Craft Identity Research Articles

Vocational Teachers’ Craft Knowledge and Working-life Experiences in Building and Construction: a Narrative Study of Embodied and Tacit Learning

Vocational teachers in building and construction in upper secondary school deal with complex situations of an organisational, vocational, and social kind. Recent research has shown that the teacher is the single most important factor for students’ learning in school. Teacher-student relationships and the teacher’s repertoire of teaching practices can be more important for the student’s learning than class size, the classroom environment, and the student’s socio-economic background. Beyond passing the journeyman’s test, we know little about the craft knowledge and working life experiences vocational teachers in the building and construction trades have acquired over many years in the construction industry, and thus, what knowledge and experiences they bring into the vocational teacher role. Learning in working life often takes place as an integrated part of work, and it is difficult to observe how learning happens. Craft knowledge is often tacit and personal. In this narrative, phenomenologically inspired study, learning is investigated as a bodily, internal process that simultaneously depends on the interaction with the material and social environment. Through narrative interviews with eleven vocational teachers in plumbing and carpentry, this study explores the teachers’ backgrounds as vocational students and apprentices, and their extensive experience as craftsmen on different construction sites. The analysis shows that the building site drives craft-related actions and situations that generate a strong craft identity, professional working life experiences, and personal growth. Craftsmen at the construction site work under constant pressure in a social, physically, and mentally demanding work environment and consecutively solve problems. As professional craftsmen in the complex working environment, the teachers also acquired social and organisational expertise, which they intuitively transferred to their role as vocational teachers.

Broken to the trade: French lacemakers’ tools as sources of pride and pain

Abstract Lacemaking in nineteenth-century France continued to be organized on a ‘putting-out’ basis, involving tens of thousands of women working from home. Their tools—pillow, bobbins, pins—were cheap or easy to make, and also highly portable, enabling lacemakers to gather in groups while working. These same tools held strong emotional and symbolic connotations, both for lacemakers themselves and for the art lovers and social crusaders who were determined to protect the trade from mechanization. Pillows, bobbins and other tools could be decorated with sentimental, religious or other messages. Lace tools were anthropomorphized in local dialects, made into ‘servants’. They were exchanged as gifts between couples, lent by neighbours and passed down from previous generations. They invoked and embodied lacemakers’ relationships, as well as their own craft identity. On their feast days lacemakers paraded replicas of their tools as a public statement of craft pride. Yet in lacemakers’ work culture, the tools were sometimes depicted as instruments of torture or as weapons used against those who forced them to work so long for so little. Lacemakers were ‘broken to the trade’ (rompu au métier) by their tools and the bodily attitudes they were forced to adopt. As the market for homemade lace declined and lacemaking became ever more closely associated with poverty, some lacemakers destroyed their tools as a protest at the grinding discipline of the trade.

Identity Navigation and Self-Positioning in a Changing Craft World: Creativity and Cultures of Emerging Self-Employed Craft Workers in Jingdezhen

Following four-months of ethnographic fieldwork among the young, self-employed craft workers in Jingdezhen, this article explores the diverse identities and emerging cultures associated with craft that differ from the popular imaginaries of craftspeople, or shouyiren, in the Chinese mainstream media that focus on the older generations. By conducting participant observation, in-depth interviews, and the diary method, I found that while the profiles of “craft workers” or “craftspeople” are favoured by the recent waves of self-employed craft workers in Jingdezhen, these workers do not fully identify as craftspeople, traditionally characterised by their professionalism, perfectionism, enthusiasm, and persistence; nor as artists. Instead, they are positioned in between different identities, such as traditional craftsman, workman, artist-crafts worker, and artist. I argue that the wavering between different identities according to the occasion and targeted audience not only allows self-employed craft workers in Jingdezhen to escape from the monotonous routines and patriarchal norms of the older generations’ craft conventions, but also facilitates a re-configuration of craft identities within a craft industry that is changing. Secondly, I found that creativity is emphasised in their self-positioning and becomes an alternative means of achieving recognition, status and mobility in Jingdezhen’s craft industry. Based on these discussions, the study provides a fuller picture of a new form of craft labour developing in Jingdezhen.

The Story of the Karuna Textile Doll

India has a large diversity of cultures and traditions that express themselves in the intangible as well as material culture of the different regions in the country. The current situation of pandemic has, in its process of disruption of the norms, created a physical distance between the crafts of India and the market. In this regard, “Creative Dignity” is a voluntary initiative that has brought together professionals, educators, and the artisans of the country with the aim to provide an ecosystem for the artisans to survive in the COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 perspective. One such attempt under the umbrella is the Karuna Doll, made by women using local textiles as a medium of expression of regional craft identities, focusing on creating individual Karuna Dolls as representatives of the craft language of every state. The Karuna Doll is an embodiment of the cultural identity, and an expression of the idea of “going places.” This article focuses on creating a dialogue with the help of interviews and follows a descriptive method to assess the kind of cultural expression this doll is aimed to become, and its impact on the artisan community as a means of storytelling of a cultural identity.

