Crafting sustainability? An explorative study of craft in three countercultures as a learning path for the future

Abstract

This article explores and seeks to identify what 'crafting sustainability' could mean in relation to education for sustainable development (ESD). Certain ESD craft pedagogies are explored in three countercultures (from 1900, 1968 and 2017 Licensing:All content in NJSTS is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. This means that anyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the material as they like, provided they follow two provisions: a) attribution -give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.b) share alike -any remixing, transformation or building upon the material must itself be published under the same license as the original. NJSTS vol 5 issue 2 2017Crafting sustainability 9 IntroductionThis article connects craft with education for sustainable development (ESD). One of the interests emerging out of the current craft movement (Cummins, 2010 [r] , Jacob, 2013 [r] , Luckman, 2015 [r] ) is that craft and craft knowledge are promoted as contributing to environmental and sustainability issues and that learning craft therefore contributes to a ). Accordingly, sustainable development is defined as a social process in which ecological, social and economic processes are treated and analyzed as three interdependent yet mutually reinforcing dimensions of development (WCED, 1988 [r] ; SOU, 2004[r]). Moreover, education is often put forward as a pathway to sustainable development. Indeed, quality education is integrated to all goals and specifically to number four in the United Nations 17 sustainable development goals in Agenda 2030 (UNESCO, 2015 [r] ).Acknowledgement of the importance of access to education is paired with an increasing interest in the acceleration of quality education at all levels and areas of education (ibid. ). Hence, in order to understand "crafting sustainability"we need to explore what are privileged as important in a practice' sustainability narratives and how such pedagogy is being made. The article's first section provides a background of craft and craft education. The second section presents the theoretical framework of sustainability and educational philosophies, the methodology and empirical data. The third section presents the findings: a text presentation followed by a summary. In the article's final section, the findings are discussed with the philosophical typology and the implications for ESD. Background: craft and craft educationCraft is often associated with something that is genuine and handmade. According to Frayling (2011:9 [r] ), this is manifested when major manufacturers promote their wares using craft language, such as "handmade", "hand-finished", "made by our craftsmen", often in combination with 'organic', a word that is repeatedly associated with craft. But what does it mean more specifically? Adamson (2013 [r] ) argues that if we want to understand how craft operates around ...

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