those tools which are gestated within technical processes, and in turn generate technical uses, might have the potential to surpass the strength, time and autonomy of men,

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unleashing huge political forces. Even though women/men may be unaware of this, they might be enslaved by technique (for instance, types of slavery derived from production relationships). This argument explains why the role played by artisans in their communities is crucial, as a bridge (chakana) for social ways of feeling, and as a catalyst for the forces that their creations may unleash (political, symbolic and aesthetic: sumak ruray).19,20 What will now be presented offers a different perspective to the hegemony of Western technology. From the standpoint of the Andean runa (man), crafts and their role in articulating a new world inside the world, abiding by the principles of kamay (re-creating, organizing), Yachay (knowing, getting to know), Llank´ay (working) and Munay (loving, cherishing), make up the chakana andina, a fundamental of the Andean culture.21,22 This argument prompts us to reconsider the role of crafts as a contraposition to industrial productivity, as an alternative to the contemporary crisis suffered by production-andconsumerism-oriented societies, whose dramatic environmental imbalances have pushed crafts away from their political and social roles.

Political crafts as chakana Getting closer to the Andean perspective of crafts requires an appreciation of the approach of the artisan as a recipient and agent of the Andean principles of reciprocity, complementarity and relationality, and their contemporary social dynamics. In such a relationship any separation between our species and Pacha is unthinkable: we are just one species among many.23 So positioned, the Andean craft worker contributes to maintaining a balance with Mother Earth and the community. In this regard, an artisan is essentially a political being, a chakana,24 who serves as a transitional bridge by means of a praxis which as much takes care and celebrates as it preserves cosmic order, meaning that the Andean runa artisan mediates both with the beings of Mother Nature through the prefiguration and the creation of sense, and also as a chakana who harmoniously brings his community together and, therefore, participates in the community’s everyday life, solving basic (utilitarian) and spiritual needs. Above all, as stated by Estermann, the Andean runa contributes to and participates in ritual and celebrative ways.25 To showcase this perspective, it is important to approach the declassification of the consumeristic notion of crafts.26 Put clearly, artisans are not viewed as professionals in the Western sense of the term, yet rather as chakana. Declassification permits decolonizing and dismantling of the Western notion of crafts inasmuch as the intended universality and classification27 of these

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cultural alternatives are not easily acknowledged as principles of EcoSophy, PachaSophy, RunaSophy and RawanaSophy.28 As chakana, a craftsman is a relational being, not a worker, a convivial being, who preserves and celebrates their culture in daily life. Upon dismantling that which surrounds crafts, a revision is made taking into account the Andean cosmovision of the false divisions among technology, design, science, technique, knowledge and trades noting that, from the Andean viewpoint, such separation is senseless, especially considering that artisans articulate most of their knowledge through myths, rituals, celebrations, healing and work informed by knowledge gained informally. Likewise, their technical knowledge has been continuously underestimated, yet more and more texts are written that disclose the knowledge and skills of Indigenous and artisanal communities existing in numerous locations.29 Similarly, when attempting decolonization of the consumeristic notion of crafts using pacha-sophical notions, there is an intention to emancipate artisans and their crafts from modern economic models which commodify culture, as previously observed. The task of disarticulating the Western notion of crafts and their practices means striving to present the role of the craftsman in society, whether as a being of relational wisdom or as a chakana between the beings inhabiting his communities. The artisan is a political and symbolic being, transforming and preserving a role that must also be highly esteemed. Artisans must no longer be seen as ‘marginal’, ‘poor’, ‘undermined’ beings, and the notion of contemporary artisanal-cultural tourism is a neoliberal strategy that requires decolonization. It is urgent that decolonization or decoloniality strategies of thought and praxis are implemented.30 A holistic defuturization is valuable here, considering that, in depth, the real situation is the existence of humankind, and the planetary crisis of society, symbolism and resources.31 An alternate idea worth considering from the Andean perspective is that crafts hold an ontological relation with Pachamama and the community, the collective, and particularly with life in ayllu (‘the most profound force in the community tissue’).32 Being in ayllu, as stated by Estermann and Raquel Gutiérrez among others, is essentially the collective entity that provides Andean people with a sense of being inside a community; the concept of subject (individual) and community equally requires declassification and decolonization. The next challenge is to look at Andean philosophy and other non-Western types of knowledge.33 There the role of crafts (maki kapchiy)34 finds its richest roots, at least in the cultures of the Andes. When artisans transform materials through their practices, they have first requested permission from Pachamama, considering, for example, her harvesting seasons, celebrations and moon phases. Concerning the ontological relation with their community, craftspeople act as a bridge between their

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ancestors and the present generation. This has a double implication: on one hand, artisans are a bridge between the past and present when they replicate a certain practice or make a vernacular artefact; on the other, artisans are a bridge between their future and their past35 when, through their knowledge and creativity, they are able to transform elements of their own culture to generate a new material culture or evolve their craft with the insertion of new functions, uses, configurations, materials, relations, etc. This evolution in their communitarian world of crafts encompasses the feelings of the community, its symbols, uses, rituals and everyday customs.

Alternate context It is important here to continue contrasting the interpretations36 occurring in Andean philosophy by listening to Josef Estermann’s words when he points out that, whereas Western philosophy has separated37 women/men from the rest of beings and attempted to proclaim life as an isolated entity, as a ‘monad’, this is inconceivable in the Andean worldview, where there is no such thing as an isolated, separated and disengaged being. Disconnecting oneself from the natural and cosmic nexuses (a postulate of the Enlightenment), would mean to the Andean runa signing his own death sentence . . . When I resort only to my own self when thinking, acting and judging, because I consider myself both the fundamental and the norm (‘autonomy’), I no longer ‘am’ (non sum) in a strict sense, since I reduce myself to a monad confined in a world without relationships.38 Likewise, in the essential perspective of life in Andean ontology, it is necessary to refer to the connecting dimension of chakana, as previously explained. In this regard, crafts can be considered as the human capability of acting as a bridge that re-establishes harmony with Mother Earth. Consequently, the proposal here is to ‘declassify’,39 to dismantle crafts and craft practices, as previously indicated, and in accordance with the ideas of García Gutiérrez. In this manner, pluralities and holisms of artisanal practical responses make their way into articulating and harmonizing Pachamama and the community around the notion of sumac kausay (well-being) of Abya-Yala.40 This is a radical deviation from the notion of crafts and their practices as known by marketing and consumerism.41 Tony Fry, in reviewing a draft of this essay, gives the example of digital programming as a component of the possibility of a ‘totalized’ craft: crafts as human ability. Such programming is associated with obtaining unique pieces, which arise from production. In the Global South we

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insist on dismantling, decolonizing and defuturing, and opting here for human crafts that are a bridge and re-establish harmony with Mother Earth. According to this approach, crafts become a vital activity in overcoming the superfluous singularity of the structure of market-consumerism. Nevertheless, the proposal hereby discussed embraces para-consistency,42 that is to say, it does not overlook the fact that, in any case, artisanal products and practices have had a regular role in the capital economy,43 especially in Latin American countries. For clarification, crafts do not exclude dynamics but rather broaden their understanding.44 Briefly, we45 will add that crafts, and the guilds and trades that constitute them in a classical and broad sense (ceramics/pottery, wood carving, weaving, basketry, forging, making of leather goods, jewellery, stone carving, and glasswork, among over a hundred mediums)46 did not reach their peak prior to the Industrial Revolution. On the contrary, they occurred, based on traces of lithic industries, dating back to 3.3 million years ago and evidence of teaching and learning processes dating back to the Lower Palaeolithic period.47 Conceptualizing, feeling and practising political crafts (chakana) places human beings as a species on the same level as the actions of other creatures, whether beavers, birds, ants, etc., creatures we walk along with, transform with, propitiating life instead of keeping an isolated and inviable cost-benefit attitude apart from market-consumerism/ mass production. Hence this essay goes beyond the econometric mentality and considers politics entirely carried out by being an artisan in harmony with Pachamama.48

EcoSophy and feel-think-design-do What is presented above requires revisiting the question: how to approach the status quo from a place other than the customary and traditional one of Western hegemony? The answer is an intercultural polylogue aimed at feelingthinking other cultures and acknowledging, in the case of the Americas, other Indigenous cultures presently recognized as Abya-Yala, which reunites the native populaces and vindicates the battles for resistance against colonialisms, mainly by Euro-North American cultural groups.49 Conditions are given for the resurgence of handcrafts in association with ontological design and design of the South, along with the inclusion of other visions of the world.50 The notion of political crafts is based upon cultural interaction, with the result that a design based on Andean philosophy is proposed: ‘Andean philosophy presents the political as an instrument of life care in all its dimensions, as much cosmic and physical as those social and cultural.’51

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The perspective of Andean philosophy is highly pertinent, and it brings to relevance what Estermann has described as EcoSophy, in the way that ‘the human being is not the master of life but its caretaker and facilitator’.52 It is worth keeping in mind that intercultural philosophy fits with the vindication of other visions of the world in an egalitarian polylogue, beyond intentionally unique Western philosophy (even its origin has been an erroneous interpretation of Greek philosophy, which is in turn of African-Asian origin53). Within this inter-culturalism, acknowledging the existence of an Andean philosophy is an assertion of the idea ‘feel-think-do’,54 which is convivial with the earth and all of its creatures.55 By being intercultural, the best from each culture is embraced, but at a different pace, as clarified by Panikkar, inasmuch as it opposes techno-chronicity and the dehumanized homo technicus.56 Andean feel-thoughts affirm the natural cycles and, integral to them, the synrythmia,57 heteronomy and the kairos (opportune moment), where crafts’ political practices become meaningful.58 In the face of the frantic technical pace of the West, Panikkar as well as Estermann and Rodríguez59 (who disassembles the conception of time in capitalism) demand that women/ men recuperate their own pace instead of that imposed by technique and acceleration dynamics. Thinking with Mother Earth, feeling with Mother Earth, taking care of Mother Earth, designing with/for Mother Earth,60 doing with Mother Earth: it is from here that the feel-think approach is complemented with the perspective this text has adopted. To feel-think-do puts us on a path of design as a human capability that includes feeling and thinking. The reference to ‘doing’ is oriented towards a transformative type of doing, quite characteristic of design (we propose that, as a human activity, design lies at the core of crafts), a ‘doing’ that is convivial, projective and set in the future.61 Despite the above, it is important to acknowledge the Greek concept of praxis, contextualized in Latin America by Sánchez and Dussel,62 who spoke of a dynamic relation between theory and practice. This must in turn be combined with the Andean EcoSophical concept of the experience of life. As emphasized by Estermann of Andean cultures, it is in the experience of life where lies the occurrence of thinking, feeling, designing, doing and all communitarian activities. Therefore, Western monadism which separates man from nature, rational from sensitive, and theory from action, is also overcome. In synch with the homeomorphic equivalent of holism, it is proposed that the Andean EcoSophical way of thinking gives sense to everything and to Pachamama; man here rearticulates itself as a species, like the other ones, feeling/thinking, and design/doing in an artisanal political praxis as weaver of relationality, complementarity and reciprocity.

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Revisiting crafts before crafts came to be To make matters clear for those readers unfamiliar with Latin America and the Abya-Yala native peoples, paradoxically, crafts were only recognized in the overall Americas upon the arrival of the invaders from the West: Spanish, Portuguese, English, Germans, etc. In the fifteenth century, according to several chronicles, crafts did not exist, as far as the invaders determined, and Europeans came to teach native peoples about them. For example, Manuel Romero de Terreros y Vinent63 narrates how in Mexico, thanks to the ‘efforts’ of Brother Pedro de Gante and to the collaboration of mentors among the conquerors, ‘good artisans’ were produced (besides being evangelized) and by the seventeenth century all liberal crafts practices and arts had emerged.64 In the same text, he mentions what was found by the kind conquerors: ‘As written by Brother Jerónimo de Mendieta, even though indigenous people lacked the necessary hammer tools for plowing, they certainly outdid the Spanish silversmiths when it came to melting any piece or molded jewel . . . because they melt a bird whose head, tongue and wings are even movable.’65 This denial of dexterities in the Mexican crafts before the conquest was only rectified after the arrival of the Spaniards, who brought mechanical arts and trades with them since, according to canonical history, the Indigenous people lacked certain knowledge. A similar opinion was declared by an author about works made of iron, bronze and ceramic, among others, materials supposedly not used by ancient Mexicans or ignored by the conquerors.66 Likewise, this can be observed in other Latin American cultures whose crafts and skills were reduced, if not obliterated, by the conquest and succeeding colonization.67 In Colombia, for instance, The Guilds’ Handbook, adopting a discourse on popular education by Spanish author Pedro R. de Campomanes, was transferred to the guild of artisans for its implementation since, like Mexico, the enlightened of the era did not acknowledge the existence of manufacturesavvy peoples. ‘In a word, there was no such thing as full-time consolidated artisanal trades.’68 With such a painful introductory description, it is worth pointing out how the crafts for the Abya-Yala peoples, as well as for all Native American peoples and those in the Caribbean, underwent a bloody colonial indoctrination.69 Keeping this in mind, it now makes sense to refer to the terms re-articulation and recuperation of that which used to be an essential component of the Andean people’s worldview, before their overwhelming conquest. The sophistication of the Andean man’s crafts had a very different purpose than those from the West: it was eminently ritualistic and celebrative, and it kept harmony in and between Pachamama and the community.

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Re-articulating worlds from the perspective of Andean philosophy It is important that this proposal sheds light on the fact that what is known today as crafts had been industries in the past, and, more accurately, the activities that made it possible for men/women to survive and weave their cosmic relation with the worlds above (hanaq pacha), below (uray pacha), the space here and now (kay pacha), between left (lloq´e) and right (puña), with the times before (ñawpaq) and after (qhepa), thus achieving connection with Pachamama.70 Hence chakana is a transition point between these complementarities (clarifying that in PachaSophy there are no dualities but only complementarities).71 These practices of the Andean world, known today as trades and crafts, as utilitarian and celebrative-ritualistic, have become not only a symbol of its past cultures but also of a transformation in the way in which women and men live in the world, of what they are, and in the relation they have established with Mother Earth and her creatures. For clarification, this idea indicates how the crafts have played an ontological, functional and symbolic role in many worldviews’ edification.72 Therefore, the transformative role of the crafts (chakanas) contains a political dimension, precisely because the model of the world harmoniously exists with each process, artefact, material and/or action functioning to create an organic whole. A relationship is established in the Andean worldview in which a continuous transformation with Pachamama occurs.

For the vindication of the praxis of crafts as politics Attempts have been made to consider how Andean philosophy offers a different political perspective of crafts. In addition to interpreting the community’s feelings, aesthetics (sumak ruray) and values, praxis in crafts also serves, maintains, cares for and protects the ayllu and the Pacha, as noted before. Rituals, utensils, tools, everything that is manufactured with a sense of community possesses, by correspondence, a political quality: their purpose is to be of service, care, ‘transitioning’ and protection. Moreover, these artefacts are, in general, technological tools for coexistence. Panikkar establishes that tools might have potential to overcome men’s strength, time and autonomy.73 Huge forces are also released (for example, slavery to production machines), even if women/men are unaware of it. It happens today as much

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with modern machinery as with digital technologies. Ultimately, we must look back at the role of crafts as an alternative to the contemporary crisis in society, productivism, consumerism and environmental imbalances. Fry states a crucial question: how can craft gain any transformative agency from its position of weakness and marginality? A clear answer is elusive, except for the elements put forward for discussion in this chapter. But, the critical political issue is thus an invitation to participate with new ideas. A system is proposed which rearticulates sustainment with the approach not only of sustainability but also, from Fry’s standpoint,74 on the ability for sustaining (sustain-ability), identifying, defuturing and propitiating an alternative lifestyle than that currently promoted by the West. Let us take the best of the West within its own shortsightedness: ‘we are incapable of acknowledging that our modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the foundations upon which it has been built.’75 For instance, we should take into account the deep ecology systemic thinking,76 the complexity of frontier contemporary paradigms and the holism of the entirety that escapes from all that is archetypal in the West. But only in the manner of the Andean runa, linked in a feel-think-design-do77 that is eco-sophical and pacha-sophical, in harmony with all creatures, will the planet go successfully forward. Finally, Latin America is a cosmos of complexity, para-consistency and idealism. We share a hope for change of peaceful convivence and harmony. Undoubtedly, in daily life, possibilities occur for those materializations. Academics, social leaders, Andean runas, and people from around the world are working to find where, innovatively, crafts can be part of the answer.

Notes 1 Special thanks to Tony Fry whom I consider my master. He had the patience and kindness to review this text, and to make very assertive suggestions. I hope that my ideas make sense of his efforts. 2 Nick Shepherd, Cristóbal Gnecco and Alejandro Haber, Arqueología y Decolonialidad [Archaeology and Decoloniality] (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del signo, 2015); Gilles Lipovetsky, El Imperio de lo Efímer [The Empire of Ephemeral] (Barcelona: Anagrama S.A., 2009); Victor Papanek, Diseñar Para el Mundo Real [Design for the Real World] (Barcelona: Pol-len, 2014). 3 Ministerio de Comercio, Industria y Turismo. Artesanías de Colombia, Estudio Ocupacional de los Subsectores Artesanales de Tejeduría y Cerámica – Alfarería [Occupational Study of the Handicraft Sub-sectors of Weaving and Ceramics-Pottery] (Técnico, Artesanías de Colombia, Bogotá: Artesanías de Colombia, 2012), 67.

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4 SIART. Sistema de Información Estadístico de la Actividad Artesanal Sistema de Información para la Artesanía [Statistical Information System on Craftsmanship - Information System for Crafts]. Daniel Serrano. 10 July 2019. http:​/​/art​​esani​​asdec​​olomb​​ia​.co​​m​.co/​​Porta​​lAC​/C​​_sect​​or​/si​​stema​​-de​-i​​nform​​ acion​​-esta​​disti​​co​-de​​-la​-a​​​ctivi​​dad​-a​​rtesa​​nal​_9​​429 5 Manuel Ortiz and Richard López, ‘Caracterización Socioeconómica de la Comunidad Artesanal de Nariño, Colombia [Socioeconomic Characterization of the Artisan Community of Nariño, Colombia]’, Lecturas de Economía, no. 82 (January–July 2015): 247–81; María Otero Gómez and Wilson Pérez, ‘El Turismo Cultural Desde una Perspectiva Sistémica [Cultural Tourism from a Systemic Perspective]’, idus​.us​.​es. idUS. Depósito de Investigación Universidad de Sevilla. 2013. https​:/​/id​​us​.us​​.es​/x​​mlui/​​bitst​​ream/​​handl​​e​/114​​ 41​/52​​980​/o​​tero-​​gomez​​.pdf?​​seque​​​nce​=1​​&isAl​​lowed​=y); C. Laorden, M. Montalvo, J. M. Moreno and R. Rivas, La Artesanía en la Sociedad Actual [Craftsmanship in Today’s Society]. Vol. 90. (Barcelona: Salvat Editores, S. A., 1986); Inés G. Chamorro, Artesanías y Cooperación en América Latina y el Caribe: Programa de la OEA (1969-1989) [Crafts and Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean: OAS Programme (1969-1989)] (Cuenca: Cidap, 2006). 6 Josef Estermann, Filosofía Andina [Andean Philosophy] (Quito: AbyaYala, 1998); Patricio Guerrero, La Chakana del Corazonar [The Chakana of Hearting] (Quito: Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, 2018). 7 Arturo Escobar, Autonomía y diseño. La realización de lo comunal [Autonomy and Design. The Realization of Communal] (Popayan: Universidad del Cauca, 2019). 8 Stone tool technology using glassy materials like obsidian and flint. 9 Enrique Dussel, Filosofía de la producción [Philosophy of Production] (Bogotá: Nueva América, 1984); Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973. http:​/​/ www​​.davi​​dtina​​pple.​​com​/i​​llich​​/1973​​_tool​​s​_for​​_conv​​​ivali​​ty​.ht​​ml 10 ‘It is erroneous to believe that within the same epistemic frames which have sustained the coloniality of power, knowledge and being, it is possible to build up another horizon of existence, since those epistemic frames have been the foundation of a dominating individualistic mercantilismdriven system that has denied the existence of other forms of knowledge.’ Guerrero, La chakana del corazonar, 69. 11 Estermann, Filosofía Andina, 162, 177–9. 12 Ibid. 13 In the philosophy of production, Dussel revisits the Greek concepts of praxis, which indicate the practical relationship among men, ‘especially the political relationship, or the production of social relationships’. In the meantime, poiesis ‘refers to the relation man-nature, particularly the technological relationship’. Dussel, Filosofía de la producción, 13. The latter merges into a sole occurrence in crafts as praxis since every ‘poietic’ action of the Andean runa occurs with/for the beings of Mother Earth and the ayllu. Their work is chakana, which transforms the beings of earth (through ceramics or stone carving), wood and fibers (through carving, carpentry, and imitation jewellery), metal (with forge or jewellery), etc. Both beings and man belong

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to Pachamama, so a politics and poietic praxis relationship develops. Adolfo Sánchez, Filosofía de la praxis [Philosophy of Praxis] (Mexico D.F.: Grijalbo, 1980); Tony Fry, Design as Politics (New York: Berg, 2011). 14 Javier Medina, Suma Qamaña. Por una convivencialidad postindustrial [Suma Qamaña: For a Postindustrial Conviviality] (La Paz: Garza Azul Editors, 2006); Estermann, Filosofía Andina; Raquel Gutiérrez, Los ritmos del Pachakuti: movilización y levantamiento indígena-popular en Bolivia (2000–2005) [The Rhythms of Pachakuti: Mobilization and Indigenous-Popular Uprising in Bolivia (2000–2005)] (Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón, 2008). 15 Fry, Design as Politics, 104–5. 16 ‘Those political things (practices and material relations) that constitute the everyday.’ Ibid., 104. 17 Illich, Tools for Conviviality, 1973; Ivan Illich, ‘Convivial Technology’, in ManMade Futures. Readings in Society, Technology and Design, ed. Niguel Cross, David Elliot and Robin Roy (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1980), 340–50. 18 Raymon Panikkar, Técnica y Tiempo [Technique and Time] (Buenos Aires: Columba, 1967). 19 ‘Sumak ruray as an insurgent aesthetic, aims toward bringing light to its ancestral memory, to its culture, in order to sow the seed of a spiritual and political aesthetic that meets the demands of life’ (Guerrero, La chakana del corazonar, 603). 20 Ibid., 601. 21 Four powers, fundamentals, pillars or Saywas. Patricio Guerrero and Daniel Tunque agree on two pillars: Munay and Yachay: Guerrero, La chakana del corazonar, 20–1; Daniel Tunque Choque, Diccionario de quechua castellano. [Quechua - Spanish Dictionary] (Cusco: Moderna, 2009). It is important to clarify that the former, Guerrero, is an Ecuadorian author whose Quechua is Ecuadorian (Kischwa), while Tunque is Peruvian with Inca Quechua or Runasimi (Qichwa) Ministerio de Educación Ecuador. Kichwa Yachakukkunapa Shimiyuk Kamu [Kischwa Dictionary], ed. CARE – UASB (Quito: Ministerio de Educación Ecuador, 2009), 7. Guerrero thinks that the strength of the Ushuay which defines spirituality is one of the powers and the Ruray is one more of the Saywas that refer to the act of doing. Tunque calls work llank’ay, very close to what is discussed by Guerrero. In the case of Páramo, it can be said that both are authors’ approaches to the Pan Andean culture of Abya Yala, both being equally valid and rich. Guillermo Páramo, Lógica de mitos: lógica paraconsistente. Una alternativa en la discusión sobre la lógica del mito [Logic of Myths: Paraconsistent Logic. An Alternative in the Discussion on Myth Logic] Ideas y Valores, 1989. 22 Tunque Choque, Diccionario de Quechua – Castellano; Estermann, Filosofía Andina; Guerrero, La chakana del corazonar. 23 ‘The human being is an intrinsic “part” of the cosmos (pacha); it is precisely this which gives men their exceptional dignity and position.’ Estermann, Filosofía Andina, 231.

