The contemporary geographies of craft‐based manufacturing

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on craft production to explore the ways in which the normative landscape of craft is affecting the contemporary geographies of craft‐based manufacturing. Craft forms of production have enjoyed a revival in recent decades in what is now called the “third‐wave” craft movement. In this paper, I consider the origins and characteristics of third‐wave craft as well as its historical precedents. I highlight 3 distinct geographies associated with contemporary craft‐based manufacturing, including a fusion of industrial and cultural production in industrial workspaces, a relocalization of small‐scale industrial production in advanced economies, and a tendency towards spatial agglomeration in both urban and rural areas. Drawing on the case of the American craft‐brewing sector, I offer a picture of these distinct geographies in a representative manufacturing industry and highlight the need to consider the ways in which craft production and articulations of its values manifest differently in different industries. Finally, I conclude by offering reflections on the landscape of craft‐based manufacturing and potential avenues for future geographical engagements with craft production.

Recovering Tradition in Globalising Rural China: Handicraft Birdcages in Da’ou village

“…The perseverance of Da’ou village as a distinctive centre for birdcage‐making may arguably be attributed to the close policing of the inter‐generational transmission of knowledge within the village and the impermeability of imagined community boundaries to knowledge transfer. This contrasts both with the situation more commonly observed in Europe, where many ‘rural crafts’ have become generic and non‐place specific and the revitalisation of rural craft industries has often by led by in‐migrants (Kneafsey et al ; Herslund ; Fox Miller ); and with the ‘deterritorialisation’ of craft‐making through processes of industrialisation documented by Gough and Rigg () in craft villages in south east Asia.…”

“…The suppression of rural crafts has never been complete, however, and as Fox Miller () notes, successive waves of craft revival since the industrial revolution have drawn on anti‐modernist and anti‐globalist sentiments, some of which have found distinctively rural spaces of expression, from the ‘back‐to‐the‐land’ movement (Fisher ), to more commercially‐oriented ventures appealing to post‐Fordist searches for authenticity (Fox Miller ). As such, Fox Miller () observes, craft products can appeal both to progressive sensibilities around quality, ethical consumption and local production, and to conservative impulses for ‘a nostalgic valorisation of historic practices of making’ (p. 3; see also Williams ; Krugh ; Luckman ).…”

“…In Europe, and other parts of the global north, rural craft industries were diminished by industrialisation and urbanisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The recent proliferation of artisan craft workshops and businesses has emphasised their more artistic outputs as part of rural culture economies, sometimes tapping into embedded local traditions of specialist craft making, but in many cases involving the hybridisation of products, styles and techniques and the production of generic ‘rustic’ artefacts (Kneafsey et al ; Mayes ; Fox Miller ; Mitchell and Shannon ). Elsewhere, in Africa, Asia, Latin America and parts of Eastern Europe, artisan craft production has persisted as a mainstream part of rural economies, including in specialist ‘craft villages’, only more recently encountering pressures to restructure, modernise and engage new markets (Rogerson ; Eyferth , ; Kimura ; Gough and Rigg ; Mahanty and Dang ; Chu ; Pudianti et al ).…”

Craftsmanship as a Carrier of Indigenous and Local Ecological Knowledge: Photographic Insights fromSámi Duodjiand Archipelago Fishing

“…The direct dependency on and involvement in nature incites attentiveness, which can cultivate self-restraint and responsibility, because people can become positioned to experience and monitor the effect of their actions (Elias [1939; Jonas 1984; Kallis 2019). Second, social and human geographers argue that craftsmanship offers better possibilities for sustainable consumption and less-intensive resource use, because through skill, knowledge, and experience people are able to re-use, repair, repurpose and reconfigure materials and products (Miller 2017).…”

‘What is industrial culture anyway?’ Theoretical framing of the concept in economic geography

“…The first takes the socio-cultural foundation of cities or regions to support economic success or competitiveness (James et al, 2006). The second focuses on cultural (and creative) industries, where the emphasis is on the consumption and production of symbolic cultural products, such as high value-added craft products (Grodach & Gibson, 2019;Miller, 2017). However, industrial culture has not found a permanent place in cultural economic geography.…”