Anthropology Of Craft Production Research Paper

1. Craft Specialization, The Division Of Labor, And Commodization

The division of labor by gender and age has been basic in human societies from the simplest hunter-gatherers through pastoralism, simple and more complex forms of agriculture, to urban societies up until the industrial revolution, and remains important today. In small-scale societies where all adult men and women practice the same craft skills, these tend to be carried out as part of the domestic economy. Kin roles are also economic roles. In this ‘domestic mode of production’ (Sahlins 1972), craft products are made for both use and exchange. Craft skills are learned from older same-sex kin in the course of assisting with craft production. The developmental cycle of the domestic group reproduces the unit of craft production.

As societies become larger and more complex, emerging urban centers can support craftsmen who specialize in a single product (iron knives, silk cloth, pottery for cooking). Repeatedly we find that specialized production is associated with refinements in technology. With a specialist division of labor, craft products become commodities as they are exchanged for other commodities or enter the market. Hart writes that the central feature of increasing economic complexity is the integration of the division of labor in a nexus of commodity production and exchange; and that there is a tendency towards the progressive incorporation of ever more aspects of social life as commodities. ‘The commodity is human labor embodied in a good or service offered to society rather than be consumed by its producer. As such, commodisation may be defined as the progressive abstraction of social labor’ (Hart 1982).

As the nexus of production and exchange becomes more elaborate, new patterns of the division of labor appear. This pattern can be seen in the independent towns of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. In Europe in the Middle Ages, textile production for an expanding market became organized as manufacture, first in specialist guild workshops, and then in rural cottage industry which took two forms. Cottage-craftsmen and women raised or bought the raw materials which they spun and wove into cloth, and sold locally to merchant buyers. The cottage-crafts-men owned raw materials, tools, and the finished cloth, planned their own work, and dealt directly with the market, although vulnerable to its fluctuations. In the other form of cottage industry, merchant manufacturers supplied the thread, often the loom, and owned the finished cloth. Weavers were paid for their work, in effect selling their labors as cottage-laborers. Rural cottage craft production organized by merchant capital is an example of what has been termed ‘proto-industrialization.’ With the harnessing of water-and then steam-power the invention of machines to replace handcrafts skills became possible. Such machines brought workers into factories, but the organization of components of production in manufacturing remained in many ways the same (machines now did the work of spinning, warping, weaving, finishing, dyeing) (Goody 1982).

Clearly, the industrial revolution has radically changed the conditions of craft production. It is no longer central to the production and exchange of commodities in industrial societies. Further, Western manufactured goods and industrial production have become integral to the economies of developing countries. Yet a number of niches of craft production remain. Social anthropology, grounded in participant observation, has addressed the topic of craft production during the twentieth century in several ways.

2. Theoretical Frameworks Of The Anthropology Of Craft Production

2.1 Material Culture And Folklore

The nineteenth century excitement with evolution was shared by anthropology, and carried over into the twentieth century with the Folklore school in which the study of material culture was central, especially in the United States and the Scandinavian countries. The focus was on detailed description and mapping of material culture, with a view of preserving a record of rapidly disappearing ‘early’ forms of society. Where craft production was treated it was within this frame-work.

2.2 Ethnographies In Social Anthropology

The ethnographies of this tradition took as problematic the social structure and functional integration of societies studied. Ethnographic accounts treat religion, kinship, economics, and political dynamics as all important and related. However social anthropologists differed in the weighting given to each domain, as did the societies they studied. Significantly, those ethnographers who treat craft production as a significant feature tend to have worked in relatively complex societies. Among them, Nadel’s account of the kingdom of Nupe (Nigeria) is pre-eminent for its detailed accounts of a number of craft industries, and the way these relate to the Nupe court. Each craft is discussed in terms of the access to raw materials, technical processes, the organization of the division of labor within the workshop, authority and transmission of skills among craftsmen, design and fashions as these relate to consumer demand, and patronage by nobles and the court where this is relevant. Some crafts are ‘open’ in the sense that any man can learn by assisting a skilled worker (weaving, bead making); others are ‘closed,’ restricted to members of certain kin groups (blacksmiths, brass smiths). Craft skills are learned in informal apprenticeship. Closed crafts restrict apprenticeship to kin; this also serves to keep ritual and secrete knowledge within the craft kindered (Nadel 1942). Miner’s account of craft production in Timbuc-too in the same period is less detailed, but closely parallels that for Nupe (Miner 1965 [1953]). Slave production of food stuffs and cotton was important, particularly in northern Nigeria, but does not appear to have been organized for craft production. However rural industry of the cottage craftsman kind in weaving and dyeing is documented around the city of Kano where certain villages were famous as centers of dyeing. The town of Daboya played a similar role as a center of dyeing in the precolonial textile industry of northern Ghana. (See also chapters by Pokrant and by Goody, in Goody 1982.)

