The Artisan Economy and the New Spirit of Capitalism

Abstract

Against the backdrop of deindustrialization and the rise of the service economy, small artisan businesses have been promoted as a liberatory alternative to large-scale enterprise and mass production in the wake of the 2007 global financial crisis. We analyze advice manuals for aspiring artisan entrepreneurs by adapting Boltanski and Chiapello’s (2005) framework and analysis of management textbooks to investigate books for would-be artisan business owners. These texts are “manuals of moral instruction” (58) that offer the reader the promise of a more fulfilling and ethical life through self-employment. We reveal that the artisan economy promoted by these advice manuals represents a further evolution in capitalism’s co-optation of the artistic critique via the oppositional strata of punk and indie youth subcultures—and their style.