MeHas the shift from industrial to artisanal production reached critical mass? Seen as a sign of resistance and a foreground of anti-corporate and environmental sentiment, one US-based culture anthropologist believes it was.
Grant McCracken, recently published return of workers, The consumer culture, dominated by identities aligned with big business, is being transformed by the third wave of the artisanal revolution, in which passive consumers become producers with artisanal side jobs.
“When I first heard this in the 1960s and 1970s, I thought it was a minority play, but now it’s really pervasive,” said Harvard, the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Observer last week. “Things are starting to come together from collective enthusiasm into something more athletic.”
A survey conducted last month in the United States found that 88% of those surveyed were familiar with the term “farm to table.” Half of them were ready to call themselves ‘foodies’. 83% preferred locally grown food. 62% like homemade food. 60% would like to live in a small town with artisans. And he’s one-third wanting to start his own business as a craftsman. Three-quarters said they prefer to buy from small shop owners.
“Even people living in cities and fully engaged in an industrial economy have expressed that they may be craving artisanal alternatives,” said the study’s McCracken. It really made a difference, because a small community of craftsmen working in small towns noticed wealthy people visiting from big cities, and that gave them a sophisticated base.”
Of course, the impact is clear. Rising real estate prices in provincial towns, unresolved stresses between locals and tourists, and questions about whether the artisanal shift is more than churning butter like Marie Antoinette. Letery Dagremanor pleasure dairy, at Versailles.
“It has a long tradition,” McCracken said.
He said the shift’s repercussions were seen in “big resignations” (unusually many people voluntarily quit their jobs due to the pandemic) and quiet retirements.
“I think we can take this as a measure of who is relatively unsatisfied with the current situation,” McCracken said. “Unless people have an image of the artisanal alternative as an alternative, they’re simply unhappy and not ready to bolt on yet.”
McCracken estimates that the alternative – the “maker” or craftsman movement – serves 28 million small businesses in the United States, and these create two new jobs in three.
All this is encouraging, but I assure you that everyone can be successful in cheesemakers and woodworkers, in basket weaving and candle making, in making stylish clothes out of scraps of leather and denim, in beekeeping and in certain crops and animals. Not meant to be animal husbandry. But as an alternative to Zoom meetings and a full return to office life, “the dignity of running one’s career and shaping one’s life may be worth the risk.”
According to the Institute for the Future, “The next decade will see economic transformation and the emergence of a new artisan economy. , or merchant craftsmen who produce special or limited numbers of specialty products for a growing customer base seeking niche products.”
The shift’s repercussions may also be seen in the fight to get workers back into the office. According to US payroll firm ADP, 68% of him in the US worker said he would consider looking for another job if he had to return to the office full-time.
Last month, Apple tried to bring employees back to the office with a policy that enforced a three-day work week, but a petition was filed claiming flexible telecommuting would result in “extraordinary work.”
McCracken writes that “half the industry of capitalism is losing its prestige and influence”, but admits that “you cannot expect to supply the world from cottage industry”.
The Craftsmanship Movement Finds Some Reasons for It in the 2009 Book Shop Class as Soulcraft Author Matthew Crawford argued that “the time is ripe to reconsider a defunct ideal: manual competence and the attitude it requires toward the material world in which it is constructed.”
A prime example of the craftsmanship shift might be former Apple chief designer Jony Ive. He is now set up in his West Country workshop full of lathes and handcrafted tools.
“We are surrounded by digitally designed and modeled products with little consideration or understanding of the attributes of real materials,” says Ive. financial times We believe that our relationship with the physical world has to do with curiosity. “As humans, we tend to be more responsible and in control of what we really understand.”
Another could be Kate Moss. Kate Moss recently posted a video of her skinny dipping on her Instagram before launching her beauty product line, Cosmos.
Whether it’s a return to nature or essential craftsmanship, the cult of craft has found its way into fashion and publishing as an expression of emotional authenticity. Kanye West sold his recent Gap collection out of a trash bag.
The roots of this craftsmanship may be found in the radical environmentalism of the 1970s. That instinct was expressed by Alice Waters in her writings. whole earth catalog by founder Stewart Brand and groups such as Earth First. Each offered a slightly different take on artisanal thinking, such as the protests and direct action advocated by members of Earth First!. And each left the hippie instincts and headed for discontinuity.
Keith Makoto Woodhouse, Author ecocentrist, a study of the political rather than cultural consequences of radical environmentalism to which craftsmen’s livelihoods react. It is said that it may influence the idea that it is based on Material consumption is doomed to environmental disaster.
“There has always been an environmentalist tension in the call for a return to a simpler life,” says Woodhouse. “It dates back to Henry David Thoreau, and then the counterculture movement of the 1970s sought to leave cities that included more traditional ways of life and embraced alternative technologies.”
What do people do while they wait for the apotheosis of the artisan? McCracken suggests first participating in small ways, such as an artisanal meal from a local market. “Tilling a lawn or raising chickens for a wildflower field used to cost all claims of being a sophisticated human being. , found that craftsmanship helped break down the anomie that once existed: “The closest thing I ever wanted to get to my neighbor was to wave at him from an acre away. Now, with this trend of heading into town on foot, it’s really falling apart.” The local cheesemonger is a village celebrity, again an unexpected sign that “the movement is growing.”
Conversion may be just beginning to take shape, but McCracken writes a spirited conclusion: return of craftsmen The Artisan Revolution “straddled the organized identities, aspirations and statuses of the 20th century, asking what we wanted, who we thought we were, and where we stood in the world. can help destroy the food industry cultural system. .
