- Author: Anna Brown
Beneath the surface of materiality: exploring the elemental relations of craft work and their consequences for organising practices
Abstract
Situated in post-human practice turn in management and organisation studies (Bell 2025; Bell and Vachhani 2020; Gherardi 2015) the proposed paper engages craft as a lens through which to rethink dominant epistemologies and ways of being with the world. Specifically, the paper aims to explore how less obviously human forms of organic matter shape how people know and do, and thus how they relate to the world. Turning to the micro-relations of craft work by following the ‘material traces that emerge in the relational engagements’ between potter and clay (Simpson et al 2021, p. 1781) the study seeks to give voice to ordinarily overlooked natural and elemental materials (Papadopolous et al 2021; Puig De La Bellacasa 2019) such as— air, gravity, torque and friction—and how the often overlooked natural environment constitutes and shapes the potter’s patterns of making as they strive for quality and coherence in their work.
The paper responds to calls in the organisation studies literature to move beyond the entanglement of the social and material world (Cooren 2020) and overcome an underlying, if unintentional, distinction between social and material beings (and their agencies) that persists in accounts of practicing (Introna 2013, 2014). I take a processual, post-human approach that ‘begins with flows and movements’, understands the emergent and ephemeral things that are produced through relational encounters— be they people, pots or practices—as ‘secondary effects’ (Simpson et al 2021, p.1776), and attends to materials as the ‘active constituents of a world-in-formation […] relentlessly on the move – flowing, scraping, mixing and mutating’ (Ingold, 2007, p.11).
Empirically, the paper follows the author’s autoethnographic experiences of establishing a professional pottery practice in the UK, zooming in on her making practices as she moves from advanced beginner to proficient potter. Three vignettes follow the micro-relations of change that unfold in the material transformation of potter and clay as they encounter both human and non-human others. Data includes field notes generated over the course of 14 months working in a studio pottery. Field notes and observations are augmented by interviews with 4 other makers who also ran their own craft businesses from the pottery, as well as photographic records of everyday activities that unfolded inside the studio as the potter engaged in different making activities.
The case of pottery making prompts critical reflection on the specific qualities and composition of clay as a colloidal form of matter that is both solid and fluid at one and the same time. In seeking ‘commonness and connection’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2019, p. 399; Bennet 2015) with non-human materialities the empirical insights show how in their encounters with the clay, enlivened by a myriad of forces, the potter’s body becomes more or less fluid over time. By illuminating how less obviously human forms of organic matter shape what crafts people do, and how they become -with the world, the findings extend conversations about the embodied, material and ethical nature of knowing in craft work (Bell 2025; Bell and Vachhani 2020) and progress conversations about the temporality of matter in post human and processual approaches to practice theorising (e.g Gherardi 2015; Hernes, Feddersen and Schultz 2021). In this context, craft presents opportunity to move beyond dominant hylomorphic, or form imposing, accounts of the human material relationship. Instead, offering a form-generating perspective that prioritises relations between materials and forces rather than subjects acting on objects. This conceptual shift encourages a greater understanding of organisational phenomena through the various elemental relations that are constitutive of their being, rather than their solid exteriors (Gherardi 2025; Ingold and Simonetti, 2022), and acknowledges a complex mingling of material bodies at every scale.
- Authors: Enrico Macciò & Marta Gasparin
Wonder-full Organizations: Imagining Slow Aesthetics and Craft
Abstract
As we live in an accelerated society (Rosa, 2013), where the dynamic stabilization of capitalistic systems is driven by appropriation, activation and acceleration’s logic (Rosa et al., 2017), leading to the insurgence of systemic crises – environmental, energy, economic – and to the rise of new forms of alienation (Rosa, 2010), the possibility for organizations to do business as usual is not a practicable path anymore (Gasparin et al., 2021). As a counterbalance to the accelerated pace of modern life and capitalist pressures, craft has gained traction as a sustainable approach to production and consumption, emphasizing local, thoughtful practices and promoting just, sustainable solutions by engaging with ecological rhythms and traditional knowledge systems (Gasparin et al, 2020; Aksin, 2015; Joseph & McGregor, 2020; Pal & Dutta, 2021; Yamauchi & Hjorth, 2024; Gasparin & Neyland, 2022). Craft practices offer a sustainable, reflective alternative to crisis-prone conventional systems by fostering more resilient and enchanting ways of organizing (Nyfeler, 2024; Suddaby et al., 2017), as craft has the potential to reimagine how society can be structured (Holt & Yamauchi, 2023; Bell et al., 2021). Thus, having craft organizations the potential to contribute to organize and inhabit the social (Holm and Beyes, 2022) – in, across, around them – which aestethics practices and experiences do they mobilise?