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24 Josef Estermann, Si el sur fuera el norte [Whether the South Were the North] (La Paz: ISEAT, 2008), 84; Estermann, Filosofía Andina, 197–206. 25 Estermann, Si el sur fuera el norte, 86. 26 Antonio García Gutiérrez, En pedazos [In Pieces] (Madrid: Asociación Cultural y Científica Iberoamericana, 2018). 27 Antonio García, ‘La descolonización de los saberes. Itinerarios de paraconsistencia. 20 años del Capítulo Español de ISKO [The Decolonization of Knowledge. Itineraries of Paraconsistency. 20 Years of Spanish Chapter of ISKO]’, Actas del X Congreso ISKO Capítulo Español (Ferrol, 2011) (Universidade da Coruña, 2012): 31–48. 28 Estermann, Filosofía Andina. 29 Vladimir Serrano Pérez and others, Ciencia andina [Andean science] (Quito: Abya-yala, 2008); Alexander Herrera Wassilowsky, La recuperación de tecnologías indígenas. Arqueología, tecnología y desarrollo en los andes [Recovery of Indigenous Technologies. Archaeology, Technology and Development in the Andes], ed. Serie estudios de la Sociedad Rural. Vol. 41 (Lima: IEP, Universidad los Andes. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales; CLACSO; Centro de Investigación Andina, PUNKU, 2011); Medina, Suma Qamaña; Miguel Quintanilla, ‘Tecnica y Cultura [Technique and Culture]’, Teorema XVII (1998): 49–69; María Gisela Hadad, ‘Prácticas económicas heterodoxas, decolonialidad y etnicidad. Dos experiencias mapuche de economía social en Argentina [Heterodox Economic Practices, Decoloniality and Ethnicity. Two Mapuche Experiences of Social Economy in Argentina]’, De prácticas y discursos cuadernos de ciencias sociales (Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Centro de Estudios Sociales) 7, no. 10 (October 2018): 157–78; Vine Deloria, Jr., ‘Traditional Technology’, in Power and Place: Indian Education in America, ed. Vine Deloria, Jr. and Daniel Wildcat (Golden, CO: American Indian Graduate Center and Fulcrum Resources, 2001), 57–66. 30 Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón Grosfoguel, ed., El giro decolonial: reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global [The Decolonial Turn: Reflections for Epistemic Diversity Beyond Global Capitalism] (Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores; Universidad Central, Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos y Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Instituto Pensar, 2007). 31 Tony Fry, A New Design Philosophy: An Introduction to Defuturing (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press Ltd., 1999). 32 Gutiérrez, Los ritmos del Pachakuti; Estermann, Filosofía Andina; Escobar, Autonomía y diseño. 33 ‘Ayllu is both the “cell of life,” the celebrative and ritual “atom” and also the economic foundation for survival and internal bartering.’ Estermann, Filosofía Andina, 203. 34 From Quechua, maki (hand) and kapchiy (art): handicraft, handmade artefact. However, further references are not found in variants of Quechua. https​:/​/es​​ .glos​​be​.co​​m​/qu/​​es​/Ma​​ki​%​20​​kapch​​iy 35 Qhipnayra uñtasis sarnaqapxañani- Aymara aphorism. According to Silvia Rivera: ‘An approximate translation to this aphorism goes as follows:

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‘Looking back and ahead (the past-future), we can walk along the presentfuture’, albeit more subtle meanings get lost in translation.’ Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Sociología de la imagen. Miradas ch’ixi desde la hisotria andina [Sociology of Image. Ch'ixi Views from Andean History] (Buenos Aires: Nociones Comunes - Tinta Limón, 2015), 12. In another of her texts, Rivera translates ‘looking into the past so as to walk along the present and the future’. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Oprimidos pero no vencidos. Luchas del campesinado aymara y qhechwa 1900–1980 [Oppressed but Not Defeated. Struggles of the Aymara and Qhechwa Peasantry 1900–1980] (La Paz: UNRISD, 2010), 17. 36 See, for example, Mario Mejía Huamán, Hacia una filosofía andina [Towards an Andean Philosophy] (Lima: Mario Mejía Huamán. 2005). 37 As an example, the Cartesian way of thinking: ‘Epistemology proceeds to divide the world it analyses and sets limits to, into components and types following patterns, properties or conditions, whether physical or immaterial objects, imbuing them with a particular and unquestionable sense.’ García Gutiérrez, En pedazos, 34. 38 Estermann, Filosofía Andina, 98. 39 ‘The declassified proposal would consist of a strategic intervention of the core sources of reasoning, the place where it emerges and, simultaneously, becomes tainted.’ García Gutiérrez, En pedazos, 44. 40 ‘We once were cultures who talked to the stars’ which is why, thanks to the wisdom of the Kuna people, our continent was named Abya-Yala: ‘fully grown earth’. Guerrero, La chakana del corazonar, 53. 41 ‘What leading a good life is all about, or what knowing how to live well consists of. Two strong reasons of concern that were forgotten by the West in its unbridled race toward producing and consuming, along with its well-known consequences.’ C. E. Maldonado, Complejidad de las ciencias sociales. Y de otras ciencias y disciplinas [Complexity of the Social Sciences. And of Other Sciences and Disciplines] (Bogotá: Ediciones desde abajo, 2016), 77. 42 Páramo, lógica de mitos: lógica para consistente, 27–67; García Gutiérrez, En pedazos. 43 A reference is made, for instance, to the current Latin American organizations for crafts exportation and the regional impulse to the ‘region brand’, the ‘origin denomination’, and the ‘nation brand’, all of which conceal cultural diversity, co-opting it and standardizing many crafts-related/artisanal products. https​:/​/co​​nnect​​ameri​​cas​.c​​om​/es​​/cont​​ent​/l​​a​​-exp​​ortac​ión-d​e-art​esaní​ as-un​a-opo​rtuni​dad-p​ara-a​méric​a-lat​ina# 44 A recent example of how crafts are now being reconciled with the market and the environment is the activism for the ceramic trade. Created in Italy in 2014, the open group, More Clay Less Plastic, has three purposes: rethink everyday life objects, substitute plastic with other sustainable materials such as ceramic, and identify the local artisans producing such items. https:// moreclaylessplastic​.org/ 45 Recently, in Colombia, authors are using the first person ‘I’ to connect with readers. For others the first-person singular sounds egotistical. In my case

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I prefer ‘we’, as my being part of the commons, not an isolated person. Further, this choice of pronoun reflects the political discussion surrounding anthropocentricity. 46 Laorden et al., La artesanía en la sociedad actual. 47 Sonia Harmand and others, ‘3.3-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya’, Nature, no. 521 (May 2015): 310–15; Ella Assaf, Ran Barkai and Avi Gopher, ‘Knowledge Transmission and Apprentice Flint-Knappers in the Acheulo-Yabrudian: A Case Study from Qesem Cave’, Quaternary International (2015): 1–16. 48 ‘By all means, the West forgot how to live, and yet it has recently started to learn that, for example, and thanks to the Andean worldview, life is a phenomenon which is impossible outside of, apart from or above nature.’ Maldonado, Complejidad de las ciencias sociales, 77. 49 Héctor Rosales Ayala, Sentipensar la cultura [Feel-Think the Culture] (Cuernavaca: UNAM, Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias, 1998); Arturo Escobar, Sentipensar con la tierra [Feel-Think with the Heart] (Medellín: Ediciones UNAULA, 2014). 50 Fry, Design as Politics; Alfredo Gutiérrez, ‘Resurgimientos: sures como diseños y diseños otros [Resurgences: Southeastern as Designs and Designs Others]’, Nómadas (Universidad Central), no. 43 (2015): 113–29; Fernando A. Álvarez Romero, Tecnología y diseño desde la filosofía Andina [Technology and Design from Andean Philosophy], Diseño + tecnología (Universidad ICESI) 10, no. 22 (2012): 213–30; Fernando A. Álvarez Romero and Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero, Diseño del Sur: interculturalidad en la vida cotidiana [Design of South: Interculturality in Daily Life], Chapt. 1 (Bogotá: IDARTES, 2017). 51 Estermann, Si el sur fuera el norte, 166. 52 Ibid. 53 Eleni Kalantidou, ‘Back to the Third World. The Greek Experience’, in Design in the Borderlands, ed. Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry (New York: Routledge, 2014), 37–60. 54 Escobar, Sentipensar con la tierra; Fernando A. Álvarez Romero, ‘Polílogo de saberes en el diseño industrial: intuición, técnica, tecnología y ciencia desde el diseño del Sur [Polylogue in Industrial Design: Intuition, Technique, Technology and Science from Design of South]’, in Bienal Tadeísta de Diseño industrial 2: 2014: Bogotá. Encuentros cardinales: acentos y matices del diseño, ed. Alfredo Gutiérrez et al. (Bogotá: Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, 2016), 256. 55 Illich, ‘Convivial Technology’. 56 Panikkar, Técnica y tiempo, 18–25. 57 The ancient Greek word ‘synrhythmia’ means the sharing of regulated movement, the process of acting together in the same way or in complementary ways.  58 Panikkar, Técnica y tiempo; Estermann, Filosofía Andina; Guerrero, La chakana del corazonar.

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59 Juan C. Rodríguez G., Tiempo y ocio [Time and Leisure] (Bogotá: Universidad Externado de Colombia, 1992), 83. 60 Tony Fry, ‘Design for/by “The Global South”’, Design Philosophy Papers 15, no. 1 (April 2017): 3–37. 61 Álvarez Romero, Polílogo de saberes en el diseño industrial; Tony Fry, ‘Futuring Design After Design’. www​.youtube​.com. 10 September 2018. https://youtu​.be​/ZnG0EQuBqsU 62 Sánchez, Filosofía de la praxis; Dussel, Filosofía de la producción. 63 His titles include Marquis of San Francisco, Knight of Malta, Director of the Mexican Academy of History, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, and the Academy of Fine Arts and Historical Sciences of Toledo, and Academician of the Academy of Rome. 64 Manuel Romero de Terreros y Vinent, Las artes industriales en la Nueva España [The Industrial Arts in New Spain] (México: Libreria de Pedro Robredo, 1923), 9. 65 Ibid., 17. 66 Ibid., 45, 59, 153. 67 Mora Alberto Mayor, Cabezas duras y dedos inteligentes. Estilo de vida y cultura técnica de los artesanos colombianos del siglo XIX [Hard Heads and Smart Fingers. Lifestyle and Technical Culture of Nineteenth Century Colombian Craftsmen] (Medellín: Hombre Nuevo Editors, 2003), 15–46. 68 Ibid., 35. 69 Arturo Escobar, La invención del tercer mundo [The Invention of Third World] (Caracas: Fundación Editorial el perro y la rana, 2007). 70 Estermann, Filosofía Andina, 146. 71 Ibid., 155. 72 Escobar, Autonomía y diseño. La realización de lo comunal; Tony Fry, Becoming Human by Design (London: Berg, 2012). 73 Fernando A. Álvarez Romero, ‘Tejiendo allwiya kamay en el fieltro convivial [Weaving Allwiya Kamay on Convivial Felt]’, Congreso 2019 de la Asociación de Estudios Latinoamericanos, 24–27 May 2019: 1–10 (Boston: LASA). www​ .lasaorg​.com 74 Fry, A New Design Philosophy; Fry, Becoming Human by Design. 75 E. F. Schumacher, as cited in Joaquim Viñolas, Diseño ecologico [Ecological Design] (Barcelona: Blume, 2005), 140. 76 Fritjof Capra, Las conexiones ocultas [Hidden Connections] (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2003). 77 Álvarez Romero, Tejiendo allwiya kamay en el fieltro convivial.

13 Chilean arpilleras Hand-stitched geographies and the politics of everyday life in Santiago’s poblaciones Nathalia Santos Ocasio

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rpilleras (pronounced ‘ar-pee-air-ahs’) are burlap sack wall-hangings embroidered with yarn, scraps of fabric and other elements of everyday life, like foil, matches and cardboard. The scenes depicted in the arpilleras vary, but some themes are recurrent, like military repression, economic precarity, protests in front of detention centres and community subsistence activities. In one arpillera, small fabric figures raise their hands in surrender while other figures in black point at them with little wooden sticks as we witness a night raid. In another, fabric figures of mothers and children with fabric bowls mattress-stitched into their hands gather around a big steamy pot to receive their daily portion of soup. Some arpilleras depict scenes that take place inside a room or a workshop, but most take place outside, where we are reminded that we are in Santiago de Chile by a chain of mountains – the Andes – decorating the background. My favourite arpilleras also include tiny colourful houses that tap electricity from the main grid with improvised lines of red or pink yarn. These geographic and urban elements contextualize the scenes in the poblaciones of Santiago, poor and working-class neighbourhoods often located at the peripheries of the city, where land is cheaper and services and infrastructure scarce. Except

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on these burlap sack wall-hangings, poblaciones are not characterized for their bright colours, as the unpaved roads and lack of green areas generate rather dusty and grey scenery. However, similar to the fabric houses in the arpilleras, the houses of the poblaciones have historically been built out of scrap materials put together by the hard work and creativity of their residents. The arpilleras described above were created by women from Santiago’s poblaciones during the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) to depict their experiences under military rule and earn vital incomes. Thirty years after the end of the dictatorship and the decline of arpillera making,1 the arpilleras created during this period continue to circulate around the world through exhibitions, workshops and archival collections. As I have walked around galleries and flicked through arpilleras in back rooms of museums, I have often wondered about the tensions between what I see in the arpilleras and the international reputation that Chile has held until recently. While the arpilleras depict poverty, human rights violations and mass mobilization, post-dictatorial Chile has been celebrated and emulated2 for its economic performance and political stability relative to the rest of the region. Although academics, activists and the general public have written about and extensively denounced the inequalities behind the Chilean success story for decades, the mainstream reputation of Chile is finally faltering under the pressure of millions of Chileans who have taken to the streets since midOctober 2019 to denounce economic inequality and precarity and demand a new constitution. As we reckon with these events, this chapter takes a look back at the dictatorial period responsible for establishing the neoliberal model that people are still protesting and the repressive tactics used to enforce it and to repress the masses that resist it, including in the recent mobilizations. But beyond the authoritarian regime itself, I emphasize how the failure of the prodemocracy political leadership to challenge the neoliberal model towards the end of the dictatorship compromised the tone of the transition and ultimately limited democracy in the post-dictatorial period. In the literature that I review below, these shortcomings are associated with the abandonment of the social movements that helped to restore the social fabric eroded by the dictatorship through grassroots organizing while also opening space for negotiating the transition to democracy. Many of these were centred around Santiago’s poblaciones, their subsistence activities and their socioeconomic demands for change. Thus, in this chapter I set out to recover the experiences and demands of these grassroots groups with the help of arpilleras, as they were part of the social and political strategies deployed by pobladores – residents of poor, working class neighbourhoods – to survive the social emergency created by the dictatorship and to demand structural change. Their visual content and materiality show how neoliberalism undermines social reproduction, or the convoluted arrangements that sustain life on a daily and

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generational basis, as well as the transformative power of organizing around the issues of everyday life. Beyond Chile, this chapter responds to the imperative of attending to the aesthetics of crafts – or folk art – not as lifeless decorative objects produced by anonymous ‘people’, but as classed and gendered production rooted in the urban experiences of poor women,3 as well as their fundamental contributions to livelihood strategies and political resistance. This chapter is structured in the following manner. First, I introduce Santiago’s poblaciones with a brief historical background where I highlight experiences of economic and human rights violence during the dictatorship. This section ends with a review of the central role that grassroots organizing based in the poblaciones played during the dictatorship and the transition to democracy. In the second section I draw on social reproduction theories to analyse the contributions made by arpilleras as I try to distil the impact of neoliberal restructuring in the everyday lives of the urban poor, and the political potential of organizing around issues related to social reproduction. The last section summarizes the main arguments of this chapter and highlights the pedagogic and political potential of arpilleras in their afterlives. My analysis relies on a literature review of scholarly work about Santiago’s poblaciones and arpilleras, as well as on a close reading of the visual content and materiality of selected tapestries.

Economic violence and grassroots organization To understand the contributions that arpilleras made to the politics of everyday life in Santiago during the Chilean dictatorship, it is important to understand the material and political circumstances behind their creation. Although some dictatorial arpilleras were created by relatives of the detainee-disappeared from other socioeconomic classes,4 the arpilleras discussed in this chapter were created by women from poor and working-class neighbourhoods of Santiago and nearby towns, locally known as poblaciones. Given the different affiliations and circumstances under which each población was formed,5 it is hard to generalize about their demographics, politics and role in the urban landscape of Santiago. However, the term poblaciones has been historically and broadly employed by state agents, the media and pobladores themselves to describe the material conditions and collective identities of poor and working-class neighbourhoods where residents have had a major role in the construction and organization of housing and urban infrastructure.6 Consistent with this broad description, many poblaciones were established in the midtwentieth century as the city grew and the state lacked political willingness and ability to meet housing demands. In fact, by 1952, 36 per cent of Santiago’s

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population lacked appropriate housing.7 In this context, many poblaciones were established through land seizures, auto-construction and the self-organization of residents, who drew on party affiliations and other strategic alliances to negotiate land titles, basic services and urban infrastructure from the state.8 It is no surprise, then, that the relationship between the state and the pobladores has always been complicated, when not violent. After the military coup, the poblaciones of Santiago not only faced systematic political repression and human rights violations, but they also experienced harsh economic precarity. Many residents lost their jobs as political punishment, and all were impacted by the ‘shock treatment’ aimed at neoliberalizing the Chilean economy, which saw a drastic reduction of state expenditure and initially caused inflation and industrial decline.9 Inflation and widespread unemployment effectively exacerbated the material precarity already pervasive in the poblaciones, provoking food shortages, water and electricity cuts, as well as complicating housing and health issues. However, the economic struggles endured by the pobladores cannot be understood in isolation. The authoritarian neoliberalism that characterized the regime of Augusto Pinochet thoroughly restructured the Chilean economy, reorienting production towards exports and recasting state activities in the economic and social spheres.10 The latter, of particular interest to this chapter, was characterized by privatization and decentralization of public services and welfare, (in)famously transforming the health, pension and education systems into commodities that can be purchased in the market by those who could afford them.11 In terms of urban policy, Navarrete-Hernandez and Toro12 identify four critical transformations: deregulation of planning, social housing privatization, devolution of territorial taxation and decreases in public service provision. As a result, the socio-spatial segregation that characterized Santiago13 was exacerbated, effectively displacing poor populations into the outskirts of the city14 where there is ‘minimal infrastructure investments and little access to public services’.15 Indeed, around 187,000 people were forcibly displaced by the state from poor campamentos (encampments) between 1979 and 1984, as city boundaries were redrawn, and land was put to the service of realestate development and speculation.16 Drawing on their historical experience with political and social organization, the pobladores of Santiago began to organize soon after the coup to counter unemployment and attend to their subsistence needs. For instance, comedores infantiles (children’s dining halls) and soup kitchens started to appear as early as November 1973, followed by other subsistence organizations, as well as cultural, educational and recreation groups.17 With political parties outlawed and the welfare state dismantled, the Catholic Church and NGOs assumed an unprecedented role in the life and organization of pobladores, providing space, financial aid and legal assistance to the different groups. Women also became

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central actors during this period, contributing to the household economy and the subsistence of their communities through paid work and other activities, including the arpillera workshops.18 But beyond attending to the immediate needs of pobladores, subsistence activities and cultural organizations like soup kitchens, health groups and shopping collectives proved essential in keeping popular culture19 alive and (re)creating solidarities during these critical years. Working to face the social emergency together strengthened the class consciousness of pobladores and demonstrated the value of collective action.20 Furthermore, many groups’ mission was explicitly (if clandestinely) educative and/or political, tying their services to the political and economic situation21 and providing popular education to foment and strengthen leadership and provide social and political formation.22 By 1983, when the economy went through a recession and unemployment soared to 30 per cent nationwide and up to 50 per cent in the poblaciones, the consciousness and solidarities that had been cultivated through collective subsistence and cultural activities became central catalysers of a national strike and the cycles of protests that followed. Although the national strike of May 1983 was convocated by the copper trade union, its success is associated in the historical literature with the participation of diverse sectors, particularly the pobladores.23 Within this group, women and young people who grew up within the constraints of authoritarianism became key figures. The actions deployed by this resistance reflected the everyday issues (re)created by the very same neoliberal policies that people were protesting, while strategically avoiding direct confrontation with the police and military, albeit to a limited extent. For example, people were encouraged not to send their children to school, not to make any purchases and to bang cooking pots inside of the house starting at 8:00pm when the curfew started.24 During this period, arpilleras depicting protests, including barricades and picket lines, started to appear, and the arpilleristas themselves joined the demonstrations in the streets.25 Although met with new rounds of violent repression, the mass mobilizations of the early 1980s effectively eroded the psychological grip of the dictatorial government and opened space in the political arena, where party leaders started to regroup to strategize and negotiate a transition to democracy. It is important to note that the leaders of traditionally leftist parties were significantly decimated through state violence and exile. Furthermore, the government explicitly banned the Communist Party, excluding it from negotiations. In this context, the negotiations, and by extension the transition, was limited from the beginning. As the previous section suggests, the pobladores of Santiago played a key role in the social movements that ultimately led to the end of the dictatorship, restoring the social fabric through grassroots organizing and producing new and unsuspected political actors that created pressure around

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issues related to everyday life. However, when decisions had to be made regarding the end of the dictatorship and political leaders started to assume direct power over the transition, excisions emerged over the issues that would be prioritized, ultimately leading to internal divisions within the Socialist Party that spearheaded the negotiations with the state.26 In this context – understandable under the pressures of the period – the political leadership settled for an ‘institutional exit’ that was prescribed by the military regime in the 1980 Constitution. In preparation for the 1988 referendum that would determine if Pinochet had popular support to continue his mandate for eight more years, the coalition of parties for the ‘NO’ vote garnered strength by recruiting support from the pobladores’ movement. However, the Coalition did not prioritize local struggles related to housing, subsistence and economic inequality in the negotiations, ultimately abandoning their social movements and popular bases. Thus, although the end of the dictatorship and the triumph of NO in the referendum were not without merit, the failure of the Coalition to embrace the socioeconomic demands of the popular bases significantly compromised the transition and ultimately limited Chilean democracy in the post-dictatorial period.27 This is overwhelmingly true in the economic sphere, where the post-dictatorial governments have not only embraced the neoliberal policies brutally imposed by the dictatorship but have also legitimized them under the guise of electoral democracy. Thirty years after the official end of the dictatorship, the ongoing mass demonstrations demanding structural change require a critical recovery of the voices and social claims that were abandoned by the transitional and postdictatorial governments in favour of private and elite interests. Given their fundamental role in the poblaciones and beyond during the dictatorship and their widespread circulation today, arpilleras provide us with a visual and performative tool to understand how the neoliberal model brutally imposed by the dictatorship filtrated into the everyday experiences of the urban poor, as well as demonstrating how craft practices can be fundamental to navigate and resist these challenges. Analysing them through the lens of social reproduction, the next section also aims to highlight the political potential of organizing around the seemingly mundane issues of everyday life.

