Readings

The following books are required reading for this course.

[Paxson] = Paxson, Heather. The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America. University of California Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780520270183. [Preview with Google Books]

[Adamson] = Adamson, Glenn, ed. The Craft Reader. Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. ISBN: 9781847883032.

Readings from these, as well as other sources, are included in the table below.

WEEK # TOPICS READINGS
1 Introduction "Objects and Plan of an Institute of Technology; Including a Society of Arts, a Museum of Arts, and a School of Industrial Science. Proposed to be established in Boston." 1861.
Part I: Historical Perspective
2 From artisan to technician: the labor and value of craftwork before and after the Industrial Revolution

Williams, Raymond. "Art." In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780195204698. [Preview with Google Books]

———. "Technology." In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780195204698. 

Epstein, S. R. "Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship, and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe." Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3 (1998): 684–713.

Risatti, Howard. "Practical-Functional Arts and the Uniqueness of Craft: Questions about Terminology." Part 1 in A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression. University of North Carolina Press, 2013, pp. 13-28. ISBN: 9781469600901. [Preview with Google Books]

Markowitz, Sally J. "The Distinction between Art and Craft." Journal of Aesthetic Education 28, no. 1 (1994): 55–70.

[Adamson] Chapter 6: "On the Economy of Machines and Manufactures."

[Adamson] Chapter 8: de Tocquevelle, Alexis. "How an Aristocracy may Emerge from Industry." From Democracy in America.

[Adamson] Chapter 10: Marx, Karl. "Capital." (excerpts)

[Adamson] Chapter 11: Braverman, Harry. "The Primary Effects of Scientific Management." From Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century.

Barley, Stephen R., and Julian E. Orr, eds. "Introduction: The Neglected Workforce." In Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in U.S. Settings. ILR Press, 1997, pp. 1–15. ISBN: 9780801483660. [Preview with Google Books]

Optional

Montgomery, David. "Workers' Control of Machine Production in the Nineteenth Century." Labor History 17, no. 4 (1976): 485–509.

Lipartito, Kenneth. "When Women Were Switches: Technology, Work, and Gender in the Telephone Industry, 1890-1920." American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (1994): 1075–111.
3 The craft of scientific work

Zetterberg, J. Peter. "The Mistaking of 'the Mathematicks' for Magic in Tudor and Stuart England." Sixteenth Century Journal 11, no. 1 (1980): 83–97.

Schaffer, Simon. "Glass Works: Newton's Prisms and the Uses of Experiment." Chapter 2 in The Uses of Experiment: Studies of the Natural Sciences. Edited by David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer. Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780521331852. [Preview with Google Books]

Delamont, Sara, and Paul Atkinson. "Doctoring Uncertainty: Mastering Craft Knowledge." Social Studies of Science 31, no. 1 (2001): 87–107.

Nutch, Frank. "Gadgets, Gizmos, and Instruments: Science for the Tinkering." Science, Technology, & Human Values 21, no. 2 (1996): 214–28.

Scarselletta, Mario. "The Infamous 'Lab Error': Education, Skill, and Quality in Medical Technicians' Work." Chapter 8 in Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in United States. Edited by Stephen R. Barly and Julian E. Orr. ILR Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780801483660. [Preview with Google Books]

Roosth, Sophia. "Biobricks and Crocheted Coral: Dispatches from the Life Sciences in the Age of Fabrication." Science in Context 26, no. 1 (2013): 153–71.

Optional

Schaffer, Simon. "Babbage's Intelligence: Calculating Engines and the Factory System." Critical Inquiry 21, no. 1 (1994): 203–27.
4

Artisanship and modernist craft revival (and re-revival)

 

Screening:
Excerpts from Craft in America, pbs.org.

Metcalf, Bruce. "Replacing the Myth of Modernism." Chapter 1 in NeoCraft: Modernity and the Crafts. Edited by Sandra Alfoldy. Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 2008. ISBN: 9780919616479.

[Adamson] Chapter 20: Morris, William. "The Revival of Handicraft."

[Adamson] Chapter 68: Gropius, Walter, and László Moholy-Nagy. "The Manifesto of the Bauhaus" and "Education and the Bauhaus."

[Adamson] Chapter 33: Ferragamo, Salvatore. "The Shoemaker of Dreams."

[Adamson] Chapter 43: Pye, David. "The Nature and Art of Workmanship."

Crawford, Matthew B. "Shop Class as Soulcraft." New Atlantis 13 (Summer 2006): 7–24.

Rees, David. "Using a Single-Blade Pocket Sharpener." Chapter 5 in How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening." Melville House Publishing, 2013. ISBN: 9781612193267.