2.3 Marxist Studies Of Craft Production

With its focus on modes of production, Marxist theory offers social anthropology a framework for the study of craft production. A mode of production consists of the productive forces (natural, material, and technical) and the social relations of production. Most work in this area is by French anthropologists, exemplified by an English collection of papers by French neo-Marxists (Seddon 1978). The goal of this volume is to lay the groundwork for ‘a truly scientific study of society … which will lead to the discovery of laws that underlie the development of … social and economic formations … (and) identify the relations of production characteristics of pre-capitalist formations’ (Seddon 1978, p. ix). There are chapters about self-sustaining agricultural societies, the peasant mode of production, the Asian mode of production, and an African mode of production. Based on detailed ethnography, most are rich and insightful discussions of the relations between economic and political factors, several foregrounding kinship in new ways; this is especially true of those in the section based on fieldwork in Africa. However, perhaps because their goal is the identification of general laws, craft production is not a focus of description or analysis.

Following the Seddon volume a number of anthropologists have written ethnographic studies of craft production from a Marxist perspective. Three can be noted briefly: Kahn’s Minangkabau Social Formations (1980) is a study of village blacksmiths in Sumatra. He describes in detail technology, organization, and marketing—treating relations of production within the workshop, the pattern of learning craft skills, relations between blacksmiths, external influences such as imported materials, and tools. The analysis is set in the context of Minangkabau matriliny, a subsistence agriculture based on rice, and economic policies of colonial over-lordship. Based on individual or small workshop production for a local market or to traders, this is petty commodity production.

The next example is a study of Scottish Hebridean Island weavers of Harris tweed. Ennew (1982) traces the development of this industry from the first sales of Harris tweed in 1881. From the beginning it was based on cottage-laborer production, with merchants sup-plying the wool, dyes, and often the loom, and deducting the cost from payment for the finished cloth. Demands from the external market (London, overseas markets) led first to the introduction of a wider, foot-powered loom, then to removal of warping to the spinning mills in order to control quality and patterns. ‘From the moment of wool-purchase the production process of Harris Tweed is entirely in the control of mill-owning capital, except for the slight loss of control during the outworking [weaving] phase’ (Ennew 1982, pp.189–90).

Very different relations of production characterize the manufacture of carved hardwood furniture in Hong Kong. In the factory which Cooper joined as an apprentice wood carver, identical sets of tables were carved for tourists and export. He speaks of the proletarianization of the industry. Workers were paid daily at an hourly rate; the factory products were standardized, carvers producing endless legs and tops for tables, with no involvement with design or contact with customers. However he does feel that seven months as a factory carver gave him insight into the Maoist distinction between manual labor and mental labor, into proletarian culture as well as ideology (Cooper, in Coy 1989).

It seems that craft production is incorporated in several modes of production: petty commodity, cottage laborer, and even as proletarian labor.