Arpilleras and the politics of social reproduction As we saw in the previous section, pobladoras – or women from the poblaciones – became key social and political actors during the dictatorship, at the same time that traditionally masculinist party politics was banned, and men were disproportionally targeted by state violence. Gender and

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motherhood mediated women’s experiences with poverty and repression, as well as in the ways that women navigated them.28 Accordingly, subsistence activities like soup kitchens, actions like cazerolazos (the banging of empty pots to protest food scarcity) and the creation and sale of arpilleras can be understood in relation to the ways in which the socioeconomic policies of Pinochet’s neoliberal regime invaded and undermined the sphere of the household29 and social reproduction more generally. Social reproduction is broadly understood in terms of biological and generational reproduction, material and ideological reproduction of labour power, and social provisioning secured by individuals and institutions. Although initially articulated in relation to the unpaid domestic activities of middleclass women in the Global North, many writers and feminist activists have expanded the sites, subjects and arrangements that ensure the reproduction of individuals, communities and capitalist systems more broadly to include the forced labour of slaves in plantation economies, community efforts to make cities liveable for queer folk,30 the replenishing function of churches,31 transnational care chains,32 and many others. In all cases, analyses that employ the analytic tool of social reproduction reveal that non-waged labour and other undervalued activities considered to be outside of the circuit of capital are a fundamental source of accumulation within capitalist systems. By the same token, writers and activists have exposed how social reproduction is mystified as ‘a natural resource or a personal service’33 when it is not mediated by wages or recognized as work, instead relying on class, gender and other social differences to naturalize and coerce its responsibilities. By accounting for a wide variety of care arrangements and social infrastructures, the analytic tool of social reproduction allows us to attend to ‘the complex network of social processes and human relations that produces the condition of existence’.34 These include ‘how we live’,35 survive and replenish through sexual reproduction, food, shelter, rest and the other ‘fleshy, messy, and indeterminate stuff of everyday life’.36 Furthermore, by bringing life and its fundamental messiness to the centre of analysis, social reproduction expands our understanding about the way in which seemingly abstract systems like capitalism37 ‘filtrat[e] into everyday practices, relationships and experiences’.38 This type of analysis is particularly relevant to neoliberal regimes, where market logistics permeate every aspect of life, as well as the conditions and institutions that should support it, in unprecedented and unsuspected ways.39 Because reproductive activities are virtually invisible, naturalized and (often) coerced, their social funding has been an easy target for neoliberal reforms, which have been defunded to unsustainable levels and/or privatized. In the process, individual and collective arrangements mediated by race, gender, class and geography are put under stress, as those who cannot afford the progressively commodified forms of care and reproduction are insufficiently

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served or actively denied access to basic social infrastructures and services, resulting in their further marginalization and uneven burden. As a model of orthodox implementation of neoliberalism, social reproduction has been notoriously undermined in the Chilean experience. Specifically, key services and institutions that sustain life on a daily and generational basis have either seen a cut in their funding or been privatized, the latter of which is infamously represented in health, pension and water systems since the dictatorship. Unevenly positioned within the geographies and socioeconomic strata of Santiago and the Chilean society more generally, the pobladores have historically faced challenges to their social reproduction, starting with their very habitation and position within the city in the mid-1900s and peaking in the previously discussed social emergencies faced during the dictatorship. Emerging within this context, arpilleras were able to visually represent the everyday manifestations of the structural changes brutally imposed by the dictatorship while also performing the work of social reproduction at multiple levels (Figure 13.1). This is concisely depicted in an arpillera that I had the chance to see at SUNY Potsdam’s Gibson Gallery,40 where a fabric figure bakes bread in a

FIGURE 13.1  Arpillera #17. A joyful scene in the outskirts of the city. In Chile spring flourishes in September. People come together to celebrate as pan amasado, a traditional bread, is made in a communal oven. (in colour at https​:/​/ww​​w​.for​​ gingm​​emory​​.org/​​colle​​ction​​​-item​​/17). SUNY Potsdam’s Art Gallery and the Forging Memory Team (reproduced by permission).

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clay oven while the other figures bring little wooden sticks to feed the fire. The scene takes place in a población of Santiago, which is suggested by the colourful houses and the background mountains also stitched into the picture. Different from arpilleras that depict the graphic face of fascism, including the bombing of the presidential palace, night raids in the poblaciones and torture chambers, arpilleras like this one give us a window into the mundane ‘stuff’ of everyday life, as experienced by their uniquely positioned creators. In this way, they sift through the technicalities of political and economic discourses to show the effects of neoliberal restructuring on daily functions like food provisioning, which is shown here to be achieved through collective baking. Besides documenting the different caring arrangements of pobladores, the materiality of arpilleras, as well as their sale and distribution, further captured and performed the work of social reproduction. As a craft made for sale, arpilleras became one of the most famous subsistence and cultural initiatives to emerge in the poblaciones during the dictatorial period. Engaging up to two thousand women in Santiago and nearby towns, the sale of arpilleras offered women the opportunity to earn vital incomes to buy food, clothing and schooling for the children, among other things.41 The arpillera depicting the bread baking arrived at SUNY Potsdam as part of a larger collection of tapestries via Jubilee Crafts, a fair-trade women’s collective in Philadelphia that, like many other fair-trade organizations in this era, presumably bought them for re-sale to support women in Chile. In fact, some of the arpilleras that I saw during my visit to Potsdam had a price tag of US$14. Back in Chile, arpillera workshops prompted other activities that either generated money, for instance baking and selling empanadas (turnovers) and bread, or directly resolved the material necessities of the women and their families by means of shopping cooperatives and soup kitchens.42 In my visit to Potsdam, I noticed that most arpilleras, including the one discussed here, had the word HARINA (flour) stencilled onto the back of the burlap fabric upon which the scene was embroidered (Figure 13.2). In fact, the word arpillera means burlap fabric in Spanish, and the arpilleras of the dictatorship were often made from flour sacks. Thus, the material composition of these crafts was itself indicative of the socioeconomic situation of their creators and the ways that crafting practices became a strategy to navigate and resist them. Relying on the literature, we can speculate that the flour sack that served as the backing of the Potsdam arpillera was purchased through the shopping cooperative programmes that emerged in the poblaciones during the dictatorship to reduce the cost of groceries and/or was left over from an actual bread sale, another popular subsistence activity from this era.43

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FIGURE 13.2  Arpillera #17. Reverse detail (in colour at https​:/​/ww​​w​.for​​ging m​​emory​​.org/​​colle​​ction​​​-item​​/17). SUNY Potsdam’s Art Gallery and the Forging Memory Team (reproduced by permission). Beyond the scale of the household and the local community, arpilleras became important objects and catalysers of political transformation. On the one hand, they were used to raise awareness about the situation in Chile and recruit international solidarity. As briefly mentioned above, arpilleras were smuggled or inconspicuously transported outside of the country as fair-trade merchandise. Once abroad, they were exhibited, circulated and sold by exiles and other allies of the Chilean cause.44 Their role as hand-stitched newspaper was fundamental to the creation of international pressure in a pre-internet context, when the state and its right-wing capitalist interests controlled most mediums of communication.45 On the other hand, arpilleras became important catalysers for the political education and politicization of their creators. As we saw in the previous section, most grassroots subsistence activities had an underlying educational and political agenda (whether explicit or not), and arpillera workshops were no exception. Arpillera workshops were organized by the Vicaría de la Solidaridad (Vicariate of Solidarity), an organism of the Catholic Church that at the time was influenced by liberation theology’s concerns for the poor. Furthermore, many of the Vicaría employees and volunteers were middle-class people tied to Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular party and movement, the democratically elected government that

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was ousted by the military coup. Thus, while gathering around the crafting circle, arpilleristas (makers of arpilleras) learned to think along Marxist lines46 and were socialized into the pro-democracy movement.47 In addition to absorbing didactic material and meeting other victims of the dictatorship, the arpilleristas were politicized through the creation of the arpilleras themselves, as the Vicaría staff would encourage women to depict the reality around them and the act of crafting together stimulated exchange and comradeship. Thus, ‘making arpilleras engaged the women in observing, analysing, and discussing indicators of poverty and political repression’,48 and ultimately in thinking of themselves as agents of political change. As a result of their engagement in crafting practices and other subsistence and cultural activities, pobladoras became key figures in the everyday politics of the poblaciones and the national protests of the 1980s. Understanding how the creation and sale of arpilleras went from subsistence activities to political devices catalysing social change is important because it demonstrates the potential of organizing around social reproduction – a blurry ‘sphere’ that is rendered invisible through social hierarchies and undermined and marketized to unprecedented levels within neoliberal regimes.

The afterlives of arpilleras In this chapter, I reviewed the material context behind the creation and sale of arpilleras during the Chilean dictatorship. Careful of providing a gendered, classed and geographically nuanced analysis, I have relied on social reproduction theories calling forth the everyday implications of the economic restructuring that took place during the dictatorial period, unleashing a social emergency that unevenly affected poor people and pushed them to engage in subsistence activities like making arpilleras to improve, or simply make possible, their lives in the city. While distilling the everyday implications of neoliberalism, this discussion aimed to recover the socioeconomic struggles of the popular movements that made the transition to democracy possible but were abandoned by the political elites who prioritized the performance of official economic indicators. Thus, while the economy has grown at a relatively consistent rate since 1980, Chile shares the highest index of economic inequality for OECD countries with Mexico,49 while household debt is on the rise.50 Economic inequality and precarity are animating the cycles of mass mobilization taking place in Chile since October 2019. What started with a demonstration against the increasing costs of transportation has evolved into a call for structural changes backed by a new constitution, demonstrating,

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once again, the transformative power of the politics surrounding everyday life. In these decisive times, re-reading the crafting practice of arpilleras through the lens of social reproduction can be a productive exercise to test the inconsistencies of democratic power and neoliberalism, as well as to rally around the socioeconomic policies that should be prioritized this time around. Furthermore, and given that the neoliberal policies inherited from the Chilean dictatorship have been prescribed and emulated elsewhere,51 arpillera exhibitions around the world could highlight their value as historic artefacts providing a window into the everyday life of pobladores during the dictatorship, as well as contemporary political objects that interrogate the promises of neoliberalism. Beyond the visual and narrative registers, Chilean arpilleras contribute to our understanding of the types of political projects and agencies that can emerge from shared practices of crafting. Then, as now, in Chile and around the world, arpilleras show the potential of craft practices in the grassroots organizing of marginalized urban communities as well as their transformative potential beyond.

Notes 1 J. Adams, ‘When Art Loses Its Sting: The Evolution of Protest Art in Authoritarian Contexts’, Sociological Perspectives 48, no. 4 (2006): 531–58. 2 M. Taylor, ‘The Reformulation of Social Policy in Chile, 1973–2001: Questioning a Neoliberal Model’, Global Social Policy 3, no. 1 (April 2003): 21–44. 3 E. Bartra, Crafting Gender: Women and Folk Art in Latin America and the Caribbean (Durham: Duke University Press. 2003). 4 M. Agosín, I. Allende, P. Kornbluh and P. Winn, Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: The Arpillera Movement in Chile (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008). 5 C. Schneider, Shantytown Protest in Pinochet’s Chile (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995). 6 N. Angelcos and M. Pérez, ‘De la “desaparición” a la reemergencia: Continuidades y rupturas del movimiento de pobladores en Chile [From ‘Disappearance’ to Reemergence: The Continuities and Ruptures of the Pobladores’ Movement in Chile]’, Latin American Research Review 52, no. 1 (2017): 94–109. 7 M. Garcés, ‘El Movimiento de Pobladores Durante la Unidad Popular, 19701973 [The Pobladores’ Movement during the Unidad Popular, 1970-1973]’, Atenea 15, no. 2, (2015): 33–47. 8 Ibid.; Schneider, Shantytown Protest in Pinochet’s Chile. 9 B. Mullings, ‘Neoliberalism’, in Encyclopedia of Geography, ed. B. Warf (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2010), 2011–2015.

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10 Taylor, ‘The Reformulation of Social Policy in Chile, 1973–2001’. 11 Ibid. 12 Pablo Navarrete-Hernandez and Fernando Toro, ‘Urban Systems of Accumulation: Half a Century of Chilean Neoliberal Urban Policies’, Antipode 51, no. 3 (June 2019): 899–926. 13 Garcés, ‘El Movimiento de Pobladores Durante la Unidad Popular’. 14 Angelcos and Pérez, ‘De la “desaparición” a la reemergencia’. 15 Navarrete-Hernandez and Toro, ‘Urban Systems of Accumulation’, 9. 16 Angelcos and Pérez, ‘De la “desaparición” a la reemergencia’. 17 M. Garcés, ‘Los Pobladores y la Política en los Años Ochenta: Reconstrucción de tejido social y protestas nacionales [Pobladores and Politics in the Eighties: The Reconstruction of the Social Fabric and the National Protests]’, Historia 396, no. 1 (2017): 119–48. 18 J. Adams, Surviving Dictatorship: A Work of Visual Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2012); J. Paley, Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001). 19 As in other languages, in Spanish, popular culture or cultura popular refers to the culture of the masses and the working classes, as opposed to the culture of the elites. In the case of Chile, the cultura popular is highly leftist and politicized. 20 Paley, Marketing Democracy. 21 Ibid. 22 Garcés, ‘Los Pobladores y la Política en los Años Ochenta’. 23 M. Garcés, ‘Las luchas urbanas en Chile en el último tercio del siglo XX [The Urban Struggles in Chile during the Last Third of the 20th Century]’, Trashumante: Revista Americana de Historia Social, no. 1 (2013): 74–95. 24 Ibid. 25 Adams, ‘When Art Loses Its Sting’. 26 Garcés, ‘Los Pobladores y la Política en los Años Ochenta’; Paley, Marketing Democracy. 27 Ibid. 28 Adams, Surviving Dictatorship. 29 C. Boyle, ‘Touching the Air: The Cultural Force of Women in Chile’, in "Viva": Women and Popular Protest in Latin America, ed. S. A. Radcliffe and S. Westwood (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 156–72. 30 M. J. Andrucki, ‘Queering Social Reproduction: How Gay Men Save the City’, societyandspace​.or​g, 31 October 2017. 31 Carmen Teeple Hopkins, ‘Mostly Work, Little Play: Social Reproduction, Migration and Paid Domestic Work in Montreal’, in Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, ed. Tithi Bhattacharya (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 131–47. 32 Beverley Mullings, ‘Neoliberalization, Social Reproduction and the Limits to Labour in Jamaica’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 30, no. 2 (2009): 174–88.

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33 Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (New York: Autonomedia, 2004), 8. 34 Tithi Bhattacharya, ‘Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory’, in Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, ed. Tithi Bhattacharya (London: Pluto Press, 2017), 1–20, 2. 35 K. Mitchell et al., ‘Introduction: Life’s Work: An Introduction, Review and Critique’, Antipode 35, no. 3 (July 2003): 415–42, 416. 36 C. Katz, ‘Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction’, Antipode 33, no. 4 (September 2001): 709–28, 711. 37 R. Nagar, ‘Locating Globalization: Feminist (Re)readings of the Subjects and Spaces of Globalization’, Economic Geography 78, no. 3 (2002): 257–84. 38 L. Kern, and B. Mullings, ‘Urban Neoliberalism, Urban Insecurity and Urban Violence: Exploring the Gender Dimensions’, in Rethinking Feminist Interventions into the Urban, ed. Linda Peak and Martina Rieker (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 23–40, 30. 39 I. Bakker, ‘Social Reproduction and the Constitution of a Gendered Political Economy’, New Political Economy 12, no. 4 (2007): 541–56. 40 I want to thank the SUNY Potsdam’s Art Gallery and the Forging Memory team for hosting and allowing me to spend time with its beautiful collection of arpilleras in November 2019. For more information see https://www​ .forgingmemory​.org/. 41 Adams, Surviving Dictatorship. 42 Ibid. 43 Adams, Surviving Dictatorship; Paley, Marketing Democracy. 44 Ibid.; J. D. Shayne, They Used to Call Us Witches: Chilean Exiles, Culture, and Feminism (Washington, DC: Lexington Books, 2009). 45 J. Adams, ‘Art in Social Movements: Shantytown Women’s Protest in Pinochet’s Chile’, Sociological Forum 17, no. 1 (2002): 21–6. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 J. Adams, ‘Movement Socialization in Art Workshops: A Case from Pinochet’s Chile’, The Sociological Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2000): 615–38, 628. 49 OECD (2020), Income Inequality (indicator). https​:/​/da​​ta​.oe​​cd​.or​​g​/ine​​quali​​ty​/ in​​come-​​inequ​​​ality​​.htm. 50 C. Han, Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012). 51 See Taylor, ‘The Reformulation of Social Policy in Chile, 1973–2001’.

14 From essential skill to productive capital Perspectives on policies and practices of craft education in Finland Anna Kouhia

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raft education has a long and debated history in the Finnish school system because of the established position that crafts have had as a mandatory subject of study from the dawn of compulsory general education in the mid1800s.1 At the time, craft making was rooted in the idea of social and cultural maintenance, and it reflected extensively the moral norms regarding good citizenship and the basic skills needed in a society.2 Although the aims of education have changed tremendously ever since, crafts have persisted as a form of education that aims to cater to practical purposes that equip people with a readiness to overcome quotidian challenges with functional, down-toearth skills and knowledge of practice. This essay sheds light on the changing politics of craft education and ponders the role that crafting has in the current national cultural policy. With the aim of reflecting how the meaning and value of crafts have historically evolved from an essential skill to productive capital as highlighted today, the essay considers shifts in the objectives of craft education, particularly related to the gendered issues that have revolved around the teaching and learning

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of crafts in Finland. The essay begins with an overview of the shifts of school craft during different time periods and continues with an examination of the role of crafts in today’s national politics. In conclusion, the essay maps out how crafts are embedded in Finland’s cultural policy, as a reflection of the skills and innovation highlighted as the building blocks for the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation.

Craft education in changing political climate In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, artisanship played a prominent role in Finnish society. In general, crafts were regarded as part of the livelihood as tasks related to proper home economics and a decent rural lifestyle; crafting not only provided a resource for catering to the needs of the household but also formed an important source of income for smallholders throughout the Finnish countryside.3 As a culture based on skilled workmanship, Finland has contextualized crafts by practicality, which initially incorporated the content and objectives of craft teaching to serve the needs of a modern society.4 Overall, craft education has largely focused on teaching the skills needed in everyday life with the objective of helping people to meet the practical needs of homes and society5 and informing them about aesthetics and proper taste.6 This approach has profoundly contributed to a view of crafting as ‘a nostalgic glance to the traditional way of life’7 contrasting crafts to the art industry and design-related entrepreneurialism.8 The presence of craft teaching in primary school has been compulsory in the Finnish education system since 1866. Its existence in the core curriculum has been mandated by successive governments whose political agendas were linked with the social agendas that characterized Finnish life. For example, at the dawn of the nationwide school system, craft education focused on educating people towards higher civic virtues, such as morality, patience and perseverance, and values like thriftiness and austerity, and promoting the wealth of the poor nation through the learning of individual managerialism.9 Later, school crafts were undertaken widely in the name of lifelong learning, in order to nurture broader cognitive and educational competencies and skills needed for the development of a sustainable and equitable view of the future. The political impetus varied over time, as can be seen by the following outline of the history of the evolution of craft education. Marjanen and Metsärinne10 have divided school crafts into different time periods with respect to the particularity of the needs of students, the subject and society: craft for home well-being (1866–1911); craft for civic society (1912–1945); craft for independent hard-working citizens (1946–1969); equality craft (1970–1993);

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and unlimited craft (1994–2014). During these periods, school crafts have been offered to serve the changing rationales of the society and have thus contributed to the learning of skills and competencies considered vital for the at-the-time political climate. The first phase, craft for home well-being (1866–1911), marks an era when the School Act of 1866 introduced craft education to the Finnish school system. The 1866 Act was initiated under the influences of liberalism, nationalism and philanthropy, and it harnessed craft education for the purposes of cultivating proper citizenship by ‘increasing individuals’ economic well-being and home and improving the welfare of the whole nation’.11 At the time, school craft was divided into two separate realms based on gender, Women’s and Men’s Handicrafts, both of which had their own goals and content for learning.12 The division of the subject not only affected the teaching of the means of manufacture but also set foundations of categorical asymmetry among the subject areas: in general, boys were taught woodwork, whereas girls, whose craft skills were particularly valued at the time, were educated to make useful products for the household, mostly by knitting and doing needlework.13 During the period called craft for civic society (1912–1945), which began with the launch of a new model for craft education enacted in 1912 and lasting to the end of the Second World War, the educational policy of craft education shifted towards more society-centric goals.14 Overall, the civic society period covers profound changes in the educational system, like the enactment of the Compulsory School Act in 1921 and the Rural Primary School Curriculum in 1925 that were instigated shortly after Finland gained its independence from Russia in 1917. With these changes, the emphasis of education was set on providing common schooling to all social classes and genders. In general, education was targeted to the teaching and learning of cognitive and academic skills that could contribute to the wealth of the nation.15 Despite the aims of common education, school craft remained as a disunited subject of study, which was separated as Girls’ and Boys’ Handicraft. Both study realms had their own learning objectives and practices for enhancing pupils’ capability to make artefacts needed in daily life. Society-centric goals were also highlighted through the teaching and learning of specific craft techniques: for instance, metalwork was emphasized in boys’ school craft as a response to the demands of the nation’s developing economy.16 In Finland, the post-war period (1946–1969) is often discussed in relation to the establishment of the welfare state.17 On that subject, Marjanen and Metsärinne interpret post-war craft education as a period of craft for independent hard-working citizens (1946–1969) that served the learning of people as individuals, providing them with work-life-related knowledge and qualifications that were needed in the changing economic environment of the country.18 Nevertheless, the rapid industrialization of the country also led

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to the increase in value of society-centric learning goals especially in boys’ school crafts, where craft education tended to be largely attributed to the practices of vocational training and where educational goals continued to be paired with the needs of industry.19 On the other hand, girls’ school crafts emphasized handicraft techniques essential for the maintenance of the household, like crocheting, knitting, darning, embroidery and sewing with a sewing machine. However, girls’ craft curriculum also covered more artistic and experimental content such as sketch drawing and material technology patching.20 Interestingly, similar discussions of the goals of craft education, especially in relation to the teaching and learning of technical skills, take place today by the stakeholders representing technical craft education and industry,21 as if today’s school craft should cater for the needs of industry and the labour market rather than act as a resource for increasing creativity, skills and innovation in society as a whole. According to Marjanen and Metsärinne, the period ranging from 1970 to 1993 can be seen as a time when there was a shift towards equality of education.22 At the time, the comprehensive school curriculum enacted in the 1970s made profound changes to school craft: the focus of craft education moved from practical learning goals to creative thinking and educational objectives began to emphasize the importance of the crafting process as a creative and exploratory activity. Accordingly, the learning goals of the era were built on developing subject-specific skills and reinforcing pupils’ ethical objectives, personality and mental health as well as their sense of aesthetics.23 In the 1970s, school craft became officially a gender neutral subject of study, since fundamental gender orientation was lost when the name of the subject changed from Girls’ and Boys’ Handicraft to Textile and Technical Work.24 However, crafts have still tended to be envisaged as gendered practices based on traditions related to certain craft techniques and materials.25 Indeed, as Kokko has noticed, the impact of gendered traditions has had profound effects on the teaching of crafts at school in Finland: even in the twenty-first century, school crafts have continued to be culturally established and maintained both through informal sociocultural learning and formal education at school, through connecting textile craft with femininity and technical craft with masculinity.26 In the 1990s, as Marjanen and Metsärinne have written, craft education came to the phase of unlimited craft (1994–2014).27 During this period, general educational goals were set on sustainable development, multiculturalism and civic education, as well as on promoting inclusive learning through the implementation of wide thematical topics and projects in schools. In addition, the role of state-normative management was decreased in schools, since the municipalities were given more independence to enact educational goals and practices defined by the National Core Curriculum. At the time, differences in school culture and regional politics led to varying interpretations of the