———. "Psychological Risks Associated with Pencil Sharpening: Assessment and Coping Strategies." Chapter 12 in How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening. Melville House Publishing, 2013. ISBN: 9781612193267.

[Adamson] Chapter 60: Parker, Rozsika. "The Creation of Femininity." From The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine.

Buy at MIT Press Cabeen, Lou. "Home Work." In The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production. Edited by Joan Livingstone and John Ploof. MIT Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780262122900.

Lasky, Julie. "Finally, the Bowl Gets Its Due," New York Times, March 27, 2013.
Part II: Theoretical Perspective
5 Knowing and doing: Tools and technology

Feibleman, James K. "Technology as Skills." Technology and Culture 7, no. 3 (1966): 318–28.

[Adamson] Chapter 58: Gell, Alfred. "The Enchantment of Technology and the Technology of Enchantment."

Ingold, Tim. "Beyond Art and Technology: The Anthropology of Skill." Chapter 2 in Anthropological Perspectives on Technology. Edited by Michael Brian Schiffer. University of New Mexico Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780826323699. [Preview with Google Books]

Collins, Harry M. "What is Tacit Knowledge?" Chapter 7 in The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. Edited by Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny. Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780415228145. [Preview with Google Books]

Farrar, Nicholas, and Gill Trorey. "Maxims, Tacit Knowledge and Learning: Developing Expertise in Dry Stone Walling." Journal of Vocational Education and Training 60, no. 1 (2008): 35–48.

Harper, Douglas. "Introduction." In Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop. University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 1–9. ISBN: 9780226316888. [Preview with Google Books]

———. "Disassembling Intuition." In Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop. University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 31–74. ISBN: 9780226316888. [Preview with Google Books]

[Adamson] Chapter 40: McCullough, Malcolm. "Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand."

Dormer, Peter. "Craft and the Turing Test for Practical Thinking." Chapter 8 in The Culture of Craft. Edited by Peter Dormer. Manchester University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780719046186. [Preview with Google Books]

Optional

Risatti, Howard. "Technical Knowledge and Technical Manual Skill." Chapter 10 in A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression. University of North Carolina Press, 2013. ISBN: 9781469600901.

———. "Hand and Body in Relation to Craft." Chapter 11 in A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression. University of North Carolina Press, 2013. ISBN: 9781469600901.
6 Embodied practice and acquired skill

Mauss, Marcel. "Techniques of the Body." Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70–88.

Maynard, Ashley E., Patricia M. Greenfield, et al. "Culture, History, Biology, and Body: Native and Non-Native Acquisition of Technological Skill." Ethos 27, no. 3 (1999): 379–402.

O'Connor, Erin. "Embodied Knowledge in Glassblowing: The Experience of Meaning and the Struggle Towards Proficiency." Sociological Review 55, Supplement 1 (2007): 126–41.

Grasseni, Cristina. "Skilled Vision: An Apprenticeship in Breeding Aesthetics." Social Anthropology 12, no. 1 (2004): 41–55.

Richards, Ellen S. "Housekeeping in the Twentieth Century." American Kitchen Magazine 12 (1900): 203–7.

Sennett, Richard. "Expressive Instructions." Chapter 6 in The Craftsman. Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780300151190. [Preview with Google Books]

Sutton, David. "The Mindful Kitchen, The Embodied Cook: Tools, Technology and Knowledge Transmission on a Greek Island." Material Culture Review 70 (2009): 63–68.

Optional

Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. "Legitimate Peripheral Participation." Chapter 1 in Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780521423748. [Preview with Google Books]

———. "Practice, Person, Social World." Chapter 2 in Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780521423748. 

Gamble, Jeanne. "Modelling the Invisible: The Pedagogy of Craft Apprenticeship." Studies in Continuing Education 23, no. 2 (2001): 185–200.

Jones, Graham M. "An Apprenticeship in Cunning." Chapter 1 in Trade of the Tricks: Inside the Magician's Craft. University of California Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780520270473. [Preview with Google Books]

———. "The Social Life of Secret Knowledge." Chapter 2 in Trade of the Tricks: Inside the Magician's Craft. University of California Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780520270473. [Preview with Google Books]

Sutton, David. "Cooking Skill, the Senses, and Memory: The Fate of Practical Knowledge." Chapter 3 in Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture. Edited by Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Gosden, and Ruth B. Phillips. Bloomsbury Academic, 2006. ISBN: 9781845203245. [Preview with Google Books]

Suchman, Lucy. "Embodied Practices of Engineering Work." Mind, Culture, and Activity 7, no. 1–2 (2000): 4–18.

Herzfeld, Michael. "Schooling the Body." Chapter 2 in The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value. University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780226329147. [Preview with Google Books]

———. "Boredom and Stealth." Chapter 5 in The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value. Chicago University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780226329147. [Preview with Google Books]
Part III: Anthropological Perspective
7

Craft and value in a global economy

 

Screening:
Clip from Mardi Gras: Made in China. Directed by David Redmon. Color, 72 min. 2005.

