Medieval and Early Modern Artisan Culture (original) (raw)

Artisan occupations in the global economy: A conceptual framework

Journal of Occupational Science, 1996

Craft production occurs in all sectors of the global economy. This paper provides a context for the study of the occupations of producing and selling crafts. Embedded in the world's political economy, crafts are a vehicle for individuals and societies to adapt to changing systems of production, a means for economic and cultural expression, and a voice of resistance against domination and oppression. Through crafts, tradition is maintained and/ or invented, and marketed to consumers who find other meanings in the objects. Study of the mode of craft production offers insight into new occupational strategies to respond to de-industrialization, using pre-industrial forms. Romanticized by the Arts and Crafts Movement, the qualities of craft work took on therapeutic as well as economic significance in European and American society. Today, throughout the world, the marketing of crafts has economic and social significance. Study of work in crafts illustrates the contested nature of occupations and adds to the body of knowledge of occupational science.

Artisanal Knowledge and Craftsmanship

Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

A clear definition of artisanal knowledge is difficult to present, as it is a contested field during the early modern period. Today artisanal knowledge is often referred to with the term "craft," but as Glenn Adamson (2013) has rightfully argued, this originates in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, when craftsmanship was considered the "other" of "modernity," Following Adamson (2013: xiii), craft emerged as "a coherent idea" and as a "defined terrain" only in opposition to industrialization: "Craft was not a static backdrop against which industry emerged (.. .), the two were created alongside one another, each defined

Artisans Rule: Product Standardization and Craft Specialization in Prehistoric Society

Craft production and its significance for understanding social relations are one of the essential topics in prehistoric archaeology. Standardization of raw materials, products, and manufacturing procedures, and the presence or absence of specialized artisans still challenge scholars engaged in the studies of technology, social archaeology, exchange and distribution networks and economy in the past. In this volume, seven case studies covering a chronological span from the Neolithic to La Tène Europe explore the notions of standardization and specialization, the nature of their interrelationship, the methods for assessing their presence in the archaeological record, and their significance for the reconstruction of social relations and emergence of social complexity, while two ethnoarchaeological studies focus on the organization of production and methods of estimation of a number of artisans. This volume brings together research from prominent scholars, based on different theoretical perspectives, thus giving new insight into the fundamental issues related to artisans and their crafts.

Artisans, Drudges, and the Problem of Gender in PreIndustrial France

Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, 1985

ENDER TABOOS WHICH define men's and women's work in different spheres G are among the most basic elements in the work world. Rooted in the conservative practices of traditional folkways, separation of work according to gender was intrinsic to the corporate nature of pre-modern society. This distinctive feature of pre-industrial social structure was lost when modern industrialization downgraded individual craftsmanship and homogenized work and its professional formation. Yet even in the traditional era, the separation of task had exceptions. In certain cases early French society accepted without question homogeneity of work when it was justified by special status, privilege, or the lack of it. Far from showing its modernity, gender-free work situations confirmed the organic nature of their communities and the particular meaning that gender had for them. This study will explore the categories of craft work in pre-industrial France to show how the institutions of the Old Regime mediated and reorganized the traditional patterns of work.'

Proto-Industrialization? Cottage Industry, Social Change, and Industrial Revolution