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National Core Curriculum. In school craft this often meant a transition towards two disassociated craft subjects.28 Textile Work and Technical Work largely persisted as separate study realms until the school curriculum reform in 2004, which eventually mandated crafts as a single combined compulsory subject taught generally for all pupils.29 Despite joint pedagogical aims, deep-rooted gendered segregation between the two craft subjects still remained in the practices of education along with issues and challenges related to creative governance and regional instatement of the National Core Curriculum.30 However, the period ranging from the mid1990s to the mid-2010s can be seen as background to the innovative policy that revolves around creativity and culture today: increasing attention began to be paid to holistic learning processes, as well as multiculturalism, social sustainability and equity of education. The current Craft Curriculum initiated in 2014 and enacted in 201631 emphasizes the pedagogical space constituted by the holistic craft process, where all phases from ideation, design and manufacturing to assessment and evaluation are conducted by the same person or group of makers.32 In this vein, today’s school craft holds the idea of the learner as a unique individual and a member of an interrelated community of learners, who takes up exploratory, inventive and experimental craft activity and solves real-life problems arising from his or her own living environment and the multi-material world.33 Indeed, the general aims of the current National Core Curriculum build on developing an inclusive school culture by bringing together knowledge and skills of different school subjects, in order to meet the global trends of lifelong learning and equip pupils with transversal competencies and twenty-first century skills with which to solve the problems of the future.34 In today’s school craft, learning tasks may be constituted as multi-material craft design projects combining contents in and across practices and working methods based on textile and technical work. More subject-specific adaptations of crafting may be still undertaken in terms of different craft materials and techniques: a holistic design process and the framing of learning tasks are the key goals of such craft projects. However, the structure of the system does not change instantaneously, even if craft teachers adopt curricula changes apace and begin to enact new educational techniques based on the new principles. A crucial puzzle related to the Core Curriculum 2014 is the level of confusion caused by its enactment, as it does not take into account the management of education on the school level but emphasizes wider perspectives on the learning of skills that are needed in the future society.35 For instance, today’s school craft omits reassuring stereotypical gender roles that anchor ‘soft materials’, such as cloth and yarn, to female spheres and ‘hard materials’, such as wood and metal, to male spheres; furthermore, it restrains from dividing the practices of school craft according to gender.36 Indeed, the recent curricula

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changes eventually phased out the gendered practices of choosing between textile and technical work, as most of the girls chose to study textile work and almost all the boys preferred technical work. According to Kokko, the changes led pupils to stick with traditional craft gender roles for fear of inadequacy or teasing and preference for a dominant gender community. She cites examples where girls who chose technical work as their preferred school craft had to represent their gender in a male-dominant group, fearing that their performance would be somehow inferior to that of the boys.37 As a reflection, Kokko has interpreted that girls tended to enjoy ‘the liberties in the textile work lessons and, consequently, learned to accept and appreciate textiles as being a special sphere of their gender’.38 Nevertheless, gender equality, sustainability and inclusiveness are promoted on many levels in the craft curriculum today: current school curriculum is designed to give all pupils the same opportunities to study crafts, with an acknowledgement that a pupil’s performance in crafts does not need to play any role in a person’s process of constructing her or his gendered identity.39

Crafts in Finland’s twenty-first century cultural policy Interestingly, arts and culture seem to have gained more social, educational and economic weight in recent cultural policy, and they have been supported and sustained by the Finnish government in its efforts to improve the nation’s creative competencies. Among other things, recent government initiatives have included strategic key projects supporting structures that bridge work life and the cultural sector and proposals for facilitating access to arts education among children and youth. A recognition of the value of creativity in revitalizing the country’s productivity40 has been apparent in these discussions, along with efforts to make creative entrepreneurship more visible with well-designed client-oriented products and services.41 Moreover, recent commentaries by the Finnish National Board of Education42 have emphasized the value of crafting in light of broader social, cultural and educational goals. In these discussions, crafts have been construed as a way to provide all children with strong basic skills in planning, designing, problem solving and divergent thinking in order to enhance skills needed both today and in the future. The Strategic Government Programme 2016 presented key projects against which crafts in twenty-first century Finland can be viewed. Particularly essential in the craft-related cultural policy were efforts to ‘make Finland a leading country of modern learning and inspiring education’.43 The Strategic Government Programme 2016 emphasized the promotion of local educational

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solutions, creativity and experimentation with different learning methods and approaches such as digital learning. The purpose was to improve creative skills, cultural competence and capacity for learning among children and youth throughout the country, and to incorporate arts and culture into their daily lives in furtherance of greater opportunities to take an active part in cultural pursuits. Institutions providing early education, basic education and basic art education were set as strategic cultural policy actors but other arts and culture actors, such as libraries, museums, heritage associations and third-sector parties were also mentioned as prospective contributors. Craft associations have a weighty role in the country’s system of Basic Education in the Arts (BEA), which covers nine different art fields: music, dance, theatre, literature, circus performing, architecture, fine arts, audio-visual art and crafts;44 crafting was also pooled in the key projects. Overall, the arts and culture projects implemented during the Strategic Governmental Programme 2016-2018 allocated €2.8 million to facilitate access to children’s cultural activities through clubs organized by schools and basic art education providers on school premises in the afternoons; €5.2 million was earmarked to improve access to art and culture in more general terms outside of educational institutions. By any scale of measure, this was not only an extensive strategic investment in the promotion of the conditions for everyday creativity through wider access to arts and culture, but also a venture in the development of the country’s anticipated productivity through innovation and enhancement of twenty-first century skills and key competencies for the construction of a creative future society. It appears that creative economies, as well as arts and culture, have become important parts of the country’s innovation policy, which is based on the aims of increasing the competitiveness, productivity and wealth of its citizens. The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture framed a creative economy and intangible growth as spearheading burgeoning sectors of the country in 2017, pointing to the tremendous relevance of culture and creativity in education and working life.45 Similar objectives are reflected in Finland’s current Government Programme 2019, with initiatives aimed ‘to create new growth and find solutions to global megatrends’ and enhance the well-being and prosperity of the nation.46 Imagining Finland as a country that promotes competence, education, culture and innovation to foster economic growth, the current Government Programme promotes a vision that commits to further education and skills and invests in the upskilling and continuous learning of the people.47 The Government Objectives include tasks to increase the level of education and competence among the population, emphasizing how ‘education, culture and skills continue to build the foundation of our society’48 and how education is considered as a focal point in enhancing sustainable growth and in strengthening Finland’s influence around the world.

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Continuing the facilitation of cultural services, the current Government Programme focuses on enhancing gender equality and non-discrimination in society by improving opportunities for children to pursue a leisure activity of their choice as part of the school day.49 This includes initiatives to advance the quality of the schools’ morning and afternoon activities in cooperation with municipalities and third-sector providers and support for the promotion of projects targeted to children’s culture within the system of BEA. Neither crafts nor other realms of the BEA system are mentioned as contributors, but the emphasis within the Programme on the advancement of school afternoon clubs and activities paves the way for the culture of crafts to flourish among free-of-charge leisure activities undertaken after the school day. At least content-wise, crafts would seem to provide children and youth with opportunities to support creativity and channel it into innovation, and ultimately, develop skills that could affect the entrepreneurial potential and sustainable growth of the nation.

Conclusion Craft education in Finland has been politically motivated depending on the agenda of governments in order that it reflect the essence of, or an idealized, Finland during a particular time period. Despite the changes in contemporary modern life, it is noteworthy that the resource-related orientation of crafting seems to be linked to developing measures to cultivate skills and competences in Finnish society. Throughout their 150-year-history in the Finnish school system, crafts have served the changing educational and moral rationales of the political powers-that-be and society. Whereas the roots of craft education were based on increasing individuals’ economic well-being with the learning of craft techniques seen as essential in the household, the emphasis gradually shifted towards creative innovation and social competencies in the increasingly globalized world. Today, craft education is valued for its potential to encourage cultural competence and creativity by teaching citizens to pay attention to the meaning of strategic planning, interaction with tools and materials, independent reasoning and responsibility for the environment. Overall, the current goals of school craft emphasize the worth and value of holistic process management and creative, solution-focused learning, which are also seen as important factors in the country’s cultural policy as a means of guaranteeing individual growth, freedom and equality. Finland has a long history not only in teaching and learning skills but also in putting value on the culture of practice based on these skills and competencies. Recent articulations of craft education associated with the

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initiation of the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education in 2004 share an understanding of crafts as a subject that unites the knowledge of many different materials and multiple techniques. Thus it is capable of providing all pupils with equal access to the roots of the knowledge of practice. The stakeholders representing textile craft education, especially, have considered the current craft curriculum beneficial for the growth of pupils as citizens and as members of society, as it puts all children in a position of equal value and expands the meaning and value of crafts in society.50 With such content, craft education is pictured today as a resource for promoting egalitarianism in schools and eventually throughout Finnish society in the name of the development of a more responsible and fair future.51 Although craft education has had a profound role in enhancing gender equality and social justice in schools and, more widely, in society, crafts seem to be still veiled, at least to a degree, by traditionalism and exclusiveness related to the gendered realms of making. It is, however, worth noting that craft education is said to have been reassessed and eventually reconstructed in today’s technologically advanced urban society to meet the demands and challenges of the twenty-first century.52 Today’s craft education is conceptualized under the influence of individualism in terms of learning solution-centricity and the skills of planning and designing, and as a flexible and adaptable collaborative practice capable of further understanding diversity in the world and making compromises through social practices. However, it appears that craft education has recently – and increasingly – expanded to a range of different skills and competencies that require more and more knowledge of people-to-people interaction in order to bring about crafting as a productive activity for the nation. Above all, today’s school crafts seem set to ensure equality by providing all children with comprehensive and equitable skills for developing creativity, critical thinking and skills for divergent problem solving. The key to this is the promotion of a wide knowledge of craft practices without internal confrontation with notions that previously divided the subject to textile and technical work.

Notes 1 E.g. Mia Porko-Hudd, Sinikka Pöllänen and Eila Lindfors, ‘Common and Holistic Crafts Education in Finland’, Techne Series-Research in Sloyd Education and Craft Science A, 25, no. 3 (2018): 26–38, 28. 2 Päivi Marjanen, Koulukäsityö vuosina 1866–2003. Kodin hyvinvointiin kasvattavista tavoitteista kohti elämänhallinnan taitoja [School Crafts in 1866–2003. From Wellbeing at Homes Towards Skills in Life Management]. Publications of the University of Turku C 344 (Turku: University of Turku,

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2012): passim; Päivi Marjanen, ‘Koulukäsityö naiseksi kasvattamassa [School Crafts Raising to Be a Woman]’, Kasvatus & Aika 8, no. 1 (2014): passim; Päivi Marjanen and Mika Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, Nordic Journal of Educational History 6, no. 1 (2019): 49–70, passim. 3 Pentti Virrankoski, ‘Eighteenth Century Handicrafts in the Rural Areas of Northern Finland’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 27, no. 2 (1979): 187–9; Eliza Kraatari, Domestic Dexterity and Cultural Policy: The Idea of Cottage Industry and Historical Experience in Finland from the Great Famine to the Reconstruction Period. Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research No. 544 (Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2016): passim. 4 Marjanen, ‘Koulukäsityö naiseksi kasvattamassa’, 58; Porko-Hudd, Pöllänen and Lindfors, ‘Common and Holistic Crafts Education in Finland’, 28. 5 Marjanen and Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, 58, 64. 6 Kraatari, Domestic Dexterity and Cultural Policy, 59. 7 Ibid., 19. 8 Tiina Veräjänkorva, Diagnoosi taidekäsityöstä. Tarkastelussa taiteen, muotoilun ja käsityön rajapinta [Diagnosis of Arts and Crafts. Examination of the Interface between Art, Design and Crafts] (Helsinki: Taiteen keskustoimikunta; Valtion muotoilutoimikunta, 2006), 17–18. http:​/​/www​​.taik​​ e​.fi/​​docum​​ents/​​10162​​/3107​​6​/DIA​​GNO​OS​​I_​%28​​EDM ​_14​_2555​_3520​%29​ .pdf 9 Marjanen and Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, 54–6, 62; Marjanen, ‘Koulukäsityö naiseksi kasvattamassa’, 58. 10 Marjanen and Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, passim. 11 Ibid., 56. 12 Ibid., 50. 13 Ibid., 56; ‘Koulukäsityö naiseksi kasvattamassa’, 58. 14 Marjanen and Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, 56–8, 62. 15 Ibid., 57; Elizabeth Garber, ‘Craft Education in Finland: Definitions, Rationales and the Future’, International Journal of Art & Design Education 21, no. 2 (2002): 132–45, 132. 16 Marjanen and Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, 62. 17 Anita Kangas, ‘New Clothes for Cultural Policy’, in Construction of Cultural Policy, ed. Pirkkoliisa Ahponen and Anita Kangas (Jyväskylä: Minerva, 2004), 21–40, 24–7. 18 Marjanen and Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, 58–9. 19 Ibid., 59.

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20 Päivi Marjanen, Eila Lindfors and Sirpa Ketola, ‘School Craft in Memories of Three Generations’, Techne Series-Research in Sloyd Education and Craft Science A 25, no. 1 (2018): 1–16, 3. 21 Okko Ojanen and Janne Rastas, ‘Teknisen työn opetuksen alasajo heikentää suomalaisten osaamista ja yritysten asemaa, uhkaa kansantaloutta ja lisää syrjäytymistä’ [The Downfall of Technical Work Weakens the Skills and Position of Finns, Threatens the National Economy and Increases Marginalization], 2018: passim. https​:/​/ww​​w​.tek​​ninen​​opett​​aja​.n​​et​/do​​cs​/Te​​ knise​​n​_tyo​​​n​_ala​​sajo.​​pdf T. Sipola, ‘Teknisen työn ja tekstiilityön yhdistäminen ei lisännyt tasa-arvoa – sen sijaan se voi pahentaa ongelmaa, jota vientiteollisuus jo nyt pelkää’ [Combining Technical and Textile Work Did Not Increase Equality – Instead It May Exacerbate the Problem That the Export Industry Is Already Afraid Of] 2019: passim. https://yle​.fi​/uutiset​/3​-11031718 22 Marjanen and Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, 59–60. 23 Ibid., 60. 24 Ibid.; Peruskoulun opetussuunnitelman perusteet II [Elementary School Core Curriculum II] (Helsinki: Kouluhallitus, 1970): passim. 25 Sirpa Kokko, ‘Learning Practices of Femininity Through Gendered Craft Education in Finland’, Gender and Education 21, no. 6 (2009): 721–34, passim; Sirpa Kokko, ‘Learning Crafts as Practices of Masculinity. Finnish Male Trainee Teachers’ Reflections and Experiences’, Gender and Education 24, no. 2 (2012): 177–93, passim. 26 Kokko, ‘Learning Practices of Femininity’, 731. 27 Marjanen and Metsärinne, ‘The Development of Craft Education in Finnish Schools’, 60–1. 28 Ibid., 60; Eila Lindfors, ‘Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Education 2020 – Some Considerations from Crafts Part’, in In the Spirit of Uno Cygnaeus: Pedagogical Questions of Today and Tomorrow, ed. Aki Rasinen and Timo Rissanen (Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2010), 109–20, 110. 29 FNBE 2004 [Finnish National Board of Education 2004]. Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet. [National Core Curriculum for Basic Education] (Helsinki: Finnish National Board of Education, 2004). 30 Jaana Lepistö and Eila Lindfors, ‘From Gender-Segregated Subjects to Multi-material Craft: Craft Student Teachers’ Views on the Future of the Craft Subject’, FormAkademisk-Forskningstidsskrift for Design og Designdidaktikk 8, no. 3, (2015): 1–20, 2. 31 FNBE 2014 [Finnish National Board of Education 2014]. Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet. [National Core Curriculum for Basic Education] (Helsinki: Finnish National Agency for Education, 2014). 32 For a definition of holistic craft, see Sinikka Pöllänen, ‘Contextualising Craft: Pedagogical Models for Craft Education’, International Journal of Art & Design Education 28, no. 3 (2009): 249–60.

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33 FNBE 2014, 462. 34 Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel, 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, 2009): passim; Eva Veeber, Erja Syrjäläinen and Ene Lind, ‘A Discussion of the Necessity of Craft Education in the 21st Century’, Techne Series-Research in Sloyd Education and Craft Science A 22, no. 1 (2015): 15–29, 25. 35 Sirpa Kokko, Anna Kouhia and Kaiju Kangas, ‘Finnish Craft Education in Turbulence: Conflicting Debates on the Current National Core Curriculum’, Techne Series-Research in Sloyd Education and Craft Science A: passim. 36 Lepistö and Lindfors, ‘From Gender-Segregated Subjects to Multi-material Craft’, 6. 37 Kokko, ‘Learning Practices of Femininity’, 727. 38 Ibid., 729. 39 Ibid., 731. 40 Ministry of Education, Luova talous ja kulttuuri innovaatiopolitiikan ytimessä [Creative Economy at the Heart of Innovation Policy] (Helsinki: Ministry of Education, 2009), 30, passim. http:​/​/jul​​kaisu​​t​.val​​tione​​uvost​​o​.fi/​​handl​​e​/10​0​​24​/76​​691; Strategic Government Program [SGP], Action Plan for the Implementation of the Key Project and Reforms Defined in the Strategic Government Programme (Finnish Government, 1/2016): passim. http:​/​/val​​tione​​uvost​​o​.fi/​​docum​​ents/​​10616​​/1986​​ 338​/A​​ction​​+​plan​​+for+​​the ​+impl​​ement​​ation​​+Stra​​tegic​​+Gove​​rnmen​​t​+Pro​​ gramm​​e​+EN.​​pdf/ 41 Ornamo, Muotoilualan yritysten suhdanne- ja toimialaraportti 2013 [Design Business Cycle and Industry Report 2013] (Helsinki: Teollisuustaiteen Liitto Ornamo, 2014). 42 E.g. Marjaana Manninen and Marjo Rissanen, Perusopetuksen tehtävänä on tarjota yleissivistystä, myös kädentaidoissa [The Aim of Basic Education Is to Provide General Knowledge, also in Handicrafts], (Opetushallitus [National Board of Education], 2019): passim. https​:/​/ww​​w​.oph​​.fi​/f​​i​/blo​​gi​/pe​​rusop​​etuks​​ en​-te​​htava​​na​-ta​​rjota​​-ylei​​ssivi​​styst​​a​-myo​​s​-kad​​entai​​doiss​​a​?fbc​​lid​=I​​wAR2Z​​ gxoUr​​jeTF_​​M3dW2​​I901B​​YzVh2​​1JQUQ​​Aj4as​​wDAm4​​94g3f​​0XQX2​​vm​-I?​​fbcli​​ d​=IwA​​R2Zgx​​oUrje​​TF​_M3​​​dW2I9​​01BYz​​Vh21J​​QUQAj​​4aswD​​Am494​​g3f0X​​ QX2vm​-I 43 SGP, Action Plan for the Implementation of the Key Project and Reforms, 30. 44 See Seija Karppinen, ‘Craft-Art as a Basis for Human Activity’, International Journal of Art & Design Education 27, no. 1 (2008): 83–90, passim. 45 Ministry of Education and Culture, Luova talous ja aineettoman arvon luominen kasvun kärjiksi [Promoting the Creative Economy and Intangible Value Creation as Spearheading Growth Sectors] (Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland 2017), 18, passim. http:​/​/jul​​kaisu​​t​.val​​tione​​uvost​​o​.fi/​​handl​​e​/1​00​​24​/79​​725 46 Government Programme 2019, Inclusive and Competent Finland – A Socially, Economically and Ecologically Sustainable Society, Programme of Prime Minister Antti Rinne’s Government (Helsinki: Finnish Government 2019), 25, 7–8. https​:/​/ju​​lkais​​ut​.va​​ltion​​euvos​​to​.fi​​/hand​​le​/10​​​024​/1​​61664​

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47 Ibid., 172. 48 Ibid., 173. 49 Ibid., 177–8. 50 Tekstiiliopettajaliitto [Association of Textile Craft Teachers], Vastine Ylen uutiseen 10.11.2019 [Response to the News of Yle 10.11.2019]: passim. https​ :/​/ww​​w​.tek​​stiil​​iopet​​tajal​​iitto​​.fi​/u​​utise​​t​/vas​​tine-​​ylen-​​uutis​​​een​-1​​0​-11-​​2019/​ 51 E.g. Manninen and Rissanen, Perusopetuksen tehtävänä on tarjota yleissivistystä, myös kädentaidoissa, passim. 52 Lindfors, ‘Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Education 2020 – Some Considerations from Crafts Part’, 117; Sinikka Pöllänen and Māra Urdziņa-Deruma, ‘Future-Oriented Reform of Craft Education: The Cases of Finland and Latvia’, in Reforming Teaching and Teacher Education: Bright Prospects for Active Schools, ed. Eija Kimonen and Raimo Nevalainen (Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2017), 117–44, 117.

15 Sincerity not authenticity Craft’s political path out of a modernist trap Leopold Kowolik

His bitterness melted away. He felt scorn and pity for these people . . . He—had to remain incognito; they took his mask for his true face. Something inside told him that even if he were to read them his works, they would not know more of him than before. They considered anyone who happened to end up among them to be a person like them. What could you do . . .1

A

uthenticity is a grand word that frequently appears with powerful resonance in the contemporary Western consumer-centric world. It is a word that brings with it a morass of implications, coy suggestions and intended meanings, none of which is clearly articulated. This lack of grounded clarity or certainty is probably a significant part of the power of the word. Authenticity is also a word associated with craft. Again, quite what the concept of authenticity means in relation to making is nebulous, and for this reason I feel the relationship between the two should be treated as inherently political. ‘Handmade’ is another word, related and as similarly loaded as authenticity though without the same uncertainty. ‘Handmade’ telegraphs not only

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something of the manufacturing process by which the thing came into being but also what the thing stands against in terms of industrial processes, massproduced anonymity and profit-driven managing-director paycheck-rewarding dross. Interestingly, it is to the latter slew of implications rather than the actual production process that ‘handmade’ as a concept directs its most earnest attention. Sidewalks, after all, as an example that comes to mind, are handmade by skilled workers with rakes, two-by-fours and a brush. But we wouldn’t call a ubiquitous, anonymous, un-authored, urban, concrete walking surface ‘handmade’. Would we ask about its authenticity? Against what does ‘authenticity’ stand? Is craft authentic? In this chapter I will explore the implications of the concept of authenticity in relation to contemporary craft. In asking about the connection between ‘authenticity’ and craft, I am asking about craft’s political identity deep within, on the peripheries of and tentatively outside contemporary capitalism. More than that however, I hope to uncover some of the assumptions about craft and in the process rediscover the potential of the allied concept of sincerity. It is easy to dismiss the marketing function of the authenticity of craft both as it is used by craft itself and by the derivative appropriations of the concept of craft in other arenas. It is tempting, too, for me to revisit a theme I began developing elsewhere2 in which I pointed out how horribly close some aspects of populist politics – nostalgia-milking in particular – come to craft’s identity as the counter to industry and finance and mechanization and the city. I might have argued that authenticity is a philosophical construct which craft finds alluring in much the same way as the seduction of nostalgia. Might I have said that authenticity doesn’t even exist outside of a very narrow and specialized philosophical concept – and that ‘craft’ is the ideal notion to be repackaged as the phantom in the chase of a society yearning for value-myths? But this is something of a paper tiger as we will see. Craft’s relationship to the presumptions of authenticity are largely meaningless, whereas craft’s political potential as a function of sincerity is significant. I will not address the specialized notion of authenticity in relation to fakery or fraud. Though this relationship is important to art history and the art market and, of course, to making in certain commercial senses, it is less theoretically charged. Since the theme of this volume is craft and politics rather than history or credibility, the focus will not be on this narrow though intriguing application of the word. In this chapter I will consider some of the contextual history of the concept ‘authentic’ in relation to craft before then looking at craft’s engagement with authenticity. We will understand that craft has a political capacity to stimulate relationships and experiences with objects and processes that transcend the limited margins defined by authenticity. Good craft, escaping the confines of ‘the authentic’, communicates what we really want to know about ourselves

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and each other. Craft that can avoid the enticement of the conservative and individualistic call of authenticity can instead breathe freedom into those objects and processes of beauty and use. Whatever contemporary craft stands in opposition or counter to, it is its sincerity that makes it politically charged and therefore essential.

