[ecrea] cfp The Craft Economy: Making, Materiality and Meaning

REMINDER— abstract proposals due 31 July 2014



Call for papers The Craft Economy edited volume



The Craft Economy: Making, Materiality and Meaning



edited by Susan Luckman (University of South Australia) & Nicola Thomas 
(University of Exeter)



A making renaissance is underway with handmade practice and goods in 
global demand. Thus the central aim of The Craft Economy collection is 
to bring together a comprehensive account of the current moment of 
growth in the contemporary handmade marketplace. We wish to examine the 
reasons why we are now seeing such significant growth, and identify the 
key drivers - both in terms of production and consumption. Importantly, 
we seek to locate this discussion within the larger picture of its 
implications for our understandings of the contemporary cultural 
economy. For example, what it may reveal about perceptions of 
authenticity and practices of ethical consumption, as well as shifting 
labour and production models (creative micro-enterprise; the home-based 
digital cultural economy; the attraction of entrepreneurial 
self-employment; and the gendering of craft work).

In the digital age, almost seventy years since the Frankfurt School 
first railed against the culture industry’s commodification and 
standardisation of all art, the bespoke ‘analogue’ physical item becomes 
Othered, different, desirable. Handmade objects are imbrued with touch, 
and therefore offer a sense of the ‘authentic’ in an ‘inauthentic’ 
world: they offer connection to the maker through the skill and learning 
apparent in their construction, and they demonstrate the time spent on 
their making in a way in most other objects cannot. Handmade cultural 
goods thus need to be located within wider debates regarding ethical 
consumption, makings, and ‘retro’ interest in unique physical artefacts.



In dialogue with this, the integration of digitally enabling technology 
with more traditional practices of making is a key trend transforming 
social and material relations between makers and consumers. Alongside 
more traditional retail options such as direct and commission sales, 
online distribution is changing the environment for operating a creative 
micro-enterprise, offering both creative graduates and more established 
designer-makers micro-entrepreneurial pathways not previously open to 
them. Alternative making spaces (for example Makerspaces and FabLabs) 
are transforming access to making, and the integration of digital 
technologies into the making process.



Therefore we welcome proposals for papers that address any aspect of the 
contemporary craft economy, especially (but certainly not limited to) 
the following:

·         Craft as a 21st century creative industry;

·         Craft work as a model for wider cultural work practice;

·         Spatialities of craft: relations of making, places of making;

·         The politics of home-based production and studio/workshop 
production models;

·         New places of making: practices within Fablabs and Makerspaces;

·         Craft apprenticeships, bench training, learning and skills 
development;

·         Craft education and the contemporary curriculum;

·         Social inclusion/exclusion, micro-entrepreneurialism and the 
contemporary craft economy;

·         Vibrant materiality and craft objects and practice;

·         Materiality, authenticity and the handmade;

·         Craft making, flow and ‘being in the zone’;

·         The ongoing resonance of binaries such as: 
professional/amateur; art/craft; producer/consumer; technology/hand;

·         Making and intersections with policy: regeneration through 
return to making;

·         Collectivisation, support organisations, guilds and 
cooperative practices;

·         Online identity work, self-marketing and art/craft production;

·         ‘Technology’ versus ‘ handmade’ – scale, growth and the place 
of tools in the making process;

·         Digital making and new models of making;

·         Lab cultures,  community / social enterprise models;

·         Craft, tourism and place-making;

·         Craft co-creation and lessons for contemporary making from the 
history of patronage and commissioned work;

·         Craft and ethical production/consumption;

·         Craft as means of economising.



Proposals: Please send proposals to both editors by 31 July 2014. 
Proposal should include: title, abstract of up to 500 words, 
institutional affiliation, and short biographical details for author.



Provisional acceptance will be advised by 30 September 2014.



About the editors:



Susan Luckman ((Susan.Luckman /at/ unisa.edu.au)) is Associate Professor in 
Cultural Studies at the University of South Australia. Her books include 
the forthcoming title Craft and the Creative Economy (Palgrave Macmillan 
2015), Locating Cultural Work: The Politics and Poetics of Rural, 
Regional and Remote Creativity (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), and Sonic 
Synergies: Music, Identity, Technology and Community (Ashgate 2008, 
co-edited with Gerry Bloustien and Margaret Peters).



Nicola Thomas ((Nicola.J.Thomas /at/ exeter.ac.uk)) is Senior Lecturer in 
Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter. She works on the 
cultures of the creative economy, specifically addressing the 
geographies of the craft sector. Her recent AHRC funded research 
includes an analysis of the enduring place of regional craft guilds, 
communities of making, and relations between craft policy and practice. 
Her research has been undertaken in partnership with Devon Guild of 
Craftsmen, Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen, Crafts Council, 
Craftspace, Heritage Crafts Association and Leach Pottery. Published 
work includes ‘Crafting the Region: Creative Industries and Practices of 
Regional Space’ (Regional Studies, 2012, with Harriet Hawkins and David 
C. Harvey).













:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

associate professor susan luckman

associate professor in cultural studies

school of communication, international studies and languages



university of south australia



Room C2-33A, Magill Campus

Tel: +618 8302 4152

Fax: +618 8302 4745

http://people.unisa.edu.au/Susan.Luckman




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