The Historical Journal, 1984

The Historical Journal, 27, 2 (i o84), pp. 473-4-9)2 Printed in Great Britaini HISTOiRIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW PROTO-INDUSTRIALIZATION? COTTAGE INDUSTRY, SOCIAL CHANGE, AND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION I Small-scale, traditional local handicrafts had always existed in rural areas, but in the period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century a new economic development occurred in many regions to which considerable attent.ioin is now being paid. TIhere was an expansion of rural industry without major changes in the techniques or scale of production. This developmental phase has recently been termed 'protoindustrial'a form of 'Industrialization before industrialization' which it is claimed holds the key to the question of why the industrial revolution took place.1 Drawing on the work of'Braun and others, the theory of proto-industrialization was originated by Mendels in his work on Flanders2 and has been further developed particularly by Medick, Kriedte and Schlumbohm of the Max-Planck Institut fhr Geschichte in Gottingen as a way of explaining the transition both from feudalism to capitalism, and from a traditional society of peasant agriculture to the modern industrial world. As a description of the nature of expanding rural industry during this period, and as an explanation of industrialization, the theory put forward in Industrialization before ind2ustrialization is very wide-ranging over time and space, and has invited much discussion. We intend here to consider and appraise this concept and the arguments made for its importance. Proto-industry occurred in the countryside among peasant farmers and serniproletarianized workers in need of an incomc supplement. It was however controlled by urban capital, which integrated it into a new set of regional, supra-regional and international markets.3 I'he goods produced were mainly textiles with their mass market potential, but industrial activities included gloving, straw-plaiting, glassmaking, leather and metal working. Previously, petty producers had commonly owned the means of production, and sold their products locally or to a middleman, but proto-industry made them much more dependent o01 capital and upoIl entrepreneurial commission. Proponents of proto-industrial theory stress that in I P. Kriedtc, H. Mcdick and j. Schlumbohm, Industrialization before industrialization (Cambridge, I98I). Translated by B. Schempp, first published as Ihdustrialisierung vor der Industriali.sieruyng (Gdttingen, 1977). (Henceforth KMS). 2 F. F. Mendels, 'Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the induistrializatioin process', .7nl qf Economic History, xxxii (1972). The work of Mendels and of Kriedtc, Mccdick and Schlumbohm cannot be seen as part of the same intellectual tradition. The former is influenced by modernization theory, and the latter espouisC various forms of Marxism. The criticisms of this article are directed at aspects of proto-industrial theory held by all its exponent.s. 3 KMS, pp. 2-3. 473 474 HISTORICAL JOURNAL England in particular there was a 'reorganization of rural relations of production according to the laws of the market' from the sixteenth century onwards.4 Furthermore, and drawing on the classical economic theory that markets overseas incorporated productive resources more effectively than did local markets, it is argued that 'foreign trade was not only the " handmaiden " of proto-industrialization, but, indeed, its " engine of growth" '.5 Such a wider market acted as a powerful agent of social and demographic change, having far-reaching effects on an economically traditional form of production, still based on conservative inclinations among rural producers who wished to maintain intact their family economies. Proto-industry is held to be specifically but not completely capitalist, an adaptation of capital to existing conditions of labour availability. Untrammelled by urban guild and company restrictions, rural workers were particularly attractive to entrepreneurs since they often had a subsistence base in agriculture and could thus forgo part of their wages, which were extracted as surplus by the capitalist.6 Throughought Europe, the theory argues, merchant capital exploited an impoverished 'peasantry' who were responding to subsistence needs in the way predicted by Chayanov for Russia: when labour input of land had increased to the point where marginal returns to additional inputs were negligible the family would turn to non-agricultural work.' The peasant family was a self-exploitative entity searching for day-today subsistence without any calculation of the cost of its labour.8 The 'total labour force' of the family was applied in an attempt to maximize use values rather than exchange values, to augment gross product rather than net profit.9 The theory of proto-industrialization has it that maximum total labour income was achieved by the joint working capacity of husband and wife plus a large number of economically productive children.'0 Proto-industrial workers are believed to have had an earlier age at first marriage than their traditional agricultural counterparts, a higher proportion ever married and consequently higher fertility and population growth rates." The reason for this is thought to be that 'generative reproduction among the landless and land-poor industrial producers was no longer tied to the "social reproduction" of a relatively inflexible rural property structure'.'2 'The family engaged in domestic industry reproduced itself in such numbers in order to subsist through its labour, and not primarily to consume "surpluses", still less to accumulate them. "13 Proletarianization of labour freed more people ' from traditional controls which had previously been effective measures of maintaining an optimum population size'.'4 ' Children necessarily counted as labour power... they were also " living capital" that served to support the parents during their old age. "" Because of this it was necessary to have children early and frequently, and to retain them 4 KMS, p. 21. 5 KMS, P-34-6 KMS, p. 23-7 KMS, pp. i6, 26. 8 P. Jeannin, 'La proto-inddustrialization: d6veloppement oti impasse?', Annales E.S.C. 27 KMS, I. 6. 28 R. L. Rudolph, 'Family structure and proto-industrialization in Russia', Jnl Leon. HIst. x. ('I 980), II I. 29 KMS, p 20. 30o Klima, 'Rural domestic inidustry', pP. 49, 53. KMS, p). 20; Klirmia, 'Rural domestic inidustry', p. 52. 2 Rudolph, 'Family structure and i)roto-iIidlistiializttioIi', pp. 116 I 7. Klima, 'Rural domestic inidustry', P. 55. 4 Rudolph, 'FI;amIily structure and proto-industrialization', p. 11i5 R. M.I Smith, 'Fertility, ecoriornoy anid household folmationi in Elnlglanld over three (centurics', Pidmlation anzd Develolpment Review, vii (ioq8 i), 618; R. M. Smith, 'The pieople of Tuscaniy anid their families in the fiftecenth lcentury: Medieval or Meditcrranean?', Inl (f F7amily i-story, Vi (io8i); C. Mosk, 'Nuptiality in M\ijijapan-', mnl ol Social History, xiii (io8o) Rudolph, ' amily structu re anid proto-indlustrializationl', pp. II 2, I 1 4.. Mosk, 'Nuptiality in Meiji Japan'; Rudolph, 'FIamily structure anld protoinidustrializationi', pp. 11 2-15-I)lid 1. 114. 38 Ibid. pp. 112 13. 40 See Smith, 'People of Tuscany', pp. I20 3 onl southernl Europe, which shatres somc importatnt culturatl facets with eatsternl Europe. 41 KMS, pp. 6-7. 42 J. Thirsk, 'Inidustries in the countryside', in F. J. Fisher (ed.), E.ssays in the economnic and social history of Tudor and Stuart England (Caimbridgc, I 96 I). 43 In patssinig it is worth niotinig thatt there is nio necessary association of proto-inidustry with patrtible inheritance; demantld for by-employmients could be equatlly stronig in aireats of impatrtible inheritance where younger soi0s would be left laindless. 44 Metndels, 'Proto-industriatlizattionl: theory and reatlity', p. 79. 45 KMS, pp-14, 26.

The artisan economy and post-industrial regeneration in the US

The 2009 Great Recession adversely impacted the post-industrial built landscape in the US. Globalization and international wage inequality also led to the closure and abandonment of numerous historic industrial districts. However, another more positive outcome came from the last economic crisis ‒ the rise of the artisan-based economy, which values highly crafted specialized goods and blends old manufacturing techniques with new digital technologies. Small companies producing high quality products are providing an alternative to American consumption based culture. This paper will present the current state of post-industrial regeneration in the US and discuss how the artisan-based economy is regenerating American post-industrial urban districts.