Industry, Craft, Modern Architecture, and Regional Identity at the Paris 1925 and 1937 International Expositions

This article examines the role of regionalism in French architecture and design at the 1925 and 1937 International Expositions and the complex interrelationships between industry and handcraft in these fields. Often overlooked, the rise of regionalism and a search for distinctive, geographically-rooted identities worked to dismantle long-established hegemonic trends of cultural centralization that emphasized Paris as the ultimate arbiter for French architecture and design in favor of a more accurate representation of national diversity.

The Effect of Sustainability Manager’s Field Engagement on Organizational Adoption of Sustainability

Social activists are often successful in their disputes with target organizations, as is evident from the concessions targeted organizations often make. However, concessions do not necessarily result in substantive changes. This is because over a longer period of time, activists are not fully capable of monitoring and maintaining direct pressure on targets or continuing to generate negative publicity. This paper contributes to research at the intersection of movements and organizations by investigating if, and if so, how individuals that are formally tasked with instituting movement-aligned changes, termed “insider allies,” achieve subsequent and substantive changes in their organization. Using data on U.S. higher education organizations, we examine the effect of field-level engagement from sustainability managers—the insider allies, in our case—on adopting a voluntary sustainability reporting tool which is an indicator of change beyond initial commitments. The results of a longitudinal quantitative analysis of 622 schools demonstrate that the more sustainability managers have participated in field interactions, the greater the likelihood that their school adopts the voluntary reporting tool. Our findings indicate that engagement in field-level interactions with a range of actors around central issues that are pertinent to the movement enables insider allies to mobilize resources and craft identities as change agents that enable them to drive substantive change within their organizations.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Looking to the Digital: An Introduction to Digital Storytelling

Storytelling, Self, Society, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2020), pp. 153–156. Copyright © 2021 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201 Hill Introduction to the Special Issue Introduction to the Special Issue Looking to the Digital: An Introduction to Digital Storytelling Amanda Hill D igital media has profoundly altered the way we function on a daily basis. Creative, professional, and social practices alike have been affected, and the articles in this special issue showcase several ways in which this happens. As this special issue demonstrates, our engagement with digital media has transformed the way ordinary folk and professional users develop, tell, and share stories, challenging notions of narrative constraint, authenticity, and ethics. This special issue of Storytelling, Self, Society investigates some of the myriad ways digital media has specifically altered storytelling practices such as the development and presentation of identity, narratives of community and culture, and the development of works within digital infrastructures. The articles in this special issue interweave conversations about the affordances and opportunities of digital narratives, taking into account the ways in which storytellers deliver content and share their identities in mediated spaces. Additionally, in their own ways, each of these articles considers the social implications of digital media and the collaboration of storytelling and meaning-making practices therein. Some specifically use social media, like Facebook and Instagram, while others examine media such as video games, online learning platforms, and video creation. Yet, each article discusses the ways in which the narratives or works created using digital media affect multiple people, including the content creators themselves and the readers of such content. 154 n Introduction to the Special Issue Together, these seven articles help establish practices, techniques, and trends of narrative-making and narrative-sharing within the field of digital media. They consider the connection between private and public lives for media users, discuss how users craft identity and narrative to work within the limits and affordances of digital media and specific platforms, and reflect on how diverse audiences respond to the impact of digital stories. These articles affect and speak to wider trends within a sphere of digital storytelling practices, providing a glimpse into a vast universe of techniques guided by a combination of traditional storytelling factors and the affordances of new media. Throughout this special issue, the authors tackle the themes of authenticity, identity, and storytelling. We begin with Farhad Bahram’s examination of how digital technologies adapt artistic storytelling practices. In “Digital Storytelling and Creative Destruction,” Bahram asks “What is the function of storytelling in a world of innovative technology and information? Is it about the creation of a ‘new’ narrative, or destruction of an ‘old’ one?” Next we turn to two articles that address the different ways people work within the limits of the media to tell narratives of identity and culture. Anelise Farris considers the impact of disability in digital gaming, especially as it pertains to the creation of gamer avatar identities. In “The Player and the Avatar: Performing as Other,” the author surveyed diverse gamers and uses her findings to examine the ways these players create their virtual identities. The author then discusses the ways in which video games might be useful for fostering empathy and support for the disabled community. Adam Brown and Emily Wade then consider how authenticity and identity shape narratives of education between teachers and students. The authors push us to consider the ways professionals create online identities in their professional roles in their article, “Serendipity, Vulnerability, and Imperfection: Harnessing Live Video for ‘Authentic’ Teacher Performances.” Specifically, the authors move us into the realm of education. They discuss the ways in which educators shape “teacher identities” in digital platforms such as social media. Using in-depth analysis of educational theory and a thoughtful consideration of the concept of authenticity, the authors approach the performative aspects of teaching. Here, teaching becomes a narrative students and teachers play into. The authors propose that there are three key factors that encourage an understanding of authenticity in live streamed lectures: serendipity, imperfection, and vulnerability. Hill n 155 The remaining articles discuss social media user practices to create authenticity , identity, and narrative. The authors focus on practices of narrative creation through social...