Ruskin → Morris: authentic object, authentic life Those of us familiar with the craft discourse, if we were set the task of explaining authenticity as it relates to objects, might reach in Ruskin’s direction and say something about honesty of purpose and functional integrity. In the second of his four lectures on architecture and painting delivered in Edinburgh in November 1853, Ruskin criticized the recently completed New Town. With his tongue very much in cheek, Ruskin reproached the architects whose use of neoclassical styles were, he felt, disingenuous and wasteful. He sardonically suggested that the audience consider the example of Rutland Street where many doctors lived: ‘you will see that a heavy and close balustrade is put all along the eaves of the houses. Your physicians are not, I suppose, in the habit of taking academic and meditative walks along the roofs of their houses; and, if not, this balustrade is altogether useless.’3 These neoclassical designs with their extraneous decorations were offensive to Ruskin not only because they were impractical and expensive but because they were not in keeping with the needs of the inhabitants and the purpose of the buildings. Ruskin was not against decoration but he saw far more integrity in Gothic decoration than in Grecian style. This criticism flows from his interest in intention and function. Breezy colonnades of the classical style help keep buildings in hot climates cool. In northern climates ‘the soul of domestic building is in the largeness and conspicuousness of the protection against ponderous snow and driving sleet’.4 This is just one example of Ruskin’s thinking about a design ethos that demands creative honesty and functionality with integrity and purpose. This is surely one possible path to an authentic object? Let us also look to William Morris – the acolyte who really brought ‘craft’ into being. Situated at the birth of craft in the face of industry, Morris drew heavily from (while also contributing significantly to) the implications of ‘the authentic’, even though Morris didn’t use the language of ‘authenticity’ as we might expect to find it. The Industrial Revolution in Morris’s understanding adversely affected the authentic human experience. Morris found a great (and lasting) connection between authenticity of object and authenticity in a more philosophical sense. One of Morris’s particular concerns was that the blooming of capitalism had generated a new wave of middle-class values.

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On the one hand this had lowered the quality (and increased the quantity) of objects produced and on the other hand this growth had put all manner of the wrong sorts of pressure on most people both as consumers and producers. Morris was drawing on Marx who was drawing on Hegel (to whom we will return shortly). For all three, the question of the authentic life was the question of escaping society’s pressures on authentic human life. Here from Morris’s 1884 speech Art and Socialism: ridding ourselves . . . of this mountain of rubbish that would be something worth doing: things which everybody knows are of no use; the very capitalists know well that there is no genuine healthy demand for them, and they are compelled to foist them off on the public by stirring up a strange feverish desire for petty excitement, the outward token of which is known by the conventional name of fashion . . . Do not think it a little matter to resist this monster of folly; to think for yourselves what you yourselves really desire, will not only make men and women of you so far, but may also set you thinking of the due desires of other people.5 This ‘thinking for yourself what you really desire’ had something of the ‘be true to yourself’ morality to it. The tone also came with a call to introspection to see past what you think you want (because capitalism has duped you) to consumer desires that are more reflective of the true you. The work of art itself and coming to know and understand art more generally in the face of the rubbish that the Industrial Revolution had thrown into society would, Morris felt, awaken and strengthen the people slumbering or lumbering under the suffocating burden of capitalism’s inauthenticity. He went on in this vein, searching for the authentic: And here furthermore is at least a little sign whereby to distinguish between a rag of fashion and a work of Art: whereas the toys of fashion when the first gloss is worn off them do become obviously worthless even to the frivolous – a work of Art, be it ever so humble, is long lived; we never tire of it; as long as a scrap hangs together it is valuable and instructive to each new generation. All works of Art in short have the property of becoming venerable amidst decay: and reason good, for from the first there was a soul in them, the thought of man, which will be visible in them so long as the body exists in which they were implanted.6 The concept of the maker’s soul infused in the object is one of Morris’s enduring legacies to Eurocentric models of craft theory and may be one of

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the key nodal points connecting Medieval and Christian sacred objects with the Morrisian view of craft’s power to embody or house a spirit. This node then lies at the root of contemporary claims to the venerated object, since the language of sacred containment has been used quite liberally in the search to articulate and claim access to and embodiment of ‘the authentic’. Morris’s beliefs in the power of art and craft to rediscover an authentic social, political human experience defined his oeuvre and his contribution to craft as a mode of object production, as a mindset and as a method of political activity. For Morris this search and discovery of authenticity could take place in the materials themselves, in the designs chosen and developed, in the communities of workers and consumers making the objects and in the very life spirit of the society as a whole. Commitment to a developed understanding of arts and crafts might reveal and overturn the pervasive presence of the inauthentic imposed, as it seemed to be, by the extra-human forces of money acquisition and labour power expropriation. Morris seems to have almost never used the words we might associate with authenticity – ‘authentic’ itself or ‘truth’ or ‘sincerity’ which enters our discussion now. Even his clear engagement with the issue is not conceptually formed in the manner we think of it. There is an important reason for this that plumbs right into the heart of modernity. The structure of the internal/external self that we take for granted and that plays a central role in our common sense of authenticity did not exist as such in the 1880s. This is the history of the modern subject. This bifurcated modern human is composed of the world of the psychological internal self (different, separated and removed) housed in the external, socialized self that is presented to the world. This new arena of human thought had been growing since the Renaissance and Descartes, but what happened in the nineteenth century was the shift we are still living through. Though in many ways this history lies at the heart of our question of authenticity, it is so large that we can in fact skirt around it without any great logical injustice. If we pick up the trail with Lionel Trilling, we see that Morris’s interests in ‘true human values’ were in fact merely in keeping with his time and that what Morris wanted for making in the face of industry had, by the 1960s, become the dominant discourse in authenticity. What had been for Morris a route through simple, beautiful objects to emancipated human life became, by the twentieth century, a jaded bid for escape.

Trilling: authenticity ⇄ sincerity Lionel Trilling was somewhat on the periphery of the philosophical and material culture fields opening up in the post-war period; he was centred slightly more

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on literary criticism. But in the general cultural discussion of Modernity,7 Trilling articulated a concise read of the issue in the search for the authentic. Following the same trail Morris was on, Trilling, in his Sincerity and Authenticity, understood the Modern quest for the authentic to be connected to the older question of ‘being true to oneself’ – what he calls sincerity and hangs on Polonius’s advice to his son in Act 1 Scene 3 of Hamlet. The difference is that where the Shakespearian sincere self assumes a conception of the person as a part of the community whole that coheres naturally by definition, the Modern self is an individual in a society comprising atomistic individuals held together by external political forces. ‘At a certain point in history’, says Trilling, ‘men became individuals.’8 And it is men in the history in general as in Trilling’s account specifically – that is surely not irrelevant. Certainly, before Descartes or Rousseau (or whatever specific point we might take) we were humans with the traits of personal experience and understanding. Trilling notes: But certain things he did not have or do until he became an individual . . . He did not have an awareness of . . . internal space. He did not . . . imagine himself in more than one role, standing outside or above his own personality; he did not suppose that he might be an object of interest to his fellow man . . . It is when he becomes an individual that a man lives more and more in private rooms.9 In Trilling’s understanding, this shift in human self-conception resulted in sincerity (and the desire to be sincere) morphing into the new idea of authenticity. Without rehearsing Trilling’s entire argument, it is crucial to highlight that, like Morris, Trilling argued that Modern (urban) societal forces are to blame for the shift that results in a dissolving of sincerity into authenticity. Trilling is perhaps at his most Hegelian in explaining this mutation: Society requires of us that we present ourselves as being sincere, and the most efficacious way of satisfying this demand is to see to it that we really are sincere, that we actually are what we want our community to know we are. In short, we play the role of being ourselves, we sincerely act the part of the sincere person, with the result that a judgement may be passed upon our sincerity that it is not authentic.10 Ultimately in Trilling’s moralizing account, contemporary authenticity is predicated on historical awareness – this in itself is an illustration of the centrality of Hegel to Trilling’s analysis. Moreover, Trilling’s suspicion of the bourgeois values that create the social pressure of sincerity is part of the Hegelian prompt for escape into disintegrated but autonomous existence away from the boring flattery of the social and towards the individual spirit.11

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Whether or not we choose to view Trilling and Hegel as conservative or snobbish about the historic role of societal values in limiting the human spirit, the upshot was that Modern artists began to make work that was authentic – work that connected to a truth untouchable by social or political realities. This is where craft’s presence in the material culture story diverged from art (most notably sometime in the early twentieth century) and where craft adhered to politics when art was eschewing such material realities. This sudden pressure of doubt upon one’s sincerity is due to the internal space of the Modern experience. Through the nineteenth century and through art in particular, the struggles for authenticity in the face of vanishing sincerity were borne out. In those art and culture discussions contemporary notions of authenticity emerged and condensed. ‘The work of art’, says Trilling of this new type of creating, is itself authentic by reason of its entire self-definition: it is understood to exist wholly by the laws of its own being, which include the right to embody painful, ignoble, or socially inacceptable subject-matters. Similarly the artist seeks his personal authenticity in his entire autonomousness – his goal is to be as self-defining as the art object he creates.12

Authentic craft? Sincere craft! Thus, the bid for authenticity seen in art starting perhaps with Impressionism was certainly apparent in Picasso and later in the Abstract Expressionists (to name obvious examples). Imbricated with this comprehension of the authentic is the concept of individualism. Born in the Renaissance, codified in Liberalism, it is the core of beliefs in freedom that Hegel identified, that Modernity celebrated and that the twentieth century took to absurd heights. The individual Modern genius whose access to an authentic version of existence is a combination of these Hegelian, Liberal notions, wrapped up with a healthy dose of Existentialism. Authentic art has meant (and continues to mean) art that has access to truths that exist behind the masks of material – social, political – existence. This is the Modern art claim to authenticity. But this is not the case for craft. What is this Modern authenticity to craft? What does Trilling’s viewpoint and art’s manifestation of the authentic mean to craft? Let us consider two examples immediately familiar to me, and then, in conclusion, try to distil the implications of this different course for craft’s engagement with the concept of authenticity, thus bringing together the potential of craft’s political position in contemporary Western society.

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To ask about the authenticity of Laura Brandon’s 2017–2020 project Illuminations would be meaningless. After five generations of silverware collecting in Canada and England (Brandon is in the sixth generation), the expression of middle-class social success embodied in these decorative arts objets no longer holds value. In a manner that might even be thought of as Hegelian, the sixth (seventh and eighth) generations decided they had no use for bourgeois statements in silver tea services and cutlery nor any use for such hard-to-maintain items of utility. So, after the museum-quality work was set aside, Brandon commissioned fifteen Canadian metalsmiths to convert the now scrapped silver into sculptural candlesticks. Each of these new works represents some part of the cultural and social work undertaken but largely unacknowledged by women since the ‘Fathers of Confederation’ established Canada in 1867. Taking quite literal lines, the fifteen new objects embody disciplinary themes like Creative Writing, Drawing and Painting, and Horticulture. Collectively the works intend to honour the undervalued contribution of women to a national history defined by men and celebrated in 150th anniversary celebrations in 2017.13 If discussion of this body of work and these objects were to be framed in terms of authenticity, we would end up analysing the aesthetic understanding and presentation of the themes and the artists’ analyses of the curatorial message. This analysis, however, would be pegged against an unreachable comparator, some sort of absolute by which the works could be said to succeed (or fail). ‘Authenticity’ would be about cultural context, freedom of artistic expression within the parameters of the project and about the connection between the material and the message. This may all be very well. But it doesn’t really tell us very much beyond the objects themselves. If, however, we reverse the process Trilling described and we approach the work asking about its sincerity, far more interesting – and political – questions begin to arise: what is the role of the male voice in discussing historic female exclusion (two of the artists are men)? What does it mean to celebrate the 150th anniversary of a country founded by and perpetuated by colonialism? Are women as responsible as men for colonialism? Can we separate the gender and colonial implications of this collection? Of what significance is it that one of the artists – Mary Anne Barkhouse – is a member of the Kwakiutl First Nation? These are powerful questions that take the aesthetic experience far beyond the immediate art object into essential political realms. But it is only through an investigation of the works’ sincerity rather than their authenticity that we can begin to engage these questions. Authenticity is about the isolated work itself; sincerity is about the work itself in the social and historic – political – context. Unlike the work of the burgeoning Modern era that Trilling describes, makers in this era now have a relationship to that old notion of sincerity that returns meaning to

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the double implication of Polonius’s advice: work that is true to itself (sincere) cannot help but be beautiful and useful. If that doesn’t seem proven, then let us consider Derek Jagodzinsky’s Rainbow Warriors line from his fashion company LUXX. Asking about the authenticity of this work leads to an opaque, multilayered colonial mess. The legend of the Rainbow Warriors – the keepers of the earth’s health – is probably Cree in origin, though such legends appear across many First Nations. Wikipedia, however, contends that the story is rather an Evangelical Christian subversion of an amalgam of traditional First Nations’ legends used for proselytizing and colonizing ends. In the 1960s and 1970s ‘Rainbow Warriors’ was appropriated by Greenpeace and other environmental and hippie movements – feel-good cultural appropriation either directly from the Indigenous legends or by way of the Evangelists. The authenticity of Rainbow Warriors is therefore a puzzling and troublesome issue in which appropriation may come from several different sides at the same time. Seeking an authentic in this maelstrom might be somewhat interesting – as a disinterested intellectual exercise or, more importantly, as an attempt at cultural historical reconstruction – but it doesn’t begin to produce positions or answers either about the work or (more importantly) about a living, current context. In the sincerity of the work we discover a powerful use of fashion (and craft with it) to sneak out of colonialism’s logic and make a break for a postcolonial statement about good craft, good clothes and, most importantly, a re-appropriative statement of autonomy. The mechanisms of colonialism were, in many places, so totalizing that connections with the essential cultural narrative were completely disrupted. Jagodzinsky (of the Whitefish Lake First Nation) draws from Rainbow Warriors, engages the legend – and in a fashion sense it is his for a moment – and the need for authentic, objective, academic confirmation dissolves. The clothing designs and their execution are sincere. The truth of the original legend is in its sincerity, not in a confirmable, suprasocial fact. This is what sincerity can mean and how craft facilitates this in a way that is profoundly political.

The politics of it all The historic use of ‘the authentic’ as a colonizing power continues in nefarious and sometimes unintended ways as craft scholar Julie Hollenbach has shown.14 Whether as a creative resource, an appropriation reservoir or merely a cultural expectation, ‘authentic’ experiences, practices and objects are often sourced by Western middle-class makers. And so we see how the craft engagement with sincerity is characterized by craft’s employment of

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creativity and artistic freedom. This is where craft begins to show its great potential: if our discussion is limited only to an object, we are tied into a binding history and implication that destroys (creativity, freedom, etc.). If, however, we define according to a process, we open up the possibility for constant reinvention and we make that reinvention the standard. This is a core component of sincerity in creative production that is the defining characteristic of craft. This sort of thinking can have a profound effect on how we think about freedom and identity and an authentic human experience. Craft and its defining capacity to engage with counter-balancing forces like living invention and historic skill (or material and concept) gives craft unique insight and powerful resonance in social and political questions of cultural identity, non-state national sovereignty and personal freedom. Craft knows how to read the constantly fluctuating authenticity of the society through the sincerity of good works. Humans are political, according to Aristotle, because we communicate with each other – not only about what is dangerous, as animals do, but about values and concepts far beyond the current moment. The personal is political too, according to Carol Hanisch,15 so the values and concepts held and exchanged in the studios and places of craft community have social implications too. It is here that we find craft in the twenty-first century and the source of its sincerity with it. When craft, in a misguided moment – guided either by political motivations related to nostalgia and conservative apprehension of history or by corporate appropriation – is connected to the concept of authenticity, it is towards some version of the existentialist’s belief in a ‘truth’ behind the material. The story might be told that a handmade mug or sweater or table is more authentic than one bought at Ikea. But this is absurd. This is a recapitulation of that Modernist myth, a colonizing retrograde gesture deeply connected to snobbism. Use of authenticity in craft should be read very warily. There are, of course, specific exceptions to this presumption, but they rely on a limited (bureaucratic even) application of the term. To refer to authentic Inuit sculpture is to say something about the identity of the maker and the arrival of the object on the market. What, though, shall we say of the authenticity of work by Kablusiak, an Inuvaluit artist making soapstone carvings of razors and butt plugs? This is why sincerity is a far more powerful, important, useful and political concept; this is why craft is potentially so politically powerful: because objects read as craft objects don’t have to tarry with worn out Modernist notions that end up siloing them into restrictive conversations. Sincerity doesn’t have the same hierarchical arrangement as authenticity has come to imply. As Paul C Taylor has commented about ethnographic authenticity, ‘visitors to African Art exhibits often still expect to find masks and carvings, and are still puzzled when confronted with video installations and photographs’.16 Modernity’s ‘authenticity’ requires objects to relate to philosophical truths, absolutes in a

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Hegelian sense; ‘sincerity’ is far more self-contained, fluid and ultimately far more reliable since if it’s real it can’t be faked. Moreover, sincerity allows for the possibility of meaningful spiritual embodiment – whatsoever that might mean – whereas ‘authenticity’ makes a museum artefact of the numinous role of materiality. Arthur Schnitzler’s character Eduard Saxberger feels, as the thoroughly Modern man that he is, that there is a real him – the poet he was in his youth – that the middle-class oafs who surround him can’t see and wouldn’t know how to access. But as Saxberger discovers, bemused, at the end of the story, his acolytes (apparently attuned to the authentic) haven’t read the book they celebrate him for. Their claims to know him – initiating his faith in their truths – are based on something superficial or passing – something that we might call insincerity. The real Saxberger, the authentic artist in the face of mediocrity, isn’t even conceivable. ‘Authenticity’ can be a labyrinth with no boundary – an idea that mires consumers in presumptions and societies in chains. But within craft there is a path to freedom. Quite how this works or what this is, I have not attempted to address here. But that it is there in craft can be read because of the works, not (only) in the works themselves. This is the political power of good craft: alluring, multi-faceted, often handmade, and empowered by meaningful contexts of sincerity.

Notes 1 Arthur Schnitzler, Late Fame, trans. Alexander Starritt (New York: New York Review of Books, [1895] 2017), 45. 2 See Leopold Kowolik, ‘The Right Politics: Conservative Craft in a Reactionary Milieu’, Craft Research 9, no. 1 (2018): 105–18; and Leopold Kowolik, ‘Craft as Property as Liberalism as Problem’, in The New Politics of the Handmade, ed. Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, now published, 2020). 3 John Ruskin, ‘Lectures on Architecture and Painting – Lecture II’, in The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Lectures on Architecture and Painting, The Study of Architecture by John Ruskin [Illustrated Cabinet Edition] (Boston: Dana Estes & Company Publishers, n.d.), 252. 4 Ibid., 234. 5 William Morris, Art and Socialism [23 January 1884]. https​:/​/ww​​w​.mar​​xists​​ .org/​​archi​​ve​/mo​​rris/​​works​​/1884​​/​as​/a​​s​.htm​. Morris gave this speech to the Leicester Secular Society at the Secular Hall, Humberstone Gate, Leicester, and it was subsequently circulated as a booklet by W. Reeves (Marxists​.o​rg Morris Chronology). 6 Ibid.

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7 I have capitalized ‘modern’ in order to clearly delineate its use herein in connection to modernity and modernism. It is crucial that ‘modern’ not be mistaken for ‘contemporary’ by a reader. 8 Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity – The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1969-1970 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1972), 24. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 10–11. 11 See, among other places, G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 310 [¶511]. 12 Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, 99–100. 13 Illuminations is a travelling exhibition. The artists are Beth Alber (Architecture), Jackie Anderson (Music), Mary Anne Barkhouse (Sculpture), Anne Barros (Photography), Lois Betteridge (Craft), Brigitte Clavette (Drawing & Painting), Charles Funnell (Dance), Chantal Gilbert (Gastronomy), Elizabeth Goluch (Horticulture), Kye-Yeon Son (Creative Writing), Fiona Macintyre (Fashion & Textile), Mary McIntyre (Film, Television & Video), Myra Tulonen Smith (Non-Fiction), Anne-Sophie Vallée (Theatre), Ken Vickerson (Design). 14 Julie Hollenbach, ‘Moving Beyond a Modern Craft: Thoughts on White Entitlement and Cultural Appropriation in Professional Craft in Canada’, Studio Magazine 14, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2019).https​:/​/ww​​w​.stu​​dioma​​gazin​​ e​.ca/​​artic​​les​/2​​019​/m​​oving​​-beyo​​nd​-​a-​​moder​​n​-cra​​ft 15 Carol Hanisch, The Personal Is Political (February 1969). http:​/​/www​​.caro​​lhani​​ sch​.o​​rg​/CH​​writi​​ngs​/P​​​IP​.ht​​ml. 16 Paul C. Taylor, Black Is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 142.

16 Bellwether Fingerprinting your woollies Seema Goel

How do we understand something, we understand it by approaching it. How do we approach something, we approach it from any direction.1 Oily and soft, smelling of its animal origins, the wool pulls and twists into a string between my fingers. It is not just the beginning of the push–pull between maker and material, but also the connection to a human practice stretching millennia, to a community in front of me, and to a tactile and gentle entrance into one of the political conversations defining our epoch – climate change.

