Researcher(s):
Stephanie Kate Levine
ENVS course(s): 400 Initiated: September 2011 Completed: May 2012 Go to project site
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This study analyzes the ways in which contemporary crafters are working against and within the process of creative destruction and the flux of the new capitalism in order to determine if, and in what ways, crafting can subvert these dominant economic theories. As crafting has been repopularized in recent years, there has been significant discourse that has looked at the sociopolitical motivations for crafting, but little scholarship on the intuitive motivations. Through a narrative analysis of Etsy seller profiles, this analysis uses arts and crafts ideology from John Ruskin and William Morris to understand participants’ intuitive motivations through: the idealization of a handmade good; the materiality and tactility of crafting; the “process” of crafting; and the ways in which participants use crafts to connect with others. The narratives of Etsy sellers show that through the intentionality, material dimensions and inherent narratives of crafts, the goods themselves physically and ideologically subvert the process of creative destruction. Through this process of creating such goods, crafters are able to temporarily escape the flux of the new capitalism, but cannot subvert the processes that influence how they commodify and sell their goods.