Craft

Abstract

Steeped in ethnographic methodology and the ethical lessons of history, anthropology is a field well suited to study craft, and yet it is often a marginal area of study within the discipline. How have studies of craft been meaningful within the field of anthropology and how do ideas of craft—as object, idea, geography—work as discursive tools of meaning making? Craft works semiotically within larger contexts of meaning and culture. Looked at in this way, craft becomes a powerful indicator of social rupture. Asking why “craft” as we study certain types of labor allows us to see how people tell themselves, their places, and their identities through narratives of particular categories of work.