Ulin, Robert C. "Invention as Cultural Capital." Chapter 2 in Vintages and Traditions: An Ethnohistory of Southwest French Wine Cooperatives. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. ISBN: 9781560986270.

Venkatesan, Soumhya. "Learning to Weave; Weaving to Learn… What?." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16, S1 (2010): S158–75.

M'Closkey, Kathy. "Novica, Navajo Knock-Offs, and the 'Net: A Critique of Fair Trade Marketing Practices." Chapter 11 in Fair Trade and Social Justice: Global Ethnographies. Edited by Sarah Lyon and Mark Moberg. New York University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780814796214. [Preview with Google Books]

Sylvanus, Nina. "The Fabric of Africanity: Tracing the Global Threads of Authenticity." Anthropological Theory 7, no. 2 (2007): 201–16.

[Adamson] Chapter 36: Doris, David T. "Destiny World: Textile Casualties in Southern Nigeria."

[Adamson] Chapter 61: Tulloch, Carole. "There's No Place Like Home: Home Dressmaking and Creativity in the Jamaican Community of the 1940s to the 1960s."

Click around the Global Mamas site to get a sense of the organization, its production and distribution methods, and products.

Optional

West, Harry G., and Nuno Domingos. "Gourmandizing Poverty Food: The Serpa Cheese Slow Food Presidium." Journal of Agrarian Change 12, no. 1 (2012): 120–43.

Humphreys, Rachel. "Skilled Craftswomen or Cheap Labour? Craft-based NGO Projects as an Alternative to Female Urban Migration in Northern Thailand." Gender and Development 7, no. 2 (1999): 56–63.

Sylvanus, Nina. "Fakes: Crisis in Conceptions of Value in Neoliberal Togo." Cahiers d'Études Africaines 51, no. 205 (2012): 237–58.

Feng, Xianghong. "Gender and Hmong Women's Handicrafts in Fenghuang's 'Tourism Great Leap Forward,' China." Anthropology of Work Review 28, no. 3 (2007): 17–26.
8

Design politics

Guest lecturer:
Dr. Sonia Matos, Lecturer, Design Context, Edinburgh College of Art

Bezaitis, Maria, and Rick E. Robinson. "Valuable to Values: How 'User Research' Ought to Change." Chapter 13 in Design Anthropology: Object Culture in the 21st Century. Edited by Alison J. Clarke. Springer Vienna Architecture, 2010. ISBN: 9783709102336.

Papanek, Victor. "The Best Designers in the World?" Chapter 11 in The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture. Thames & Hudson, 1995. ISBN: 9780500278468.

Bonanni, Leonardo, and Amanda Parkes. "Virtual Guilds: Collective Intelligence and the Future of Craft." Journal of Modern Craft 3, no. 2 (2010): 179–90.

Latour, Bruno.This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader. "A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design (with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk)." (PDF) Keynote lecture for the Networks of Design meeting of the Design History Society, Falmouth, Cornwall, September 3, 2008.

Optional

Bonsiepe, Gui. "Design and Democracy." Design Issues 22, no. 2 (2006): 27–34.
9

Screening:
Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Directed by David Gelb. Color, 81 min. 2011.

Q&A with Dr. Theodore C. Bestor, Reischauer Institute Professor of Social Anthropology, Harvard University

Optional

Kondo, Dorinne K. "The Aesthetics and Politics of Artisanal Identities." Chapter 7 in Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780226450445. [Preview with Google Books]
10

Artisan lives and artisanal cheese

[Paxson] Chapter 1: American Artisanl.

[Paxson] Chapter 2: Ecologies of Production.

[Paxson] Chapter 4: Traditions of Invention.

[Paxson] Chapter 5: The Art and Science of Craft.
11

Craft publics: collecting and display

Guest lecturer:
Alessandro Angelini, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

 

Screening:
The Quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend. Directed by Celia Carey. Color, 60 min. 2005.

Weschler, Lawrence. "Inhaling the Spore." Part 1 in Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. Vintage Books, 1996. ISBN: 9780679764892.

Mashberg, Tom. "Hopis Try to Stop Paris Sale of Artifacts," New York Times, April 3, 2013.

Peterson, Karin Elizabeth. "Discourse and Display: The Modern Eye, Entrepreneurship, and the Cultural Transformation of the Patchwork Quilt." Sociological Perspectives 46, no. 4 (2003): 461–90.

Duncan, Sally Anne. "From Cloth to Canvas: Reinventing Gee's Bend Quilts in the Name of Art." Museum Anthropology 28, no. 1 (2005): 19–34.