Story Work: Non-Proprietary Autonomy and Contemporary Television Writing

Based on interviews with three dozen working writers in American television, this paper argues that TV writers assert their status as labor to guarantee their shared craft identity with novelists, dramatists, and authors of other conventional literary material. The tension between writers’ desire for literary prestige on one hand, and their recognition that they create at the behest of company executives, on the other, emerges, alternately, in the imagined difference between writers and producers and, most basically, between autonomous creators and corporate hacks. Our novel observation is that writers’ identification with labor, including their commitment to their union, the Writers Guild of America, plays a central role in resolving these tensions. Union membership solves a problem at the heart of contemporary TV writing insofar as it transforms a necessity into a virtue; opposing management as labor, the writer registers her opposition to creative input that might otherwise compromise her sense of artistic integrity. That opposition allows writers to imagine themselves at odds with the studios and networks that employ them, and at the same time to commit to artistic over and against corporate values.

A Computer-Mediated Escape from the Closet: Exploring Identity, Community, and Disinhibited Discussion on an Internet Coming Out Advice Forum

Research suggests that gay men and lesbians, as a product of being raised by heterosexuals in a heterosexist culture, are often shielded from information to help them cope with their stigmatized identity in their early years. Unsurprisingly, this community of individuals has been found to use the Internet more heavily than their heterosexual counterparts. This study examined an advice sub-forum on a popular set of forums designated for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) people negotiating the coming out process. Employing online disinhibition as a framework, and drawing from an identity management standpoint, a thematic analysis uncovered seven unique ways that LGBTQ people create community and craft identities in a computer-mediated context.

Masculinity and Material Culture in Technological Transitions: From Letterpress to Offset Lithography, 1960s-1980s.

Between the 1960s and the 1980s the printing industry in advanced capitalist economies underwent dramatic technological change. While the transition from "hot metal" compositing to computerized typesetting has been extensively analyzed, there was another transformation occurring simultaneously: in the pressroom, letterpress was gradually replaced by offset lithography. Many letterpress machinists retrained, moving from a heavy, manual technology (with an entrenched patriarchal culture) to a method that was faster and less physically taxing. However, unlike their compositor counterparts, the press-machinists' transition involved a continuity of traditional masculine craft identities rather than a rupture associated with "deskilling." Intrinsic to this experience of technological change was a masculine embodiment that was attuned to and shaped by the materiality and aesthetics of printing technologies. This article establishes how masculine craft identities do not rely exclusively on skill-based mastery of traditional technologies, but also relate to other dimensions of technology, such as aesthetics, embodied "know-how," and the physicality of industrial machinery.

Who gets to be a writer? Exploring identity and learning issues in becoming a fiction author

Drawing upon a research study on lifelong learning, citizenship, and fiction writing, this paper explores issues around identity and learning in becoming a fiction author. Five main thematic areas are discussed: (1) envisioning a writing career, (2) compelled to write, (3) learning the craft, (4) getting published, and (5) online identity. The challenges, hurdles, and motivational factors in pursuing a career in a field as tenuous as fiction writing are explored. The paper argues that fiction writers, like many people who work in the creative sector, have a strong desire to engage in work that they consider to be meaningful. Those who succeed demonstrate great perseverance. As the impact of new technologies and social media shape and change the publishing sector, there are new challenges as well as opportunities that writers will need to learn about and address as they develop their career trajectories.

The Rhetoric of Heavy Metal Resistance: Musical Modalities in Iraqi Public Life

Abstract This article explores the possibilities of heavy metal as an active and vital part of Iraqi civic life. Using a rhetorical analysis, the public dimensions of Iraqi heavy metal are shown to offer cathartic relief and public critique, craft identities and community, and foster modes of identification between Iraqi and Western public spheres. A survey of resources (over 100 texts total) was conducted primarily around the bands Acrassicauda and Dog Faced Corpse. Texts for analysis narrate artists' relationships to their music, to Iraq and to their sociopolitical condition. This article concludes that heavy metal acts as a modality, or way of crafting publics, in Iraq. Rooted in the sounds and social fabric of today's Iraqi youth, heavy metal modalities offer a unique amalgam of personal pain, public commentary and global cultural ties that succinctly capture the tension and struggle of a transitioning new Iraq.