Bellwether/belle weather/Lovely Weather Connecting craft and climate change began, for me, with the Lovely Weather project in 2010. This public art initiative asked artists to engage with the local community of Donegal, Ireland, in a climate change discussion. Not being Irish, but understanding that place was integral to this project, I sought a ‘thing’ to which I could fasten my thinking and reached into my closet for my ‘Donegal Cable’ sweater. As I read the label I had the first of many epiphanies. The object revealed a duplicitous and fictive identity as a co-opted piece of

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Irish iconography. Made in Thailand by American Eagle, it summed up a deep contradiction of material, making and cultural authorship. My own work comes out of finding places where relationships don’t make sense, where contradictions exist and usually go unexamined. I use materials with specificity, not just because of what they can do, but because of the information they house. I am aware that craft constituents and practice, in particular, offer accessible points of entry into theoretical concepts because of our long and deep relationships with materials and making over millennia. Our knowledge lives in the hand, head and heart as well as being part of our personal stories of handmade objects. Craft connects ‘the concrete and the abstract into a material symbol’.2 It is not just the final object and its use, rather it’s the material in concert with layers of connection that give the object resonance and meaning. The material and its connections let the public into a story to reveal and examine larger ripples of relationships and significance. Climate change, as a discussion point, poses a host of questions, not least of which is ‘what is the root of the problem?’ Is it scientific, cultural, economic, political or moral? We know global warming as an environmental problem, but even there we understand little of its facts and consequences. We are rightfully afraid, but so too do we feel guilty, paralysed, overwhelmed and resentful. I realized that to get the people of Donegal into a conversation on climate change I had to shift the scale of the issue from something as large as all life on the planet and the future of human civilization to something I could hold in my hand and use as a metaphor. The sweater became my approach, leading me to craft, contradiction and community as a framework for my research. When my flight landed in Dublin my first observation was, ‘My God, there are sheep at the airport!’ They were grazing beside the taxiway. I soon discovered that sheep are ubiquitous in Ireland, as much a part of the landscape and culture as shamrocks and Guinness. Thus, it was appropriate that I began my research at Treen House farm with Mervyn and Joyce Norris where I learned more about the economics of sheep. A fleece from a single animal yields roughly 2.5 kg of wool. This was valued at €2 on the 2010 wool market, with the farmer paying €3.50 for the labour of shearing.3 2.5 kg of wool is enough for twenty-five pairs of homespun socks. The 100 gram skein normally used for this activity retails at around €10 at the wool shop. This means the processed value of the fleece is €250. Why are farmers paid less than 1 per cent of this amount, and why are they losing money on the wool? A farmer with only fifty head of sheep may not bother taking it to market since it would cost a day’s work. The logic of the ledger forces a recategorization of the wool from resource to waste product and leads farmers to believe that their wool is worthless. Humans domesticated sheep 11,000 years ago,4 and over hundreds of generations bred them for specific attributes in disposition, fleece, milk, meat

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and even fertility. As value has shifted to meat over their other products, breeds which produce twin lambs are favoured. In Ireland the Texel breed is becoming dominant, and while its milk and wool can be used, these factors are not a priority. I asked Mervyn if the wool market price was related to the breed. No, he told me, all the fleeces, regardless of breed, are priced according to weight. In this swift and standardizing stroke, the national wool market reduces all breeds to nothing more than wool. For most of us this will not register as significant, but to put the blanket (pun intended) term in perspective, it is akin to going to the cheese shop and saying, ‘I’d like some cheese’ with the expectation that all cheese is the same. There are hundreds if not thousands of types of cheese,5 just as there are hundreds of varieties of sheep, and their fleeces have particular characteristics which lend them to different methods of production and use. The purpose of all that breeding was intentional, but now the optimization has been ignored so the material is treated as homogeneous. Farmers and consumers lose value because the industry has decided variety is not relevant. My wanderings in Carndonagh and Buncrana, combined with the wool and knitting questions I kept asking the locals, eventually led me to the Carndonagh Irish Countrywomen’s Association (ICA). Here was a bastion of knitting women who gathered weekly to make things, share company and find community. Attending their meetings, I found that none used local or even Irish wool. The majority of the women declared wool too expensive or fussy for their intentions and instead knit with acrylic. While my eyes grew round I did manage to keep my mouth shut. Acrylic is essentially plastic. It is made from a combination of petroleum and natural gas and it does not biodegrade. The few knitters who preferred wool drove over the border to Derry and bought New Zealand merino for special projects. I need to repeat at this point that there are sheep everywhere in Ireland. There are, in fact, almost as many sheep as there are people.6 A sheep was probably grazing less than 200 metres from the ICA at that very moment! Despite the ubiquitous abundance of raw material, the lack of availability as a processed product made it invisible to the women. Under capitalism’s spell, they were blind to what was around them and could not identify their own myopia as an ill. So far I had a Collection of Contradictions: Identity – my Donegal sweater that was not from Donegal Value – farmers pay more to have the sheep shorn than they receive at the market Homogeneity – the wool market pays the same price for all wool Invisibility – even though wool surrounds them, the Irish do not use the local material.

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Realizing that wool tangled a huge diversity of climate change issues within its soft strands, I submitted my proposal to Lovely Weather and was selected to create the Carbon Footprint Project Studio in Carndonagh, Inishowen, a place to rediscover local wool through making.

Knowledge is only a rumour until it lives in the muscle7 I signed up for a one-day spinning course in County Dublin with Mary O’Rourke. In the studio she emptied a bag of raw Jacob and Cheviot fleeces onto the floor, passed each person a drop spindle made from a roughly cut cross-section of a tree branch and a notched stick, and said, ‘Now, all you need to learn how to spin is a stick and a potato.’ Within minutes we were transforming the wool into yarn. A pull and a twist, the wool forgiving and responsive, the group eased into the action finding comfort in genetic memory. That afternoon we moved onto spinning wheels, and by the end of the day we each had our first skeins. Mary’s approach was without fuss or demands. She taught us to spin with the greasy, uncarded and animal-smelling wool, saying, ‘Why add extra steps if you don’t need them?’ Everything was acceptable, and every process needed the body to figure it out. I know now the great gift of her mentorship. She imparted a sense of openness and experimentation where the idea of ‘correct’ didn’t exist. Showing us her own way, she let us know that we should and could find ours too, and she would help if we became stuck. She knew that we had to learn with our hands and that this would teach us more than anything she could say. She taught us also about the many breeds of sheep and variations in fleece, the vocabulary of wool from staple length to lock, the differences between breeds best for spinning or felting or stuffing pillows or layering quilts. A fleece was spread on the floor and she pointed out the areas where it grew more coarsely, producing fibres that would make rope or carpet, and other parts where it was soft and suited to baby clothes. This was all from the same fleece. Listening to her made me aware of how distant we’ve become from the origins of this process and how little I knew.

Three bags full I returned to Carndonagh and began a series of workshops in cafés, eldercare centres, elementary schools and the pub. Word spread that I was working with local wool, and it was given to me in huge bags labelled by breed. I took

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out my ‘stick and potato’ and began spinning, and before I knew it there was a crowd of people wanting to know more and willing to learn. Bellwether, an old middle English word, describes the flock’s lead sheep wearing a bell, but it is also used to reference an idea that is at the front. Wool truly was our bellwether material drawing us forward and leading the conversation. In the café, with my six-week-old child, I sat with other moms and their babies, and we spun and talked about the comfort of the company in making, of knowing how to make things and where they came from, of taking time and using millennia-old slow-tech methods. In the eldercare centre, octogenarians reminisced about their grandmothers spinning and warbled out The Spinning Wheel song.8 They learned to spin in minutes, and immediately knit up the yarn to admire its softness and strength. I mentioned the farm it came from and they talked of sheep and how grand to be using wool from up the road. In the pub I just spun and let people have go at it, and there wasn’t much talk, but there was curiosity about this Canadian woman who was so in love with Irish wool that she’d come all the way to Donegal to teach people to spin (Figure 16.1). By this time I was quite ‘brainy’ about the wool. Having spent over a year thinking about it I had armed myself with all the relationships and connections that fuel every good artist’s statement. I went into the schools

FIGURE 16.1  Kathleen and Laoise using a wooden drop-spindle at Spin-in art-action event. Photo: Paul McGuckin. Reproduced with permission.

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and proselytized like a new convert. Connecting art and science, I praised wool as a portrait of the landscape made of the air, soil and water of Donegal. I talked about rethinking materials and technology and how wool was used in oil spill clean-up, as a fire retardant and as insulation. I mentioned its qualities to absorb moisture but retain warmth in a piece of clothing, especially if some of the oils are left in the yarn, making it ideal for Ireland’s damp climate. We looked at the gross domestic product (GDP) graph and compared it with the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) graph and examined the mathematics that proved this connection. Then we asked each other, could we make things without increasing the GHG? (Figure 16.2) (Figure 16.3) (Figure 16.4) I even suggested that we could describe wool as a form of carbon capture by looking at its structure and recognizing that it is 44 per cent carbon by mass. From this height of exuberant discovery, I asked the children if they had ever used wool. Raising his hand, a ten-year-old responded, ‘Yeah, we throw it in the bog and use it for traction when we’re cutting the peat.’ Brought down to earth very quickly, I taught them to spin. Every single one of those kids had sheep in their family history, and this was the first time they had ever used wool other than as a waste product. I set up the Carbon Footprint Project Studio in an empty store, hired Ruth McCartney, a local fibre fiend, as my studio assistant, and borrowed a spinning wheel from Johnny Shiels, the last spinning wheel maker in Ireland who happened to live in the same town. People came in, curious about this new entity in their village. There was nothing for sale, just raw wool and free workshops. We helped people through the steps of spinning. Sometimes they left slightly bemused with oily hands and the smell of sheep, or with a drop spindle and a hank of wool tucked into their bag. And then it blossomed. People came and offered to teach what they knew. The group taught each other, Ruth

FIGURE 16.2  Irish Gross Domestic Product in US$ billions. Source: http://www​.worldbank​.org

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FIGURE 16.3  Irish CO2 production in parts per million. Source: https​:/​/ou​​ rworl​​dinda​​ta​.or​​g​/co2​​/coun​​ try​/i​​relan​​d​?​cou​​ntry=​​~IRL

FIGURE 16.4  Correlation between Irish CO2 and GDP. Analysis by Dr. Stephen J Kirkland. Reproduced with permission.

made up a schedule so the space was always busy and I became tangential. We learned to felt, create dye from onion skins, and spin. A drum carder arrived from England and we added it to the supplies. A sock-knitting class was held, the high-school students came in after school, and the Studio became a place to hang out where the only stipulation was to do something with wool.

Making it visible On the wall we posted our motto: Inishowen wool is made of Inishowen. This was our starting point. The graphs of the GDP9 and GHG were displayed

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to remind us of the instigating ambition – how to diminish the correlation between those graphs? Gradually discussions emerged through the group: the wool led us. By teasing out the questions we began to expose the problems endemic to textiles: where was this made; by whom, with what; were they paid; will it degrade; what were the effluents and wastes attached to it; how and how far did it travel; whose idea was this; where does the money go; what happens at the end of its life; and why is fleece so cheap but yarn so expensive? We found a web of interconnected relationships that all came down to rethinking the idea of cost. The failure of our system and the resulting problem of climate change comes down to our refusal to recognize an economic system which fails to distinguish the difference between cost and cost. That is, what we pay monetarily to purchase something versus the social and ecological consequences of that purchase.

A line into the future long enough to walk on10 Full cycle thinking, referred to as the triple bottom line (TBL), attempts to include people, planet and profit as part of the economic evaluation of business. Even though there is growing awareness of the TBL it is rarely invoked as a component of the practical marketplace, and there is no regulation requiring its implementation. This inclusive economic accounting also attempts to monetize natural ecosystems.11 While this may help to demonstrate Mother Nature’s value were she paid in dollars and cents, it does not equate to being able to replace those natural systems with human-made ones. For example, as the ocean acidifies we cannot create a substitute for coral reefs in the ocean’s food web no matter how much money is available. The idea of the triple bottom line is long overdue but it lacks political teeth and is naive in its quantifications of natural ecosystems. Citing the 1987 Brundtland Report as a primary resource, proponents of the TBL define sustainability as ‘the premise that development should occur in ways that meet the needs of current generations while maintaining conditions and opportunities for future generations to do the same’.12 This early definition of the term sustainability focuses on the question, ‘how much more should we protect?’ rather that its more current interpretation ‘how much more can we take?’ With the protection option in mind a further question arises: how does craft help us connect with sustainability ambitions and make a line into the future long enough to walk on? A list of the points of polarization were exposed in the wool studio: handmade

manufactured

heterogeneity

homogeneity

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anonymous maker

human scale

industrial scale

personal production

mass production

local production

distant production

slow/retro technology

fast/high technology

slow fashion

fast fashion

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natural (biodegradable) materials synthetic (petro-chemical-based) materials personal and fair-wage labour

sweatshop low-wage labour

valued materials

worthless materials

micro-economies

globalization

We learned that everything in the left-hand column related back to our autonomy and our ability to act. When we make things, we gain skills and find agency, build identity on a personal and cultural level with unique objects, respond to local problems directly and devise local solutions, work on a small scale and take time for the making. Ultimately, we value where things come from and the labour involved in their production, and because we know the makers, we care about them and their products which form part of our story. We revitalize local economies, and these expand to bring more activity to villages. By knowing where things come from we are more likely to endeavour to protect the land/labour/resources that are impacted in production. The phenomena in the right-hand column started with colonization and became normalized in the Industrial Revolution which both centralized production and shifted attention away from the individual. That production model was further entrenched through globalization and trade structures, now making it impossible to trace the origins of clothes back to their human makers. Instead we just know brands with origins in Asia or Eastern Europe. A piece of fabric can be made with cotton grown in the United States, spun and woven in China, dyed in India, then cut and sewn in Bangladesh, to finally return to an American retail shelf. What if it is synthetic? Then we need to take account that it is made of fossil fuel products, will never degrade and ultimately end up in landfill. We don’t often think of our purchasing power as part of the climate change debate, or consider that what we buy and where it comes from changes the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. It is true that mass production in far-off countries makes things cheaper, yet this manufacturing model cheapens everything it touches – materials, humans, places, aesthetics.

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Purchasing is a political choice, requiring insight into more than what appears in fashion magazines and on style blogs.

To spin a revolution We held a spin-in to reactivate empty shopfronts with our simple industry. The village turned up – children, parents, politicians and carpenters stood in the streets spinning wool. We called this our Gandhian ploy, invoking his spirit as a forefather of the craft-activist movement. We understood at that moment the power of making as defiance of global market forces through the simple act of spinning.13 Like Gandhi, our ambition was not just to collapse the distance between producer and consumer, but to value the material, the land and farmers that produced it, our abilities to collectively act, our community, and, most of all, to identify an approach to an impossible challenge. At the end of the Carbon Footprint Project (CFP) the group had an exhibition in Letterkenny. We made garments translating climate data into tactile, humanscale objects: socks with patterns revealing rain fall increases, and hurricane hats describing the air currents above Ireland. We celebrated the ten weeks of the studio and the many friendships and discoveries made. Then I packed up my spinning wheels and left for Dublin. Six months later I received an email announcing the opening of the Yarnspinners of Inishowen Spinning Collective. The group persisted for seven years bringing focus to the value and use of local wool. When I returned to Canada I learned that all the issues facing the Irish farmers are part of a global dilemma. Everywhere, wool is worth so little that it is often discarded, it is priced by weight and local product is often difficult to find. I continue to work with this material and teach people to spin to bring these aspects to light and draw attention to craft’s potential to reveal larger world problems. I’ve often wondered about the magic of the Carbon Footprint Project and why it resonated so much and continues to hold sway as an action and narrative. In my conversation with Judith Leemann,14 a friend and fellow fibre artist, she spoke of the need to train ourselves to face impossible tasks, that we need to practise and, perhaps, this initiative was part of that training. It allowed those involved to think of the impossible through a material – wool – and to reactivate and learn its potential. In addition to this idea, I believe the CFP’s real success lies in its life as craft rather than art. Prior to this project I doubted the craft–art divide. It was always based in materials: wood, glass, clay, fibre, metal. Since my practice is so connected to material information, I never understood this as a rationale for the division and denied craft’s possibilities. The CFP clarified the difference

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through the simple presence of authorship, or rather the lack of it. Craft is egalitarian, democratic, welcoming to all voices. The authorship of this work, as belonging to me, quickly disappeared during the first weeks. Instead, the participants owned and shaped the project, so much so that after I left, they knew they didn’t need my involvement or permission to keep the project running. Craft doesn’t have authorship. Dwelling in the hand and the process, craft sits with apprenticeship, community, collectivity, shared tasks. While it is almost always something created in response to need and function – that is usually a technology responding to a problem, like how do I collect water, keep warm, adorn myself, eat? – craft also has an openness to knowing there are many ways to solve problems and the approach is to remain flexible and adaptable. When I spin, I don’t worry about being derivative or assuming someone else’s voice, I just spin. Craft confronts climate change only when it has an intention to do so. While the history of craft aligns strongly with sustainability, it is important to recognize that this is not a given. Historically this was an accident of circumstance. Materials were local and biodegradable because that was the only option. Craft didn’t enslave distant labour because that economic structure was alien. Today though, craft can assume any material and any position of power. It can be, and often is, part of globalization without that even being considered. Polyester fabric from China, sewn into unicorns and sold on Etsy to be shipped across the globe, do not a sustainability paradigm make. In order to place craft in the sustainability realm it needs to extend beyond the rescaling of production to include understanding of how and where materials are made and what they are made of. Craft needs to anchor itself with intention to an awareness of its carbon finger-and-foot-print and understand its own place in the conversation.

Fingerprint or footprint The Inishowen group’s most insistent revelation was the importance of choosing where materials come from and what they are made of. We stressed the local, but we struggled to understand how to talk about the meaning of a larger picture. A carbon footprint is a general accounting of the trail of GHG released through the manufacture and transportation of an item or the activity of a person or entity.15 This exclusive focus on GHG numbers flattens the issue with no consideration of place and people. For example, mass production uses an economy of scale to produce efficiencies, and these may actually reduce the GHGs attached. But in addition to possibly being part of sweatshop labour, mass production creates overproduction and immense waste by making items

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disposable through abundance as well as using cheaper materials to increase profit margins. These in turn create objects that are less robust. Decentralizing production and making things locally costs more, but allows another way of thinking about carbon as having a fingerprint. A carbon fingerprint includes carbon identity and demands a local emphasis. It asks us to personally connect with and identify the elements of production, and touch those elements in our own communities. In Inishowen, I reminded the school children that wool is actually made of the soil, water and air of Inishowen, and this awareness changed their relationship to the material. At the beginning of this essay I noted that as a public, we understand little about the implications of climate change. Here are three things – more might be overwhelming – to bear in mind as you consider the imperative for action to address the conditions of the Anthropocene: 1. For every 1ºC increase in temperature, the air holds 7 per cent more water. Where will this come from and where will it go?; 2. The thermohaline cycle drives the ocean currents. It is what keeps Ireland and England temperate rather than frigid. This is expected to collapse when the glaciers melt due to the change in relative salinity driving the ocean’s pump16; and 3. The ocean garbage patch, consisting of plastic, is currently the size of Texas and will persist for hundreds of years if not removed. Humanity needs to find do-able actions to address what we have wrought. Basic craft practice has the power to bind us together and spur action by priming us, through the simplicity our hands, to rise to what seems an impossible challenge. As Captain Picard says, ‘Things are only impossible until they are not.’17 Craft says, begin with your hands, pull the wool apart, twist, pull again.

Notes 1 Matthew Goulish, 39 Microlectures: In Proximity of Performance (London: Routledge, 2000). 2 Jack Zeljko Bratich and Heidi M. Brush, ‘Fabricating Activism: Craft-Work, Popular Culture, Gender’, Utopian Studies 22, no. 2 (2011): 233–60, 246. 3 While the numbers have shifted slightly over the last ten years the discrepancy persists at the time of this writing. https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​journ​​al​.ie​​/ pric​​e​-of-​​wool-​​indus​​try​-4​​34​014​​1​-Nov​​2018/​ 4 J. R. S. Meadows, ‘Sheep: Domestication’, in Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, ed. C. Smith (New York: Springer, 2014). https​:/​/li​​nk​.sp​​ringe​​r​ .com​​/refe​​rence​​worke​​ntry/​​10​.10​​07​%2F​​978​-1​​-4​419​​-0465​​-2​_22​​15 5 For a short list see Monty Python’s Flying Circus, ‘The Cheese Shop’, Episode 33. 6 2018 census reports 3.73 million sheep in Ireland and 4.83 people. https​:/​/ ww​​w​.agr​​iland​​.ie​/f​​armin​​g​-new​​s​/map​​-how-​​many-​​sheep​​-are-​​ther​e​​-in​-i​​relan​​d/; https​:/​/ww​​w​.wor​​ldome​​ters.​​info/​​world​​-popu​​latio​​n​/ire​​land-​​​popul​​ation​/

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7 Papua New Guinea proverb. 8 John Francis Waller. Irish ballad from the mid-1800s. https​:/​/ww​​w​.liv​​eabou​​t​ .com​​/the-​​spinn​​ing​-w​​he​el-​​35529​​51 9 From 1967 to 2006, the correlation value for the two data sets (GDP and CO2) is r = 0.9024. This means there is a strong positive correlation between the GDP and CO2 data sets – that is as one quantity increases, so does the other. To put the strength of this correlation into perspective, the largest possible correlation value for r is 1. The statistical significance of the correlation was also tested. Here we set up the null hypothesis (that r = 0, and the two data sets are uncorrelated) and the alternative hypothesis (that r is not 0, and they are correlated). For a 1% level of significance, the critical value for r is about 0.405. Since our value r = 0.9024 is much larger than 0.405, we reject the null hypothesis, accept the alternative hypothesis, and conclude that the value of r is statistically significant to within a 1% level of significance. What this means is that there is less than a 1% probability that the correlation we found was due to chance. Consequently, we conclude that the CO2 and GDP data sets are indeed strongly positively correlated. Analysis supplied to author by Dr Stephen J. Kirkland. 10 Sabina Kim, Fort Sanity Chapbook, 1987. 11 Janet Hammer and Gary Pivo, ‘The Triple Bottom Line and Sustainable Economic Development Theory and Practice’, Economic Development Quarterly 31, no. 1 (February 2017): 25–36. 12 Ibid. 13 Gandhi’s awareness of textiles as a galvanizing political force centred around the spinning wheel’s egalitarian quality and the revitalizing opportunity in decentralizing production by bringing it back to the people. He also understood craft, all craft, as an area of ingenuity, problem solving, identity, and vitality. Armed with a spinning wheel, he defied the British mills and led a non-violent revolution which resulted in the emancipation of India from British rule in 1947. Susan Bean, ‘Gandhi and Khadi, the Fabric of Indian Independence’, in The Textile Reader, ed. Jessica Hemmings (London: Berg, 2012), 234–46. https​:/​/ww​​w​.mkg​​andhi​​.org/​​momga​​ndhi/​​ch​ap8​​6​.htm​ 14 Judith Leemann is an Associate Professor of Fine Arts 3D/Fibers at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She gave the Keynote address at the Crafting Sustainability Conference at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, in 2015. During our airport delay we became friends and have continued the climate/craft conversation. I spoke with her about the impossible in January of 2020. 15 https​:/​/ww​​w​.bri​​tanni​​ca​.co​​m​/sci​​ence/​​carbo​​n​​-foo​​tprin​t 16 Jianjun Yin et al., ‘Is a Shutdown of the Thermohaline Circulation Irreversible?’ Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 111, no. D12 (June 2006). https​:/​/ag​​upubs​​.onli​​nelib​​rary.​​wiley​​.com/​​doi​/f​​ull​/1​​0​.102​​9​​/200​​ 5JD00​​6562 17 Star Trek: The Next Generation, ‘When the Bough Breaks’. Season 1, Episode 17, 15 February 1988.

Epilogue D Wood

A

s 2020 progressed, the statistics relating to the cases and deaths due to COVID-19 reached into the millions. The most vulnerable populations – those living in crowded, densely populated areas; the impoverished; people with compromised health and domestic environments; families that have inadequate access to medical care – are more likely to succumb to this and future viruses. Craftspeople in developing countries are some of the vulnerable, and after reading the essays in Craft is Political one can’t help but wonder about the well-being of Alanna Cant’s Oaxacan woodcarvers, Geoffrey Gowlland’s Indigenous Taiwanese, Anne-Marie Willis’s Egyptian potters, Çiğdem Kaya’s Turkish embroiderers or Nathalia Santos Ocasio’s arpilleristas. On 15 May, The Guardian1 reported a potential humanitarian disaster as the coronavirus reached the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Not only was I concerned about the women embroiderers who were the focus of David Palazón and his colleagues in their essay, but I was worried about the three researchers who are based in Cox’s Bazar. I sent an email to David and he replied, ‘The first case appeared this week. All UN agencies and Humanitarian sector are working around the clock to minimise the impact through awareness campaigns and building new isolation adequate spaces. We will go through together.’ In addition, David reported on the craft described in these pages. He said he was ‘full on with the project, despite the circumstances and to keep providing an income to the embroidery women, we have arranged home assignments so they can work from their homes’. It is heartening to know that the craft intervention by the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre has resulted in the women producing 300 items, changing their economic and political world view. David enclosed photos of Kurshida, a twenty-year-old wife and mother, who is making face masks to distribute to relatives, embroidery colleagues and their families. She is quoted as saying: ‘Masks are important because they protect from dust, coronavirus and disease. I feel privileged to contribute something in these difficult circumstances. Maybe I can help protect many lives’2 (Figure E.1).

