Craft Reconfiguration: Rediscovering Traditional Craft Despite Modernizing Forces

Abstract

Using an inductive research design, the current study provides an exploration of how traditional craft can be reconfigured through entrepreneurial action, revealing unique processes by which craft persists as a source of meaningful jobs and income, despite modernizing forces. Whereas prior assessments primarily explore how modernization reconfigures traditional craft, the focus in this article is on entrepreneurship’s role in challenging cultural remnants attached to craft while maintaining traditional elements in contemporary craft. The findings indicate that craft can be recontextualized, revitalized, and repurposed through entrepreneurial action, such that it then can be rediscovered and adapted to contemporary market demands. First, craft is recontextualized, from a culturally anchored tradition mainly performed at home to a commercially embedded practice performed in organizational settings. Second, craft is revitalized through modern approaches to production, equipment, and design that turn craft into something more accepted in the broader economy and enable it to compete with industrialized products. Third, craft is repurposed, from a practice performed for family and friends to artistry that addresses market needs, shifting from marginalization to a far more commercial practice. These findings offer theoretical contributions to emerging efforts to rediscovering craft, in that they reveal the unique processes by which craft, even if pushed to the margins, can persist as a vital source of economic and social prosperity in the marginalized communities that rely on it.