We will investigate how the case of craft can support the conceptualization of an aesthetic experience for organizing, drawing upon our ethnography in the area of Dals Långed, a remoted town in Sweden, where we could observe how craft organizations not only mobilise alternative modes of organizing, where reflexivity, quality and effort are the base to experimentations for doing things differently, but they are also organizing with a slow approach. In particular, craft organizations, through ideas of belonging, community, solidarity, sharing and care, rethink practices and relational approaches (Bell and Vacchani, 2020) which, stepping beyond an anthropocentric perspective, consider different more-than-human temporalities (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2015) and actors in, across and around them. To do so, the paper will look at craft practices through Irigaray’s (1993) concept of wonder and Michelle Boulous Walker’s (2017) ideas on slow philosophy.
With Slow Philosophy Michelle Boulous Walker (2017) theorises a different approach to philosophy, advancing an idea of love of wisdom that counterbalances the desire to know. More broadly, the relationship to philosophy is further interpreted by the author as a relationship to otherness, where desire to know and love of wisdom enable different approaches in the encounter with the other: if desire to know describe an approach to the otherness that remains referred to the self and driven by speed and haste, love of wisdom is rather a slow and medidative attitude to the other, for which the sense of self steps down, letting us open to the encounter with the other.
Thus, concerning love of wisdom, Boulous Walker referes to Luce Irigaray’s (1993) ideas of wonder. In particular, wonder is defined as a slow act, an interval that allows us to encounter the otherness, and that allows to resists speed and acceleration. Wonder allows to experience the other, to avoid the assimilation of the other to ourselves while contemplating its nature; wonder is rather “the advent of the other” (Irigaray, 1993, p.75).
In the case of craft, the aesthetic experience happens throught wonder. As re-enchantment (Suddaby et al., 2017) is configured as a return to materiality, opposed to the rationality and the repetitiveness of white collar occupations, wonder entails the disposition to communicate and organize through dialogue with materials and the environment around, to co-create according to the otherness properties, rather than through enactment of an approariative act.
- Author: Stefanie Steinbeck
Exploring Craft as a Form of Play in Museum Experiences: Mapping a Conceptual Topology of Play in Museum Settings
Abstract
What do we mean when we speak of play? The term evokes associations with childhood, imagination, and leisure — yet play is far from a trivial or universal category. It is a deeply cultural, situated, and negotiated practice (Sutton-Smith, 2001). In recent years, museums have increasingly mobilised play as a strategy for audience engagement, learning, and experience design (Olesen and Holgaard, 2024). Yet, what precisely counts as play — and for whom — remains an open and theoretically underdetermined question within museum studies, anthropology, and play theory.
This paper forms part of Moving Museums Through Play, a research and dissemination programme at the National Museum of Denmark funded by the LEGO Foundation. The programme investigates how play can attract, engage, and inform audiences across generations while developing a conceptual framework for playful museum experiences. Within this broader initiative, this paper offers a reflexive, theoretical contribution: an inquiry into what play is — and when it occurs — in the museum context.
To begin this investigation, I turn to craft. Craft is omnipresent in museums, both through artefactual collections and participatory visitor activities. Occupying an ontological space between productivity and playfulness, seriousness and improvisation, skill and exploration (Ingold, 2013; Fink, 1960), craft provides a rich site for examining how play takes shape in material, embodied, and affective museum engagements. Drawing on phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), anthropological theory (Ingold, 2013), and play philosophy (Eberle, 2014), this paper analyses examples from Frøsnapperbyen at Frilandsmuseet, the værft at Skibene i Holbæk, and participatory object-handling sessions at the National Museum of Denmark. Through these cases, I interrogate when play begins, how it is recognised, and how it intersects with practices of making, working, and learning.