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FIGURE E.1  Kurshida. Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, May 2020. Kurshida and her masks exemplify craft’s sustain-ability, its propriety as an agent of change and its inherent care. I hope that other craft communities, enduring compromised and life-changing situations as a result of the coronavirus, are capable of summoning up the same resilience. These photographs of Kurshida, modelling her masks, are the image of hope with which I end Craft is Political.

Notes 1 Rebecca Ratcliffe and Redwan Ahmed, ‘Fears Rohingya Refugees Face Disaster After Covid-19 Reaches Cox's Bazar,’ The Guardian, 15 May 2020. https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/wo​​rld​/2​​020​/m​​ay​/15​​/fear​​s​-roh​​ingya​​-refu​​gees-​​ face-​​disas​​ter​-a​​fter-​​covid​​​-19​-r​​eache​​s​-cox​​s​-baz​​ar 2 IOM, Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre, ‘The Happy Tailor’, May 2020.

252

Author biographies

Fernando A. Álvarez Romero is an Associate Professor at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in the Product Design School. He is a Doctoral candidate in Design and Creation, University of Caldas. His research interests focus on archeo-design, technology, sustainment and design of/by/for the South theory. He has published on design for social innovation. His most recent paper (co-author) is Case Study of a Participatory Process based on Industrial Design with Female Inmates in the San Diego Jail, Cartagena de Indias (2018). Lisa Binkley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. She is an Anishinaabe (Algonquin) settler scholar specializing in textiles and needlework by Indigenous and settler women during the long nineteenth century. She is the co-editor of Stitching the Self: Identity and the Needlearts (Bloomsbury 2020). Forthcoming publications include Making Canada: Women’s Identity through Quilts, 1800-1900 (UBC Press); chapters in Craft and Heritage: Intersections in Critical Studies and Practice (Bloomsbury, 2021); and Locations/Dislocations: Transnational Perspectives on Feminism and Art, 1960-1985 (Routledge, 2021). Her current research focuses on Mi'kmaw needle artist Christianne Paul Morris and decolonizing the fur trade through textiles and needlework. Alanna Cant (PhD) is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. She is a specialist in Latin American anthropology, with an emphasis on the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Her work considers how different ideas of culture, history and aesthetics impact on people’s everyday lives, as seen through the lenses of ethnic arts and crafts, tourism, heritage and religion. Her current research investigates the restoration of a sixteenth century monastery in Oaxaca, and her book, The Value of Aesthetics: Oaxacan Woodcarvers in Global Economies of Culture was published in 2019 by the University of Texas Press. Seema Goel is an artist, writer, curator and STEAM educator. Her education includes a B.Sc. from McGill University, an Associate Arts diploma from the Ontario College of Art and Design and an MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is currently completing an M.Sc. in Interdisciplinary Studies connecting environmental engineering and aesthetics with specific attention sustainability projects. Goel’s art practice focuses on

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

the manipulation of human-animal and human-place relationships. She draws on her dual background in the arts and sciences to create pieces that point out the contradictions and incongruencies in our actions. Geoffrey Gowlland is Honorary Research Fellow at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. He has research interests in material culture and heritage and their relation to the politics of indigeneity. He has conducted fieldwork with the Paiwan people since 2012. Previously, his research addressed craft ceramics, heritage and apprenticeship in China and Taiwan. Çiğdem Kaya is Associate Professor at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Department of Industrial Design, where she teaches at the undergraduate level and supervises graduate and PhD research. Her teaching practice in applied design and methodological inquiry in design research is informed and enriched by her art training and practice. She studied art at San Francisco Art Institute and design research at Sheffield Hallam University. She was a senior researcher at the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Project ‘trans-making’ funded by the European Union. She is a Fulbright alumna. In 2020, she was awarded the Middle Eastern Technical University, Prof. Dr. Mustafa N. Parlar Education and Research Foundation Research Encouragement Award. Anna Kouhia, PhD, is a researcher, craft practitioner and academic, who works as a university lecturer in the Craft Teacher Education programme at the University of Helsinki, teaching across courses on yarn crafts, craft pedagogy and crafting as material culture. Her current research initiatives are driven by an interest in lived experiences at the intersection of making and materiality. Her research focuses on autoethnography, textiles and dress, new materialism, community heritage, digital materiality and the meanings of hobby crafts, especially emerging in social media and popular culture. Leopold Kowolik is an instructor in the Craft and Design programme at Sheridan College in Ontario. He has degrees in history and art history from the University of Chicago and the University of Edinburgh and is currently pursuing a PhD at York University in Toronto in Social and Political Thought. Kowolik was Editor in Chief of Studio Magazine, dedicated to Canadian craft and design, from 2011 to 2019. He has written about the theoretical and political crosscontextualization of craft and material culture and worked in public and private galleries in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Lurdes Macedo has a PhD in Communication Sciences with specialization in Intercultural Communication and Communication for Development (C4D). She is Professor of Communications at Lusófona University in Porto, Portugal. Macedo is also a Cultural Studies researcher at Communication and Society

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

255

Research Centre of Minho University (Portugal) where she works on social and cultural memory research. Her current project is ‘Memories, cultures and identities: how the past weighs on the present-day intercultural relations in Mozambique and Portugal’. She is a consultant for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) team working to establish the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre. Shahirah Majumdar is a writer, journalist and researcher. Based in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, she has reported on and worked with Rohingya refugees extensively since 2017. She is a member of the IOM team working to establish the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre, and Associate Professor of writing at BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Verity Marques is a writer, editor, translator and communications consultant currently based in Porto, Portugal. She specializes in the social and environmental sciences and has worked with organizations in Southern Africa to produce publications on such issues as human and land rights, development, environmental protection, culture, identity and citizenship. Fiona P. McDonald is an Assistant Professor of Visual Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, where she is the Director of the Collaborative + Experimental Ethnography Lab. Her current research focuses on water rights, cold climate housing, sensory ethnography and open access digital publishing. She is a founding member of the Ethnographic Terminalia Collective, which curated exhibitions at the intersections of art and anthropology from 2009–2019. Her ongoing research looks at historical and contemporary uses of woollen blankets when transformed by contemporary artists, craft makers and Indigenous communities in North America and Aotearoa New Zealand. Heidi McKenzie is a Toronto-based ceramic artist. She completed a Diploma in Crafts and Design at Sheridan College, Canada and an MFA in Curatorial Practice and Art Criticism at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. She is the recipient of Craft Ontario Awards, Best in Show Ontario Artists Association Biennial Award, and the 2020 NCECA Helene Zucker Seeman Curatorial Research and Critical Writing Fellowship for Women. Work from a 2019 solo exhibition was acquired by Global Affairs Canada. McKenzie’s work engages issues of race, identity and belonging. She is an active arts journalist and ceramic arts reviewer. David Palazón is a designer, visual artist, curator, researcher, producer and award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer. He produces projects internationally in which people and art blend together in creative

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

ways. Driven by a curiosity for exploration combined with a unique sense of humour, his work is a constant enquiry about the human condition. Based in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Palazón is the Curator leading the IOM team working to establish the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre. Nathalia Santos Ocasio is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University, Canada. She has a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from the Université de Montréal. Her research concerns the afterlives of Chilean arpilleras and, more broadly, the role of art practices in the social reproduction and political resistance of marginalized urban communities. Elizabeth Shaw is Program Director of the Bachelor of Fine Art and Convenor of Jewellery and Small Objects at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Australia. Shaw’s academic research focuses on ethical practice and the social and cultural values and meanings associated with objects; she is an international member of the advisory board for Ethical Metalsmiths. Her studio practice is informed by traditions of silversmithing and sculpture. Shaw exhibits regularly and is interested in rethinking the role of the maker within society, and reconsidering working methodologies and materials to address societal and environmental needs. Yasuko Suga, PhD (Royal College of Art) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, is a design historian and was a founding member of the Design History Workshop Japan. She is Professor atTsuda University, Japan. She has published books and articles in a variety of academic journals on different aspects of design history. Her research interests cover nineteenth and twentieth century British and Japanese design and culture, Japonisme, Modernism, the cultural history of plants at home, transnational design, design in the diaspora and the prison industry. The Way of Tea in the Ura-Senke style is one of her hobbies. Anne-Marie Willis researches and writes about design and visual culture. She has taught at universities in Australia, Hong Kong and Egypt, including four years as Professor of Design Theory at the German University in Cairo. She is the editor and author of five books, most recently the Design Philosophy Reader (Bloomsbury, 2019). She is currently exploring the relation between design and fiction via curatorial practice, through workshops with The Studio at the Edge of the World, Launceston, and postgraduate study in the School of English, University of Tasmania. D Wood earned a Diploma in Crafts and Design in furniture at Sheridan College, Canada, and an MFA in Furniture Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her PhD from the University of Otago, New Zealand, addressed

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257

the history and presence of studio furniture in New Zealand in the context of the contemporary craft movement. She taught design at undergraduate and graduate levels in the United States, New Zealand and Canada. Her craft-focused writing has appeared in American Woodturner, Capital & Class, Ceramics Monthly, Glass Quarterly, Journal of New Zealand Studies, Metalsmith and Surface Design Journal.

Index Abaza, Mona  87 Abya-Yala  186, 187, 189, 193 n.21., 195 n.40 Adamson, Glenn  66, 164 n.41 aesthetics  2, 35, 42, 45, 55, 69, 70, 87, 88, 92 n.17, 97, 99, 101, 102, 104, 109, 112, 114, 136, 151, 162 n.24, 166, 172, 183, 184, 190, 193 n.19, 200, 213, 215, 232, 245 Agnew, Terese  174, 175 Ahmed, Farzana  117 Akwesasne  36, 37, 46 Albright, Madeleine  137 Anatolia  67 Anderson, PJ  125, 128–31 Andes  13, 181–98 animal rights  167 Anthropocene  3, 248 anthropocentrism  4, 195 n.45 anthropology  11, 26, 56, 70, 100, 126, 136, 139, 143, 149, 151, 154, 156, 181 Aotearoa, see New Zealand apartheid  12, 123, 172 Appadurai, Arjun  143, 151, 154 archaeology  56, 136, 139, 181, 182 arpilleras  7, 8, 13, 198–211 art  36, 52, 53, 55, 59, 60, 69, 73, 105, 111, 117, 123, 124, 144, 149, 151, 157, 189, 213, 215, 217, 218, 226, 228, 229, 231, 232, 234 African  234 conceptual  125, 131 craft divide  87, 246 education  217, 218 performing  30, 125–7, 131, 132 public  237 rhetorical  165–7, 170, 173

and science  242 visual  2, 84 artefacts  23, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62, 68, 79, 112, 183, 186, 190, 209, 214, 235 articulation  54, 55, 61, 62, 157, 160 artisan  9, 10, 14, 25, 26, 52, 59–61, 83, 87, 97–105, 124, 141, 154, 159, 183–9, 213 artist(s)  11, 12, 14, 17 n.40, 57, 58, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 90, 123–30, 134, 148, 166–73, 235, 236 n.13, 237, 241, 246 Arts and Crafts Movement  55, 57, 62, 66, 85, 99, 106 n.9, 154, 227–30 Atayal people  56–8 atlas design collection  68, 75 n.27 Attawapiskat  129 Auckland  150, 157, 159 Australia  2, 9, 79–81, 83–6, 89, 144, 171, 175 Austronesian  10, 51, 55–8 authenticity  14, 62, 154, 225–36 authorship  238, 247 ayllu  185, 190, 192 n.13, 194 n.33 Bangladesh  11, 110, 111, 113, 117, 120, 140, 245, 250 Barthes, Roland  66 Baudrillard, Jean  12 Belgarde, Perry  46 Bell, Nicholas  171 bellwether  241 Benjamin, Walter  73 Bensusan, Eli  72 Bhabha, H. K.  110 BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Colour)  12, 123, 124, 133, 166, 172, 178 n.53 Bisbee, John  171, 175

INDEX 

Black  125, 126, 129, 130, 172 blankets  12, 150–5, 173, 239 politics of  151, 154 Welcome Blankets  8 woollen  150–5 Bonsiepe, Gui  165, 166 Book of Tea, The  31 Bourdieu, Pierre  99 Bradshaw-Heap, Laura et al.  143 Braidotti, Rosi  6 branding  69, 71, 159, 174, 181, 195 n.43, 245 Brandon, Laura  232 Braungart, Michael and W. McDonough  142 Britain  8, 12, 29, 42, 47, 57, 99, 128, 129, 132, 138, 143, 144, 150, 151, 172, 227, 249 n.13 Bryan-Wilson, Julia  166 Buddhism  111 Cairo  10, 79, 81–3, 87, 90 Centre for Traditional Crafts  87 Calvès, Anne-Emmanuèle  88 Canada  2, 8–10, 12, 34–6, 39, 41–3, 45, 46, 102, 123–5, 127–9, 131, 132, 138, 167, 173, 246 Act for the Gradual Enfranchisement of Indians  44 Assembly of First Nations  46 Confederation, 150th anniversary  232 craft  123 Department of Indian Affairs  39 First Nations  129, 232, 233 government of  34–6, 38, 39, 41, 44–6 Indian Act (1876)  34, 39, 43–6 Indian Advancement Act  41 residential school system  43, 46, 49 n.40 Royal Tour 1860  36, 42; 1869  42 Superintendent of Indian Affairs  35, 37, 39, 41 Truth and Reconciliation Commission  46 Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery  125, 126 canoe  35, 36, 52

259

capital, productive  212 capitalism  2–6, 8, 9, 13, 14, 54, 97, 158, 162 n.24, 168, 181, 182, 187, 188, 204, 207, 226–8, 239 carbon dioxide  1, 4 242, 243, 245, 247, 248, 249 n.9 Carbon Footprint Project Studio  240, 242, 246 care  3, 4, 6, 7, 13, 14, 39, 46, 99, 110, 165, 166, 173–5, 182–4, 187, 188, 190, 204, 245 ethics of  6 Catholic church  189, 201, 207 Caughnawaga Exhibition  10, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 46 charity shops  143, 144 Chile  7, 8, 12–14, 125, 127, 198–211 China  56–8, 245, 247 Chinese  23, 51, 56–8 language  57–9, 61 class  2, 6, 10, 30, 65, 66, 69, 74, 97, 127, 200, 202, 204, 208, 214 high  87 low  87 middle  87, 93 n.27, 97, 123, 204, 207, 227, 232, 233, 235 working  8, 123, 198, 200, 210 n.19 Clifford, James  53–5, 61 climate change  1, 4, 13, 14, 141, 166, 237, 238, 240, 244, 245, 247, 248 Colakyan, Aret  72 collaboration  57, 66, 69, 71–3, 111, 117, 120, 220 Colombia  181–97 colonialism  2, 4, 12, 53, 57, 58, 61, 110, 129, 132, 133, 150, 151, 154, 172, 182, 232, 233 colonization  10, 34, 55, 123, 125, 126, 134, 233, 234, 245 (see also decolonize) neocolonialism  4, 11 colonizer-colonized  34, 51, 55, 56, 62, 126 commerce  3, 11, 14, 23, 40, 52, 53, 61, 68, 69, 136, 139, 144, 150, 152, 154, 155, 157, 181, 226, 237–9

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INDEX 

commodity  52, 66, 98, 139, 141, 143, 145, 154, 181, 185, 201, 204 commodity candidacy  139, 144 community  4, 5, 9, 10, 13, 36–40, 42–7, 52, 57, 59–62, 71, 80, 84, 88, 89, 91 n.2, 100–2, 105, 111–15, 118, 119, 121, 123, 129, 132, 133, 141–3, 150, 151, 154, 158, 159, 165, 166, 181–6, 188–90, 198, 201, 202, 204, 216, 217, 229, 230, 234, 237 community of practice (CoP)  11, 12, 97–102, 155, 156 competence  6, 212–14, 216–20 Confucianism  30 consumer(s)  12, 14, 35, 36, 45, 52, 54, 85, 139–41, 154, 156, 160, 182, 184–7, 191, 225, 228, 229, 235, 239, 246 consumption  4, 65, 68, 69, 71, 80, 85, 86, 88, 97, 102, 129, 145, 149, 152, 154, 157, 160 Cooke, Edward  3, 9 Corbett, Sarah  8 cosmology  181, 184–7, 190, 191 COVID-19/coronavirus  14, 250 Cox’s Bazar  11, 110, 114, 118, 119, 250 Coyle, D. et al.  112 Cradle to Cradle  142 cræft  5 craft  1–17, 53–5, 141, 181–97 activism  246 agent of change  3, 4, 10, 14, 169 basketry  36, 37, 44, 67, 129, 187 beadwork  35, 36, 38, 44, 68 blacksmithing  81, 82, 171, 175, 187 bookbinding  67 boys  214, 215, 217 calligraphy  67 canon  124 carpentry  67 ceramics  10, 12, 24, 125–35, 166–8, 187, 189, 192 n.13, 195 n.44 copper working  67, 170–1 crochet  215

description  238, 247 dyeing  81, 243, 245 education  2, 5, 212–24 egalitarian  247 embroidery  7, 11, 68, 81, 112–21, 198, 206, 215, 250, 251 ethical understanding of  98–102, 105 Eurocentric theory of  189, 228 felt  67, 68, 240, 243 fibre  60 function  247 furniture  9, 22, 27, 28, 30, 31 gendered practice  67, 125 girls  214, 215, 217 glass  82, 168–70, 187 Indigenous  2, 8, 10, 12, 13, 34–8, 44, 45, 47, 51–5, 58, 61, 62 invisibility of  98, 101 jewellery  12, 67, 68, 82, 136–47, 187 knife making  67 knitting  214, 239, 241, 243 knowledge  4 leather  71, 187 luxury  2, 15 n.5 marbling  67 markets  12, 14, 48–162 masonry  67 men’s  92 n.20, 214 metalsmithing  67, 72, 81, 82, 170–1, 214, 216, 232 moccasins  8, 35, 37, 44 movement  124 needlework  34, 43–5, 214 philosophy  13, 14, 53–5, 181–97, 225–36 political content  2, 4 potential  246 pottery  59, 67, 82 power  229, 235, 247 practice  38, 45, 52–4, 56–9, 61, 62, 203, 206, 208, 209, 238 quality  31, 86, 90, 97, 98, 100, 103–5, 115 quilts  8, 10, 35, 41–7, 166, 173, 174 revitalization  53, 57–61

INDEX 

saddlery  67, 68 school (see craft education) sewing  215 silversmith  68, 232 spinning  81, 150, 240–3, 246, 247 stone working  67, 187 sustainability  244, 247 taboo  61, 125 tailoring  112, 113 tapestry  114, 115, 117, 120 tattoo  56 textiles  41–7, 81, 148–63, 166, 173–5, 217 tradition  36, 38, 52, 53, 62, 66, 67, 71, 72, 87–9, 111, 215, 217, 220 Turkish  65–78 value added  69 weaving  56–8, 60, 81, 129, 130, 187 women’s  68, 70, 148–63, 214 woodcarving  11, 35, 42–7, 56, 58, 81, 98, 101, 102, 104, 105, 172, 187 woodworking  67, 82, 171–3, 214, 216 craft and authenticity  225–35 craft and design  65–78 craft and sincerity  226, 227, 233–5 craft and storytelling  114–17, 120, 238 craftivism  7, 8, 111 Craftivist Collective  8 craftsmanship  5, 85, 98–101, 104, 105, 171, 172, 182 craftspeople  9, 61, 65, 68–73, 79, 81–6, 98–100, 105, 124, 136, 159, 165, 175, 185, 232 Craste, Laurent  167 cultural  3, 10, 51, 52, 59, 60, 66, 79, 80, 85, 87, 88, 92 n.20, 102, 110–16, 124–6, 129, 131–4, 140, 145, 156–8, 160, 169, 170, 181–3, 187, 201, 202, 206, 208, 233, 238, 245 assimilation  54, 58 diversity  56 exchange  29

261

hierarchy  73 inferiority  35 intercultural  187, 188 knowledge  45, 60 maintenance  212 meaning  66, 71 memory  112 multiculturalism  58, 61, 128, 215 performance  36 policy  212, 213, 217–19 resilience  53, 54 resistance  112, 121 revival  59, 61 transcultural  126 Cultural Memory Centre (CMC)  112–16, 118, 121, 250 culture  7, 9, 23, 30, 40, 41, 45, 47, 57, 58, 61, 67, 71, 72, 79, 87, 92 n.20, 110, 112, 126–8, 143, 145, 149, 165, 166, 169, 171, 172, 175 n.6, 181, 182, 184, 186, 189, 190, 202, 210 n.19, 213, 216–19, 230–2, 238 Andean  184, 185, 188 arts and  218 Euro-North American  35, 187 school  215, 216 tea  22–5, 29–31 Davidson, John (Indian Agent)  35, 36, 41, 42, 44, 47 Davies, William  2 de Certeau, Michel  66 declassification  184–6, 195 n.39 decoloniality  80, 91 n.2, 132, 184, 185, 187 deconstruction  110, 121, 142 decoration  68, 103, 115, 116, 118, 119, 152, 157, 167, 168, 198, 200, 227 decorative arts  81, 82, 87, 232 defuturing  185, 187, 191 Deloraine, Tasmania  81 democracy  4, 58, 172, 199, 200, 202, 203, 207–9, 247 depoliticized  88 Descartes, René  229, 230 design  2, 3, 10, 21, 23, 27, 30–2, 42, 43, 52, 60, 61, 65–78, 82, 84,