2.4 The Rebirth Of Material Culture Studies: The Cultural Meanings Of Commodities

Material culture has again become a central concern for anthropology, but now the focus is on the cultural and personal meanings of things as commodities. Objects serve to objectify cultural meanings in individual experience; individual identities are constructed through the consumption of commodities. Indeed it has been argued that the study of consumption and commodities represent a major trans-formation in the discipline of anthropology and may come to replace kinship as the core of anthropology. Appadurai, in his Introduction to The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986) reviews economic theories which focus on the production of commodities and argues, following Douglas and Isherwood, that the interesting questions are rather about why and how people consume goods. The factors that drive consumption (the ‘demand’ of classical economics) are to be found in socially and historically shaped cultural meanings—in the political economy of the social life of things. The Introduction concludes: ‘Ever since Marx and the early political economists, there has not been much mystery about the relationship between politics and production. We are now in a better position to demystify the demand side of economic life’ (Appadurai 1986, p. 58). Given this perspective it is not surprising that among these anthropologists the few who are interested in production deplore the scarcity of relevant studies (but see chapters by Spooner and Bayly in Appadurai 1986).

2.5 Learning And Apprenticeship In Craft Production

The learning of craft skills has consistently been central to craft production itself—with the domestic mode of craft production in simple societies, in apprenticeships in craft workshops, and again in the domestic mode of cottage industry production. Craft production is labor intensive, and the work of un-skilled children and youths frees craftsmen to concentrate on more complex skilled tasks, assembly of components, and/organization of both production and distribution to consumers. A Vygotskian view sees learning as based on working alongside an adept: observing, assisting with very simple task elements, gradually taking over responsibility for these elements while continuing to observe, and then assisting with more complex tasks. This model corresponds closely to the learning of weaving by fostered apprentices in the Daboya textile industry (Goody, in Goody 1982). It also appears to fit accounts of domestic craft production by blacksmiths (Nadel 1942, Kahn 1980, Coy 1989); it is consistent with formal apprenticeship as in industrial wood carvers (Cooper, in Coy 1989) and Japanese folk potters (Singleton, in Coy 1989). The contributors to Coy’s edited volume on Apprenticeship (1989) are all anthropologists who did fieldwork while themselves apprenticed, and several learned hand-crafts. Their work supports the view that in craft production the learner is central to the production process—by providing unskilled labor in labor-intensive production; by systematically enforced sub-ordinate status which legitimizes labor demands and supports the expert’s control of synchronizing elements of production; and by embodying the social reproduction of craft skills and knowledge.

3. Trajectories Of Craft Production In A Global Economy

Before industrialization, virtually all artifacts—for daily use, exchange, luxuries—and the tools for making these, were the products of craft skills. With the industrial revolution, craft manufacture (‘hand making’) of most commodities has been replaced by machine production in factories. Yet today craft production still occurs in the many niches left by industrialization, sometimes in surprising places.

There are many craft production niches in both industrial and developing societies; this is an open set. The conditions under which handcraft production has advantages (of cost, of detail work, of skilled knowledge) are varied, and change in response to both local and global factors. Social anthropologists have studied craft production in some of these niches; other awaits research. Contemporary anthropology is responding to the complexity of globalization and postmodern skepticism of both theory and observation with a proliferation of particular interests. While none of the major current themes focuses on production, there are good individual studies in several of these niches. It is only possible here to sketch these briefly.

3.1 Niches Of Contemporary Craft Production In ‘De Eloping’ Societies

3.1.1 Artisan Craft Production For Local Use In Developing Societies. In partially industrialized third world societies many commodities for local use are made by individual craftsmen and workshops, and in small factories, using handcraft tools and techniques. In Bolivia, tinsmiths make pails and basins, blacksmiths make farm implements and locks, others make kerosene lanterns, dancing masks, clothing, shoes, etc. (Buechler, in Coy 1989). The largest single example must be the Indian Khadi cottage industry making handspun, hand woven cloth. Beginning in the ideology of self-sufficiency with which Gandhi led the movement for independence, this continues to be centrally organized. As with other attempts to make household craft production economically viable alongside industrial production, partially mechanized processes have been introduced to support handcraft skills (e.g., multiple-spindle spinning jennies are wired to electricity by villagers, Bayly, in Appadurai 1986).

