Craft and craft making are typically associated with the material, the handmade, and the organic, both in terms of its products and the labour involved in their creation. Craft goods and imaginaries, though, are increasingly imbricated in digital spaces through commercial sites such as Etsy, Taobao, and Instagram, but also as the principles of craft labour align with those of digital entrepreneurship (Bell et al., 2021). The papers in this panel will explore what happens when practices associated with craft and craft making - broadly intended - intersect with the digital economy. Drawing on a variety of perspectives, different platforms, and diffuse geographies, we engage with the dynamics of craft making in diverse ways to foreground the relationship between craft and the artisanal, on the one hand, and the computational spaces of the digital industries, on the other.
This panel is an important contribution as craft is an often overlooked part of the economy because of its association with domesticity, feminised labour, and/or the “pre-industrial” economic margins. Yet, in the aftermath of the 2007-08 economic crisis and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic, it was craft that absorbed a new demand for work meaningfulness, as an alternative to unemployment or even the gateway to a new ‘good life,’ based on a return to material work (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023). At the same time craft has become big business in the global platform economy, as a swathe of content creators engage in craft-related endeavours, intersecting with regimes of ethical consumption in the global North. This industrialisation also corresponds with growing opportunities for income-generating activity within marginalised economic contexts as platforms, tools, and types of profitable work proliferate. Consequently, the labour, economic, and social dynamics that animate craft as a commercial activity resonate beyond the specific arenas of the handmade and the artisanal, and have become key components of what has been argued to be an emergent ‘industrious modernity’ (Arvidsson, 2019) characterised by new geographies of work and life. This panel has been brought together to fill a gap about the relationship between craft imaginaries and practices and studies of digital industries, the platform economy, and online culture.
The first paper explores the ‘discursive materiality’ that characterises neo-craft work, taken as a new form of post-industrial craft work typical of Western economies with specific distinctive features. Based on a combination of digital methods and qualitative research on neo-craft work in the EU context, the paper illustrates this process of ‘discursive materiality’, showing its paradoxical nature as well as its intricate - and critical - relationship with the broader logics of platformisation of culture (Poell et al., 2021). The second paper explores the commercial activity of Tiktok content creators as an articulation of the principles that animate contemporary understandings of craft and craft labour. Drawing on interviews with creators located outside of global economic centres, it draws links between the principles of the artisanal hipster craft economy and the entrepreneurial logics that animate their digital labour, suggesting a logic beyond “instafame” as a key driver. The third paper, though, counters this proposition. Drawing on an extensive study of digital bazaars in India, this paper identifies the street level innovations of digital goods sellers, including their use of digital payment and management systems. It questions the extent to which the craft metaphor as articulated in global north contexts can be extended to this work. The final paper returns us to the world of craft goods retailing - in this instance, the online retailer Etsy - and questions of platformisation. It seeks to answer the question of how to understand the labour status of these platform traders. Focusing on the concerns raised through the strike by Etsy sellers in April 2022, it systematically works through different approaches to answer the question of whether these craft makers can be considered workers.
References
Arvidsson, A. (2019). Changemakers: The industrious future of the digital economy. London: Wiley & Sons.
Bell, E., Dacin, M. T., & Toraldo, M. L. (2021). Craft imaginaries–past, present and future. Organization Theory, 2(1), DOI: 2631787721991141.
Gandini, A., & Gerosa, A. (2023). What is ‘neo-craft’work, and why it matters. Organization Studies, DOI: 01708406231213963.
Poell, T., Nieborg, D. B., & Duffy, B. E. (2021). Platforms and cultural production. London: Wiley & Sons.