262

INDEX 

86–91, 92 n.17, 116, 117, 120, 145, 157, 159, 171–4, 181, 183, 185, 187, 188, 191, 213, 216, 217, 220, 227, 229, 249 and class  66 and craft  65–78 education  2, 70, 71 emotionally durable  4, 144 fashion  140, 174, 233 feminist  7 graphic  7, 173 industrial  10, 66, 70–2, 171 and industrialization  66 jewellery  137, 139, 142 modern  65, 67, 71–3 philosophy  1, 13 of the South  181, 187 Turkey  65–78 designer-maker  66, 70, 83 de Terreros, Manuel Romero  189 developed  11 developing  11, 14, 65, 136 development  4, 36, 39–41, 45, 69, 71, 84, 88–90, 98, 100–2, 109, 110, 112, 114, 115, 117, 120, 141, 201, 213–16, 218–20 development discourse  4, 67, 69, 244 dictatorship  57, 125, 199, 200, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209 Di Giovanni, J. R.  111 digital  12, 133, 148, 149, 186, 191, 218 digitalization  65–7, 69, 72, 73 DIY  85, 87, 157, 172 Dresser, Christopher  21 Dussel, Enrique  188, 192 n.13 economics  2, 11–13, 23, 36, 68, 70, 84, 88–90, 139, 150, 151, 155, 156, 158, 160, 166, 170, 181, 187, 198, 200–4, 206, 217–19, 238, 244, 245 agency  148 home  213 inequality  199, 208 kinship  148–62 precarity  198, 199, 201 theory  71, 148, 185

economy  2–5, 14, 23, 45, 65, 66, 68, 83–6, 88–90, 98, 101–3, 145, 154, 156, 159, 181, 182, 187, 247 Australia  84 Chile  198–211 Finnish  214 orange  181 theory  148 Ecosophy  185, 187, 188, 191 education  3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 49, 59, 70–3, 84, 87, 89, 100, 102, 112–15, 141, 142, 166, 172, 181, 187, 189, 201, 202, 207, 212–24, 240–2, 246 Egypt  9, 11, 12, 79, 80, 83–90, 125, 131 potters  83–4 Revolution  84 El-Sayed, Habiba  125, 131–3 enfranchisement  38, 39, 44 England  2, 34, 43 environment  1, 3–6, 8, 12, 13, 15 n.15, 139–41, 143, 144, 166, 169, 174, 182–4, 191, 219, 238 epistemology  70, 72, 73, 110 Estermann, Josef  184–6, 188 Ethical Metalsmiths  141, 143 ethics  61, 69, 98–102, 105, 136, 138, 145, 157, 165, 166, 181, 183, 215 of care  6, 13 ethnic  51, 56, 59, 60, 87, 102, 105, 125, 128, 172 ethnography  12, 55, 67, 98–101, 148, 150, 234 ETSY  154, 158, 247 Eurocentrism  80, 110, 123, 133 Europe  12, 22, 23, 42, 97, 127, 245 Euro-settler  35, 38, 43, 45–7, 49 n.40, 123, 150, 151, 189 exhibitions  9, 10, 22, 23, 57, 61, 92, 166, 169–71, 175, 199, 207, 209, 234, 236 n.13, 246 Caughnawaga Exhibition  10, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 46 Great Exhibition London  22, 34, 35

INDEX 

international  30–1 Kyoto  10, 22, 23, 25, 28–30 expert  10, 15 n.3, 66, 69–73, 88, 97, 104, 160, 241 Fairclough, Wendy  169 fair-trade  138, 141, 206, 207 Farzana, K. F.  111 fascism  206 fashion  8, 53, 68, 87, 88, 136, 138–41, 143, 145, 172, 174, 228, 233, 246 fast  12, 136, 139, 140, 245 Fashion Revolution  139, 140 Fayoum Pottery School  90 feminist  6, 7, 204 Finland  13, 212–24 Flints, Celia  35, 42, 47 folk art  57, 102, 200 folklore  67, 68, 114 food  14, 15 n.7, 21, 25, 51, 81–3, 97, 114, 131, 132, 158, 201, 202, 204–6, 239, 244 Formosa  51 France  42 Freeman, Hadley  138 Fry, Tony  1, 3–4, 6, 86, 139, 145, 186, 191 Fukukita, Yasunosuke  29–30 furniture  9, 80–3, 87, 92 n.17 DIY  172 Japanese  22, 26–8, 30, 31 studio  172 Taiwanese  52 futola, see Rohingya embroidery gallery  81, 102, 105, 124–6, 141, 151, 167, 169, 171, 174, 205, 207 Gandhi, Mahatma  246, 249 n.13 Garland  17 n.46 Gates, Theaster  11, 124 GDP  242, 243, 249 n.9 geishas  28 Gell, Alfred  62, 149 gender  6, 13, 14, 28, 31, 44, 68, 71, 77 n.46, 91 n.2, 113, 119, 126, 131, 133, 163 n.39, 200, 203, 204, 208, 212, 214–17, 219, 220, 232 equality  44, 213, 217, 219, 220

263

Gengensai, Grand Tea Master  2, 9, 22, 24–32 Gen X  151, 152, 157 Germany  189 GHG  242, 243, 247 Gilligan, Carol  6 Glassie, Henry  67 globalization  2, 4, 8, 9, 65, 67, 68, 85, 87, 102, 105, 160, 173, 219, 245–7 Global North  204 Global South  9, 13, 88, 91 n.2, 185, 187 global warming  1, 238 Greer, Betsy  7 Guerrero, Jaime  169–70 guild  67, 187, 189 Guyana  12, 125, 131 Hale, Lady Brenda  138 hand  2, 3, 5–7, 116, 238, 240, 242, 247, 248 handmade  2, 3, 5, 12, 13, 31, 35–7, 44, 45, 47, 66, 69, 71, 81, 82, 85–9, 92 n.17, 93 n.27, 97, 98, 129, 136, 144, 149, 154–8, 160, 173, 182, 183, 187, 207, 214, 215, 225, 226, 234, 235, 238, 244 Hanisch, Carol  3, 234 Hegel, G. W. F.  228, 230–2, 235 Held, Virginia  6–7 Hemmings, Jessica  80, 81, 89 heritage  2, 5, 9, 14, 17 n.46, 52–4, 56, 65, 67, 69, 71, 88, 110, 112, 114, 115, 154, 169, 218 hierarchy  10, 44, 73, 87, 98, 126, 208, 234 craft and industrial production  69 design and craft  10, 65, 66, 72 Hilliard, Van  165, 166 history  2, 9, 10, 12, 13, 22, 26, 36, 41, 53, 55, 56, 66, 67, 69, 84, 91 nn.9–10, 111, 113, 123–7, 133, 134, 143, 150, 154, 157, 167, 169, 170, 173, 174, 189, 195 n.35, 197 n.63, 199–202, 205, 209, 212–24, 226, 229–34, 242, 247

264

INDEX 

Hollenbach, Julie  123, 124, 233 Hughes, Peter  141, 144 humanitarian work  109, 110, 113, 114 humanity  3–6, 13, 14, 29, 30, 100, 125, 136, 139–41, 145, 167, 168, 185–8, 193 n.23, 204, 237, 238, 244–6, 248 human rights violations  199–201 identity  2, 11–13, 23, 51, 52, 54, 57, 58, 61, 80, 83–5, 87, 112, 113, 115, 120, 124, 125, 128, 131, 136, 149, 156, 157, 160, 166, 181, 200, 217, 237, 245, 248, 249 n.13 cultural  61, 111, 112, 117, 132, 234 mixed-race  124, 125, 127, 129 Illich, Ivan  183 immigrant  125, 131, 150, 176 n.29 immigration  12, 68, 123, 169 Canada  123, 128 United States  123 India  71, 74, 245, 249 n.13 design and craft  65, 74 indigeneity  10, 36, 52, 54, 55 Indigenous  2, 8, 10, 12, 13, 42, 43, 51, 52, 57, 123, 125, 127–30, 151, 163 n.33, 168, 233 agriculture  36, 37, 40, 41, 45 Andean  13, 182, 185, 187, 189 Canada  10, 34–9, 41, 43–7 community  36–40, 42–7, 151 craft  35–8, 44, 45 culture  41, 51, 57, 58, 60, 61 dance  36, 45 exhibition  34–45 Māori  150, 162 n.19, 163 n.33 resistance  37, 47, 52 Taiwan  51–62 traditional knowledge  35, 36, 43, 46, 47 women  34, 35, 43–7 industrialization  9, 13, 31, 36, 65–7, 69, 73, 74, 84, 97, 98, 139, 162 n.24, 181, 184, 214, 226, 245 Industrial Revolution  187, 227, 228, 245

industry  3, 8, 11, 34, 36, 66, 68, 83, 86, 88, 140, 141, 150, 171, 172, 174, 201, 215, 226, 227, 229, 239, 246 creative arts  68, 84–6, 163 n.33, 182, 213 Ingin, A. Kiyak  69 Ingold, Tim  99 International Monetary Fund  86 International Organization for Migration (IOM)  11, 110, 112, see also Cultural Memory Centre Ireland  14, 143, 144, 237–49 Islam  82, 93 n.93, 111, 125 Istanbul  67–9, 72 Grand Bazaar  67, 68, 72 Jamaica  12, 125, 128, 129 Japan  9, 10, 21–32, 55–7 aesthetics  21 craftspeople  25–6 culture  22, 30, 42, 43, 45 economy  23 modernity  22–4, 28, 30–2 Western standards  22–6, 28, 31 jewellery  12, 67, 68, 72, 82, 87, 92 n.17, 136–47, 170 ethical  136, 138 fashion  139–41, 145 gems  82, 139, 141, 142 gold  82, 139, 141–4 political  137–8 silver  82, 137, 139, 142–4 unsustainable practice  141 Jørgensen, Marianne  17 n.40 JUNK  12, 141–5 Kahnawà:ke  38–42, 44, 46 Kanien’kehá:ka  35, 36, 44, 46 Karagöz, Boncuk  72 Karakuş, Gökhan  67, 69 Kentridge, William  123 Kiem, Matthew  4, 5, 139, 145 kilim  68, 77 n.58 kinship  12, 129, 148, 149, 151, 153, 156, 158–60 Klein, Naomi  4 Kokko, Sirpa  215, 217

INDEX 

Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party)  57, 58 Kyoto  22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30 Exhibition  10, 22, 23, 25, 28–30 Governor  21, 25, 30 Palace  25 labour  2, 4, 7, 12, 31, 66, 68, 71, 84, 85, 87, 88, 99, 126, 133, 139, 150, 156, 158, 163 n.39, 170, 171, 204, 215, 229, 238, 245, 247 lacrosse  35, 36, 42, 43, 47 Langlands, Alexander  5 Lanyu  51, 52 Laronde, Louise Kon8aseti  10, 35, 41–5, 47 Latin America  126–8, 181, 187–9, 191, 195 n.43 Latour, Bruno  70, 158 Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger  100 LeFebvre, Henri  66 Levrant de Bretteville, Sheila  7 LGBTQ  166, 170, 204 liberalism  189, 214, 231 neoliberal  2, 4, 13, 181, 185, 199–206, 208, 209 lithic  182, 187, 192 n.8 Little, Carl  171 local production/development  14, 55, 58, 61, 69, 81–3, 88, 105, 149, 154–7, 159, 160, 163 n.33, 195 n.44, 203, 207, 217, 237, 239, 240, 242, 245–8 Lovely Weather project  14, 237, 240 Luckman, Susan  66 McBrinn, Joseph  154 McCulloch, Malcolm  66, 73 Mcgovern, Alyce  8 McKibben, Bill  1 Manitoba  126, 128, 129 Manquet, Jacques  162 n.24 Māori  150, 162 n.19, 163 n.33 Marchand, Trevor  99 Margolin, Victor  7 Mari, Enzo  171–2 Marjanen, Päivi and Mika Metsärinne  213–15

265

Markle, Meghan (Duchess of Sussex)  138 Martinez, Monica Mercedes  125–8 Marx, Karl  66, 106 n.9, 208, 228 Mary, Queen of Scots  173 Masanao, Makimura  25, 26, 28 mass-production  2, 3, 10, 11, 53, 54, 62, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74, 82, 85, 86, 97, 136, 140, 141, 144, 162 n.24, 167, 187, 226, 245, 247 material culture  3, 10, 42, 43, 47, 51, 52, 54–7, 62, 66, 67, 111, 150, 161 n.6, 186, 229, 231 materials  3–5, 9, 12–14, 66, 67, 79, 81, 83, 85, 98, 100, 102, 104, 112, 117, 119, 120, 127, 138, 139, 142–4, 151, 152, 154, 157, 165, 168, 172, 182, 183, 185, 186, 189–91, 199, 200, 204, 206, 215, 216, 219, 229, 232, 234, 235, 237–9, 241, 242, 245–8 political nature  137 sourcing of  5, 136, 140, 141, 149 matriarchal society  34, 35, 42, 43, 47 Meiji  23, 26, 30 mestizaje  126–8, 134 Métis  12, 46, 125, 126, 129 Mexico  98–105, 130, 169, 189, 208 military  8, 22, 57, 125, 127, 134 n.10, 167, 174, 198, 199, 201–3, 208 Miller, Daniel  139, 163 Mingei movement  55, 57 Miyako Odori Festival  28 modern  53, 55, 62, 65–7, 71–3, 117, 139, 167, 185, 191, 213, 217, 219, 229–35, 236 n.7 modernity  10, 22, 23, 28, 30, 32, 36, 40, 53, 62, 65, 69, 123, 139, 141, 154, 229–31, 234 modernization  22, 24, 37, 40, 47, 83 Mohawk  40, 50 n.42 Montgomery, Lindsay  167 Montréal  36, 38–40, 42, 47 Morris, William  99, 227–30 Morris, William (glass)  168 Mother Earth/Nature  13, 182–4, 186–8, 190, 192 n.13, 244

266

Murray, Kevin  17 n.46, 136, 141 museum  2, 21, 51, 57, 60, 61, 138, 141, 151, 166, 169, 170, 172, 174, 218, 232, 235 Muslim  11, 131–3 Myanmar  11, 111–18 National Ceramic Educators Conference of America (NCECA)  124 Navarrete-Hernandez, Pablo and Fernando Toro  201 New Zealand  1, 2, 12, 148–64, 239 NGOs  11, 80, 81, 83, 87–90, 111, 114, 201 Nicholson, Heather  150 9/11  7, 132 Norbury, Ian  172 North America  8, 45, 97, 123, 132, 151 Oaxaca  11, 98, 101, 102, 105 woodcarving  98, 101, 102, 104, 105 O’Connell, Robert  169 odalisque  133 OECD  208 Okakura, Kakuzo  31 online  2, 17 community  156, 158–60 markets  12, 14, 144, 149, 158 Orlandi, A. Coskun and Y. Kösebay Erkan  67–9 Osaka  23 other, the  6, 44, 125 Ottoman Empire  10, 67, 72 Pachamama  13, 182–90 Pachasophy  181, 185, 190, 191 Page, Andrew  168 Paiwan  52, 56–9, 61 Panikkar, Raymond  183, 188, 190 patriarchal  43, 44, 174 Pavavalung, Sakuliu  58–60 Peguis reserve  129 Picasso, Pablo  167, 231 Pinochet, Augusto  7, 125, 127, 199, 201, 203, 204

INDEX 

plastic  15 n.15, 103, 139, 142–4, 195 n.44, 239, 248 poblaciones  13, 198–203, 206, 208 police  57, 130, 202 political  2–6, 8–14, 21–3, 27, 28, 31, 32, 34–6, 38, 40–2, 45–7, 51–8, 60, 62, 65, 67, 69, 73, 74, 79, 80, 88–91 n.3, 98, 101, 105, 111, 112, 139, 140, 149, 160, 165–78, 181–5, 187–91, 199–203, 208, 213, 219, 225–7, 229–34, 237–9, 244, 246, 249 n.13 art  123–35 change  109, 110, 114 consequences  113 education  207 elitism  66 jewellery  137–9, 141, 145 leadership  199, 203, 208 parties  57, 58, 80, 201–3, 207 personal  121, 151, 234 political vs. politics  80, 91 n.3 transpolitical  165 politics  3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 36, 39, 42, 44, 45, 47, 52, 55, 62, 86, 88, 125, 131, 136, 145, 165, 166, 168, 175, 182, 183, 187, 200, 213, 215, 226, 231 of craft education  212, 219 of craft markets  149 Polonius  230, 233 Portugal  189 postcolonial  91 n.2, 109–11, 121, 129 power  4, 5, 7, 8, 23, 24, 34, 35, 39, 46, 53, 54, 61, 68–70, 80, 98, 100, 105, 113, 124, 137, 149, 165, 183, 193 n.21, 200, 203, 204, 209, 225, 229, 233–5, 245–8 authoritarian  199, 201, 202 and class  65 colonial  58, 182 crafts  8, 53, 57, 248 doing/making  52 dynamics  129, 131 empowerment  70–2, 80, 81, 88, 89, 110, 111, 120, 133, 170, 235 imbalance  124

INDEX 

Indigenous  53–5, 61, 62 narrative  110 producers and consumers  52 purchasing  86, 245 soft  170 state and market  54, 62 structure  126 praxis  4, 173, 181–5, 188, 190, 192 n.13 protest  2, 8, 52, 94, 111, 112, 125, 137, 166, 173, 198, 199, 202–4, 208 Pussyhat Project  8 Queen Elizabeth I  173 Queen Elizabeth II  138 Queen Victoria  42, 47 quilts  8, 10, 35, 42–7, 240 Agnew, Teresa  174 AIDS  166 silk patchwork  41, 42, 44, 45, 47 Star  46 Todd, Barbara  173–4 UDHR  8 race  2, 8, 11, 12, 35, 44, 123, 125, 169, 204 mixed-race  123–34 Radical Jewelry Makeover (RJM)  12, 141–5 Rainbow Warriors  233 Rakhine  111, 115, 116 Rana Plaza factory collapse  140, 174 recycling  4, 15 n.15, 81, 86, 139, 172 refugee  1, 2, 11, 68, 109–16, 118, 120, 168, 172 Renaissance  229, 231 repair  4, 81, 85, 86 research field  58–61, 70–2, 101–5, 148–64, 237–49 practice-led  65, 70, 71, 73, 114–21 reuse  139, 141, 142, 144 rhetorical, see art Robertson, Kirsty  173 Rodríguez, Juan C.  188 Rohingya  11, 109–21 Rose, Gillian  124

267

runa (man)  182, 184–6, 191, 192 n.13 Ruskin, John  14, 99, 227 ryūrei style  22, 25–31 Saad, Reem  84, 87, 89, 92 n.13 Said, E. W.  110 San Martín Tilcajete  102–5 Santiago  13, 198–202, 205, 206 Schmahmann, Kim  172 Schnitzler, Arthur  225, 235 Schreckengost, Victor  167 science  14, 56, 100, 111, 182, 185, 238, 242 Sen, Amartya  71 Sennett, Richard  11, 66, 70, 85, 99–101, 104 Sen Rikyū 22, 26 Sevenhuijsen, Selma  6 sheep  14, 81, 238–42 Sherman, Ira  170 silk  10, 25, 35, 42, 47, 68 silver  137, 139, 142–4, 232 sincerity  14, 87, 225–36 skill  2, 3, 5, 7, 14, 43, 85, 86, 88–90, 92 n.17, 98–105, 113–15, 141, 143, 144, 156, 212–20, 226, 234, 245 Skyriver, Raven  168–9 Small, Pippa  138 Smithsonian American Art Museum  166, 171 social  4–6, 8, 9, 11–13, 28, 41, 69, 71, 73, 79, 80, 84, 86–9, 100, 102, 104, 111–14, 120, 133, 134, 151, 154–6, 158, 159, 182–4, 187, 191, 192 n.13, 199, 201–5, 208, 214, 217, 219, 220, 228–34, 244 action  165, 170, 173 agenda  213 justice  99, 129, 166, 175, 220 maintenance  212, 216 media  12, 85, 140, 148, 149, 154, 158, 159 networks  149, 153, 156, 158 order  166 reproduction  199, 200, 203–6, 208, 209

268

INDEX 

society  3, 87, 89, 99, 111, 125, 129, 131, 132, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 165, 166, 169, 175, 205, 212–16, 218–20, 226, 228–31, 234, 235 settler  53–5, 62 socioeconomics  66, 70, 71, 80, 84, 85, 113, 199, 200, 203–6, 208, 209 South Africa  123, 130, 171, 172 South America  13, 183 Spain  189 spirituality  13, 22, 30, 31, 125, 182, 184, 193 n.19, 246 Spivak, G. C.  110 Stevens, Dennis  157 storytelling  114–17, 120, 238 subaltern  110 Suffragettes  137, 138, 173 SUNY Potsdam  205–7 sustain-ability  4, 5, 145, 191, 199, 205, 250 sustainability (neoliberal)  4–5 sustainable  68, 69, 83, 112, 138, 144, 159, 176 n.13, 182, 191, 195, 213, 215, 217–19, 244, 247 unsustainable  141, 145 Sustainment, The  4–5, 145 Taiwan  9, 10, 51, 55–60, 62 colonialism  53 Council on Aboriginal Affairs  58 government  52 Indigenous  51–3, 56, 58 martial law  58 tradition  51 Tao  52 Tasmania  79, 81, 82, 89, 90 n.1, 141 Tasmanian Craft Fair  11, 81–2, 89 Taylor, Diana  126, 128, 129, 131, 133 Taylor, Paul C.  234 TBL (triple bottom line)  244 tea ceremony, Japanese  9, 10, 21–31 aesthetics  23 furniture  22, 27, 28, 30, 31 political  21–3, 25, 27, 28 utensils  21, 24, 27 Tea Cult of Japan  29 technical nutrients  142 technical work  215–17, 220

technique  5, 59, 67, 79, 86, 112, 116, 117, 120, 130, 169, 172, 184, 185, 188, 214–16, 219, 220 technology  3, 4, 9, 14 n.1, 55, 69, 73, 74, 141, 145, 151, 154, 160, 166, 171, 175 n.6, 182–5, 188, 190–2 n.13, 215, 220, 241, 242, 245, 247 temperature  248 Thomas, Nicholas  149 350.​o​rg  1, 4 Todd, Barbara  173–4 Tokyo  23–5 Tool, Ehren  167–8 tools  4, 14, 21, 24, 27, 31, 37, 82, 83, 102, 169–71, 183, 189, 190, 219, 240, 242, 243 tourism  10, 11, 14, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 35, 36, 51, 52, 57, 59, 60, 68, 81, 82, 86, 88, 102, 104, 149, 169, 185 tradition  4, 5, 10, 12, 14, 22, 25, 27, 28, 32, 35, 36, 41–3, 45–7, 52–4, 60–2, 66, 68, 69, 82, 83, 86–9, 102, 111–13, 115, 116, 119, 120, 129, 142, 154, 157, 167, 171, 174, 182, 187, 202, 205, 213, 215, 217, 220, 233 male role  112, 113, 119, 122 n.26, 203 Trilling, Lionel  14, 229–32 trousseau  68, 70, 71 Trudeau, Justin  46 Trump, President Donald  15 n.39, 138, 171 Tuna, Özlem  72 Turan, Gulname  67 Turkey  9, 10, 65–78 Ministry of Development  71 Tweedie, Jill  7 United Nations  111 Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People  54 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage  2 UNESCO Living Human Treasure  68

INDEX 

United States  2, 8, 12, 102, 123, 124, 128, 130, 138, 142, 158, 167, 169, 171, 206, 245 unsettlement  1, 2, 14 n.1, 166, 175 n.6 Ura-Senke school  22, 24, 32 Venkatesan, Soumhya  99 Walbank, William McLea  38–41, 46 war  12, 17 n.40, 22, 23, 31, 36, 150, 166, 168, 170, 172, 175, 189, 229 Japanese internment  176 n.15 WWII  57, 214 waste  14, 27, 39, 52, 139, 165, 227, 238, 242, 244, 247 Way of Tea  22, 28–30 weaponization  129, 131, 168 Webber, Stacey Lee  170–1 Western  2, 8–14, 36, 37, 42, 45, 55, 56, 77 n.46, 129, 132, 143, 166, 172, 182–9, 191, 225, 231, 233

269

White  123, 124, 126, 129, 133 whomademyclothes  140 women  6–8, 10–13, 28, 57, 80, 85, 88, 92 n.20, 103, 127, 133, 137, 148–64, 166, 168–70, 172, 199–204, 206, 208, 232, 239 Indigenous  34, 35, 43–7 mothers  114, 116, 119, 124, 127–9, 131, 138, 150, 156, 159, 176 n.29, 198, 204, 241 (see also Mother Earth) Rohingya  109–21 Turkey  67, 68, 70, 71 women’s culture  7, 112–15, 120, 121 Wood, William Warner  100 wool  93 n.27, 173, 237–49 blankets  12, 150–5 yarnbombing  8 Zweiman, Jayne  8

270