About Face: Mapping Our Institutional Presence

In this article, we situate the web sites of technical and professional writing programs as important institutional spaces that serve as interfaces to particular values, beliefs, and practices. Specifically, we examine the ways in which the web sites of United States-based programs craft identity and anchor these programs. We also analyze the ways in which the digital interfaces we create to represent our work do and don’t mesh with who we are as a field and what we value theoretically and pedagogically. We borrow from the work of James Porter, Patricia Sullivan, Stuart Blythe, Jeff Grabill, and Libby Miles to articulate what we mean by institutional space, and extend their model of institutional critique into digital space. Further, we offer a three-fold framework for analyzing institutional spaces, related to institutional and technological dynamics, issues of agency and representation, and aesthetic dimensions.

Beyond the Self-expressive Creative Worker

Evidence from industry reports, labor union data, and interviews with producers and union officials indicates that while the demand for media products and the number of productions continues to rise, much of the increase in demand is in low-budget features and extremely low-budget production for cable networks. In this production environment, the conglomerates are pressuring producers to reduce labor costs and produce a larger number of low-cost products. Producers are using various strategies to reduce costs, including requiring more flexibility from the production workforce with respect to the length of workdays and working conditions. This article examines how production trends, influenced by conglomerate domination of production and distribution, are affecting the media workforce. In particular I look at three tendencies. The first is a widening split between core workers and peripheral workers employed in industry projects. The second is a change in professional and craft identities as a result of technological specialization by freelancers and the loss of union control over production projects, especially at the low end of the budget spectrum. Finally, there is the persistence of `hard-wired' social and economic networks to reduce worker and employer risk. These networks foster and reinforce labor segmentation among women and men, and among ethnic groups, restricting access to job opportunities and careers.

The Reinvention of Tradition: An Ethnographic Study of Spondylus Use in Coastal Ecuador

Archaeologists have long noted the importance of Spondylus in the archaeological record of Ecuador. However, no one has attempted to understand contemporary Spondylus use and its relation to the precolumbian past. This research attempts to understand contemporary Spondylus use in coastal Ecuador by focusing on issues of craft production and identity formation. Using an approach that combines both archaeological and ethnographic information, this paper attempts to understand the role of Spondylus craft production in the formation of a localized identity.

Craft and Social Identity of Metalworkers in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt

Craft and Social Identity of Metalworkers in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt

Work restructuring and changing craft identity

This article explores the changes in worker identity that can occur during manufacturing restructuring – specifically those linked to the declining status of craft work – through an in-depth case study of Weaveco, a UK carpet manufacturer. An analysis of changes in the labour process is followed by employee reactions centred on the demise of the traditional craft identity of male carpet weavers. The voices of the weavers dramatize the tensions involved in reconstructing their masculine identity, and we consider the implications this has for understanding gendered work relations.

Divided they stand: Hollywood unions in the information age

In an effort to increase labour power, trade unions representing communications and creative workers in North America have pursued a form of convergence, merging with each other and restructuring themselves along similar lines to their employers. This paper examines the issues surrounding labour convergence by taking up the failed merger between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. It finds that, although the leaders of both unions supported the merger, the particular characteristics of the unions, including their culture, sense of craft identity and the lived experience of members, derailed the effort.

Making Time

This article adopts a point of view of practice theories and elucidates how temporal orientations commence in the interactions of humans and the material world. Empirically the article focuses on the contemporary practices of wooden boating. Such practices offer a variety of different temporal orientations, which include emancipatory uchronias, flow states, altruistic care of common heritage and craft identities of mastering traditional skills. These positions within wooden boating result out of a distinct historic development. The practices of wooden boating also frequently imply stress and heavy toll on time, and entail subtle negotiations between self-determination and duties as a practitioner.

‘In transition’: choice and the children of New Zealand’s economic reforms

New Zealand’s rapid emergence as a late‐modern, neo‐liberal society following 1984 led to a transformation in the institutional infrastructure for youth transitions from school to post‐school worlds. Our research focuses on the ways that young people born after 1984 craft identities in transition. We investigate their perspectives on transition in their last year of school, and the processes by which they make choices about post‐school destinations. In particular, we examine the extent to which the transitions they negotiate are shaped by the institutional infrastructure for transition established by policy. Expecting some degree of mismatch between the complexities of participants’ lives and the linear transition process implicit in policy, we found instead a combination of traditional assumptions (that transition would be a straightforward, linear process) and late‐modern assumptions (about the construction of elective biographies through active choice). These combined to produce a particular perception of risk among participants.