3.1.2 Artisan Craft Production In De Eloping Countries For The Global Market. There are two links to this market, tourists buying locally, and international buyers for stores in industrialized countries. The two are related, since tourists want to buy similar craft products on returning home, and consumers of craft producers in industrialized countries look for them as tourists. Social anthropologists have recently become interested in tourism. Among the studies which treat craft production are several in Graburn’s Ethnic and tourist arts (1976); see especially the chapters by Graburn (on Inuit soapstone carving), Kent (Puebio and Navajo weaving in the American Southwest), and Salvador (on Mola applique blouses made by Cuna Indians).

Handwoven and hand-printed textiles have for centuries been among India’s most successful export industries. In the twentieth century some firms concentrating on garment manufacture attempted to secure advantages of efficiency and control through factory production. However, there is a pattern of reverting to commissioning both weaving and making up of garments from smaller units—cottage weavers and small workshops. Swallow’s study of one such company finds that in a volatile export market the costs of factory production (maintaining plant and machinery, labor troubles) remain higher than those of cottage craftsmen and cottage laborers managed by intermediate capitalist merchants, under conditions of population pressure and lack of alternative unemployment (Swallow, in Goody 1982).

An increasingly common pattern is merchant or factory production of crafts sold locally to Western buyers for retail in industrial countries. Best studied is the production and marketing of luxury goods such as oriental rugs carpets (see Spooner in Appadurai 1986) and carved hardwood furniture (Cooper 1980). Less elaborate, cheaper craft products (simple jewelry, pottery, glass, textiles) are made by cottage craftsmen, cottage laborers, or in workshops for sale to wholesale buyers who market them in bulk to retailers at trade fairs in industrialized countries. These are finally sold to consumers in Western gift shops, department stores, and clothing stores (buyer, personal communication). Although this mode of craft production for final sale in the commodity-rich markets of the West probably far exceeds in volume that of luxury goods, it seems as yet not to have been studied by anthropologists.

3.1.3 Development Aid And Craft Production. Inter-national development agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and national government agencies have seen craft production as a potential focus for income-generating projects, usually for women. This may mean building on existing craft skills; often crafts judged as marketable are unfamiliar locally, and have to be taught. Project effort is directed towards teaching skills, securing access to materials and tools, and marketing. The development of some form of local cooperative structure is often integral to the project. Although anthropologists often participate, little published material is available on such projects, except in the form of reports and evaluations.

3.2 Niches Of Craft Production In Industrialized Societies

3.2.1 Outwork And Workshop Handcrafts In Industrial Societies. In industrialized societies craftsmen—here usually craftswomen—continue to work at home at piecework rates on a number of crafts: sewing on industrial machines (owned or rented), knitting (often by machine), and the making of small cheap goods like Christmas crackers. This modern cottage industry is cheaper for manufacturers for the familiar reasons: low rates of pay; a dependent labor force lacking employment alternatives; no need to maintain plant or machines; flexibility of labor force which is only given work when demand is high. Some manufacturers, particularly in textiles, bring crafts-people into workshops where sewing and knitting machines are provided and supervision is possible, making changes in design easier.

3.2.2 Production Of Folk Crafts For The National Market. The ‘Arts and Crafts movement’ associated with William Morris in England in the second half of the nineteenth century had counterparts in the United States, and later Japan. This movement reacted to industrial production by romanticizing craft production, seeing it as preserving old techniques and a classical vision of beauty expressed in individual hand skills. In order to manufacture craft products so as to make them accessible to an enlightened market, Morris taught himself to weave, embroider, print textiles, make tied carpets, make glazed tiles, and block print designs used for wallpaper. Apprenticeship was initially rejected, since they were seeking a pure recreation of the essence of each craft. Although it was Morris’ dream to make craft products cheaply so all could afford them, the cost of production with skilled labor and costly materials meant they were always luxury goods.

This vision survived. It subsequently led to hand-craft manufacturers using traditional patterns and materials but of relatively modest cost: of textiles (Harris tweed), pottery (exemplified by the craft of Bernard Leach), and in the United States of Quaker furniture. In Japan it was reflected in the deliberate creation of a word of ‘folkcraft’ (mingei) after discussions among artists and philosophers (including Bernard Leach), and the establishing of a national museum of folk-craft which worked especially with traditional potters to develop aesthetic and practical adaptations of old forms. This folk pottery was made in traditional rural workshops, and became commercially popular. In his study of several rural Japanese pottery-making communities, Singleton found that high demand led in some to an opening of apprenticeship to outsiders, with a decline in the authority of the master (Singleton, in Coy 1989).

