Learning Craft Skills in China: Apprenticeship and Social Capital in an Artisan Community of Practice

Abstract

This article discusses some of the consequences of collectivization and subsequent privatization of handicraft in China in the second half of the 20th century on ways of learning and modes of apprenticeship. It argues that, after the privatization of the ceramics workshops of Dingshu, Jiangsu province, an ethos of sharing previously introduced by collectivization continues to determine the paths of transmission of practical knowledge and facilitates exclusion of access to knowledge from community outsiders.

Conceptions, Purposes and Processes of Ongoing Learning across Working Life

“…They are also of the kind that can develop links and associations amongst what they already know and can do, and that are required for developing depth in understanding and procedures that are strategic (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989;Collins et al, 1989). They can also be personal practices on the part of experienced workers who might for instance talk aloud as they engage in tasks (Gowlland, 2012). Then, there are events that are outside of everyday work activities that are used to promote learning from events arising through everyday work activities.…”

Francophone Perspectives of Learning Through Work

“…So, rather than being subject to and dependent upon a more expert mentor and teacher (i.e. tradesperson), the locus of that approach to learning an occupation is proposed as being founded on novices' interests, including knowing how to engage in that process of learning (Bunn 1999;Gowlland 2012;Webb 1999). So, accounts from the outside of dominant perspectives and countries have the potential to challenge orthodox views with implications, for instance, about how this form of occupational preparation should progress.…”

Labor and Precariousness inChina's Porcelain Capital

“…However, workers' responses to these circumstances are influenced by local histories, cultural ideologies, and social formations. For example, while globalization of the garment industry caused "desolation, disappointment, and industrial decline" in Trinidad, Prentice finds that Trinidadian garment workers responded by taking pride in drawing on their skills, networks, and personal ingenuity to make a living as entrepreneurs (Prentice 2008:55;2012). Neoliberal imperatives of individual responsibility converged with local cultural values of personal ambition and a long history of occupational multiplicity in the region to give precariousness a particular cast.…”

“…Several scholars have described the loss in status that China's urban proletariat experienced as the state sector shrunk, with many workers undergoing personal and familial crises as they were laid off (Hanser :157; see also Won ; Liu ). In rural settings, too, workers in handicraft industries once incorporated into the centralized economy lost their state enterprise and collective sector jobs as the government pursued market reforms (Cooper and Jiang ; Mueggler ; Eyferth :160–162; Gowlland ). In the silk industry, privatization caused a global market collapse (Strange and Newton ).…”

“…Gowlland finds that ceramists in Yixing make extensive use of their former co‐workers from the collective factory. He argues strongly for the ongoing significance of social ties formed in the collective factory ().…”