Additional Reading

Myers, Fred. "Ontologies of the Image and Economies of Exchange." American Ethnologist 31, no. 1 (2004): 5–20.

Buy at MIT Press hooks, bell. "An Aesthetic of Blackness: Strange and Oppositional." In The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production. Edited by Joan Livingstone and John Ploof. MIT Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780262122900.
12

The quest for authenticity: from craft tourism to craftivism

 

Screening:
Excerpts from Handmade Nation. Directed by Faythe Levine. Color, 90 min. 2009.

Jenine Providence. "Handmade Nation Trailer." January 19, 2009. YouTube. Accessed August 27, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwFbMFqfsKM

Terrio, Susan J. "Performing Craft for Heritage Tourists in Southwest France." City & Society 11, no. 1-2 (1999): 125–44.

Creighton, Millie. "Spinning Silk, Weaving Selves: Nostalgia, Gender, and Identity in Japanese Craft Vacations." Japanese Studies 21, no. 1 (2001): 5–29.

Janoff, Callie. "The Church of Craft: Making Our Own Religion." In Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design. Edited by Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl. Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. ISBN: 9781568987873.

Berger, Shoshana, and Grace Hawthorne. "A Mini Manifesto (with Apologies to William Blake)." In ReadyMade: How to Make {Almost} Everything: A Do-It-Yourself Primer. Potter Style, 2005. ISBN: 9781400081073.

Lupton, Ellen. "Foreword." In D.I.Y. Design It Yourself. Edited by Ellen Lupton. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. ISBN: 9781568985527. 

———. "Why D.I.Y.?" In D.I.Y. Design It Yourself. Edited by Ellen Lupton. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. ISBN: 9781568985527. 

Lupton, Julia. "D.I.Y. Theory." In D.I.Y. Design It Yourself. Edited by Ellen Lupton. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. ISBN: 9781568985527. [Preview with Google Books]

Rosner, Daniela K., and Kimiko Ryokai.This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader. "Spyn: Augmenting the Creative and Communicative Potential of Craft." (PDF - 2.6MB) School of Information, University of California, Berkeley. 2010.

Dawkins, Nicole. "Do-It-Yourself: The Precarious Work and Postfeminist Politics of Handmaking (in) Detroit." Utopian Studies 22, no. 2 (2011): 261–84.

Optional

Minahan, Stella, and Julie Wolfram Cox. "Stitch'nBitch: Cyberfeminism, a Third Place and the New Materiality." Journal of Material Culture 12, no. 1 (2007): 5–21.

Dilemna, Anna. "Spynning Stories." Craft 8 (2008): 32–33.

Rosner, Daniela K., and Kimiko Ryokai. This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader."Reflections on Craft: Probing the Creative Process of Everyday Knitters." (PDF) School of Information, University of California, Berkeley. 2009.

Further Readings of Interest

Buy at MIT Press Pinch, Trevor, and Wiebe E. Bijker. "The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other." In The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch. MIT Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780262517607. [Preview with Google Books]

Carlson, Bernard W. "Building Thomas Edison's Laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey: A Case Study in Using Craft Knowledge for Technological Invention, 1886–1888." History and Technology 13 (1991): 150–67.

Myers, Natasha. "Molecular Embodiments and the Body-work of Modeling in Protein Crystallography." Social Studies of Science 38, no. 2 (2008): 163–99.

Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. University of Chicago Press, 1974. ISBN: 9780226672885. [Preview with Google Books]

Collins, H. M., G. H. de Vries, et al. "Ways of Going On: An Analysis of Skill Applied to Medical Practice." Science, Technology, & Human Values 22, no. 3 (1997): 267–85.

O'Connor, Erin. "Glassblowing Tools: Extending the Body Towards Practical Knowledge and Informing a Social World." Qualitative Sociology 29, no. 2 (2006): 177–93.

Rosner, Daniela K., and Alex S. Taylor. "Binding and Aging." Journal of Material Culture 17, no. 4 (2012): 405–24.

Appadurai, Arjun. "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value." Chapter 1 in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Edited by Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780521357265. [Preview with Google Books]

McBrinn, Joseph. "Handmade Identity: Crafting Design in Ireland from Partition to the Troubles." Chapter 7 in NeoCraft: Modernity and the Crafts. Edited by Sandra Alfoldy. Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 2008. ISBN: 9780919616479.

Seymour, John. Forgotten Household Crafts: A Portrait of the Way We Once Lived. Knopf, 1987. ISBN: 9780394558301.

Greer, Betsy. This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader."Taking Back the Knit: Creating Communities via Needlecraft." (PDF - 1.4MB) MA thesis, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2004.