3.2.3 Persistence Of Customized Craft Production. Factory production for mass consumption has become the major source of commodities in industrialized societies. Customised handcraft production continues alongside this, especially of men’s clothing, women’s fashions, shoes, and jewelry. Women’s fashions have become international, with a few famous designers in Paris, Rome, New York, and Tokyo holding annual shows which set the latest fashion. At the luxury end of this mode of production the craftsmen designs a prototype made in his workshop; this may be commissioned by a customer, offered for sale through a show, or in exclusive shops. Successful designs may be copied in other workshops for sale in select stores; such as garment with a ‘designer label’ is still considered exclusive. A few designs are more widely copied and sold through chains of stores to the public. This ‘trickle-down’ of fashions through dressmakers’ workshops has always linked dress to social mobility. Lace, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, moved from courts to town gentry to village bonnets. Maher describes this for Turin in the early twentieth century, where seamstresses copied the dresses made for customers to wear themselves—thus passing socially as ladies (Maher 1987). Customized craft production also continues to be important, for instance in fine furniture, jewelry, pottery, and textiles. These are sold in specialist shops, and increasingly in shops alongside replicas of museum holdings. Their makers are coming to be known as designer craftsmen,’ and also as ‘artist craftsmen.’ There is a debate, as with some of the ethnic crafts, as to whether this is ‘art’ or ‘craft.’

3.2.4 Individual Craft Production For Pleasure In Using Craft Skill. The anthropological preoccupation with conceptualization of identity in terms of commodities has displaced earlier anthropological interest in occupational and personal identity based on skilled craftsmanship. Yet there is a resurgence of popular interest in learning craft skills like sewing, knitting, embroidery, lace-making, weaving, pottery, jewelry-making, etc. A number of indices reflect this enthusiasm: where they used to be learned from kin or in apprenticeship, such crafts are now taught in com-munity centers and in summer workshops; practitioners form associations concerned with style and pattern, access to tools and materials, teaching and examining craft skills; there are magazines and books devoted to patterns and techniques; practitioners hold exhibitions of their work. The main motivation seems to be development and exercise of individual handcraft skills. Products are used by the maker or given as gifts. While occasionally a seamstress, weaver, or potter becomes skilled enough to sell skills or products on the market, for most commodization is not a factor. Indeed, individual craft production may be seen as the separation of craft skills from the market.

Bibliography:

1. Appadurai A (ed.) 1986 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
2. Cooper E 1980 The Wood-carvers of Hong Kong: Craft Production in the World Capitalist Periphery. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
3. Coy M 1989 Apprenticeship: From Theory to Method and Back Again. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
4. Ennew J 1982 Harris Tweed: Construction, retention and representation of a cottage industry. In: Goody E N (ed.) From Craft to Industry. Cambridge University Press, Cam-bridge, UK
5. Goody E N (ed.) 1982 From Craft to Industry: The Ethnography of Proto-Industrial Cloth Production. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
6. Graburn N H H (ed.) 1976 Ethnic and Tourist Arts: Cultural Expressions from the Fourth World. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
7. Hart K 1982 On commodisation. In: Goody E N (ed.) From Craft to Industry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
8. Kahn J 1980 Minangkabau Social Formations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
9. Maher V 1987 Sewing the seams of society: Dressmakers and seamstresses in Turin between the wars. In: Collier J, Yanagisako S, Block M (eds.) Gender and Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis. Stanford University Press, Stan-ford, CA
10. Miner H 1965 [1953] The Primitive City of Timbuctoo. Anchor Books, New York
11. Nadel S F 1942 A Black Byzantium. Oxford University Press, London
12. Sahlins M 1972 Stone Age Economics. Akline, Chicago
13. Seddon D (ed.) 1978 Relations of Production: Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthropology. Frank Cass, London