Spirituality in creative work: how craft entrepreneurs in Ghana cope with precarity

Abstract

ABSTRACT We investigate how craft entrepreneurs navigate the precarious conditions widespread in Ghana’s creative industries. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with weavers of Kente cloth and smocks in the Northern, Savannah and Ashanti regions, we focus on the role of spirituality as a significant resource for coping with the extreme challenges and uncertainties faced by craftspeople in this context. Our empirical findings reveal how deploying spiritual narratives, including everyday invocations of God and divine spirits, helped our interviewees attain a sense of purpose and empowerment while further strengthening their communal ties, including care and mutual support for a shared way of weaving life. As our data further reveal, however, these important benefits of spirituality in creative work came with constraining effects, trapping weavers in dismal working conditions and reinforcing gender boundaries and exclusion by tabooing women’s engagement in craft entrepreneurship.