Rather than offering fixed definitions, the paper proposes that play in museums must be understood relationally — as culturally situated, materially negotiated, and affectively experienced. Craft emerges here as a generative conceptual lens, capable of unsettling fixed categories of work, learning, and leisure, and revealing the ambiguous, often unexpected ways play materialises in museum settings.
The paper’s primary contribution is to advance the early development of a conceptual topology of play in museums, with an ambition of mapping the multiple forms, meanings, and experiences of play, ranging from sensory immersion to collaborative creation. In doing so, it lays groundwork for future audience research, experimental museology, and playful exhibition design that are critically attuned to the diverse, situated, and emergent ways play takes shape across age groups, cultural contexts, and institutional settings.
References
Eberle, S. G. (2014). The elements of play: Toward a philosophy and a definition of play. American Journal of Play, 6(2), 214–233.
Fink, E. (1960). The ontology of play. Philosophy Today, 4(2), 95.
Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge.
Olesen, A. R., & Holdgaard, N. (2024). Why Play in Museums? A Review of the Outcomes of Playful Museum Initiatives. Journal of Museum Education, 1–12.
Sutton-Smith, B. (2001). The ambiguity of play. Harvard University Press.
- Authors: Adelina Tordiglione & & Daniel Hjorth
Craft and Technology: A Critical Approach
Abstract
This paper critically examines the evolving relationship between craft and technology, challenging the prevailing notion that positions craft as a marginal or residual form of labour in contrast with the dominant, efficiency-driven realm of technology. Rather than treating craft and technology as binary opposites, this study explores the way they presently are brought into a complex, co-constitutive relationship, particularly within the context of seeking alternatives to capitalist modes of production. Drawing from interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks — including anthropology, philosophy, and critical management studies — this research seeks to reframe the discourse on human agency, labour, and technological mediation in contemporary organizational and societal contexts.
Historically, craft has been associated with human skill (Sennett, 2008; Kroezen et al., 2021), embodied knowledge (Bell & Vachhani, 2020), and artisanal practices (Blundel & Smith, 2013), often idealized as a form of resistance to the alienation produced by industrialization and mass production (Rippin & Vachhani, 2018). On the other hand, technology has been linked to mechanization, scale, and abstraction, often perceived as inherently dehumanizing (Raffaelli, 2019). This dichotomy has long shaped our understanding of labour and production. However, this paper argues that such a divide is caught in an analytical template of dialectical thinking, dominant in Marxist-based critical studies, but preventing a more affirmative imagination of alternatives beyond resistance and thus fails to account for what might become developed as alternatives to dominant capitalist forms of production (Deleuze & Guattari, 1977) beyond the dynamic interplay between the two domains. This has become even more needed in the digital age that has opened for other forms of ownership as well as organization (O’Neil, 2015).
Through a critical engagement with the works of Tim Ingold (2000) and Karl Marx (1867/1976), the paper presents two contrasting yet complementary perspectives. Ingold’s anthropological approach emphasizes the inseparability of tools, materials, and embodied practices, highlighting how both craft and technology involve skilled engagements with the environment. From this view, the boundaries between craft and technology blur, offering a more fluid and integrated understanding of labor, which in our perspective opens for a more processual analysis and understanding, in turn related to an affirmative politics of imagining and actualizing different ways of organizing work (not simply labour; Deleuze, 2006; Massumi, 2002). However, while Ingold’s analysis sheds light on the experiential and material aspects of human-technology interaction, it does not fully account for the socio-economic structures that shape these interactions, nor the desire- and affect-based alternatives available for a more affirmative politics of creative organization (Hjorth, 2015).
To address this limitation, the paper incorporates a Marxist critique, particularly focusing on Marx’s insights in volume 1, Ch. 15, of Capital (Marx, 1976), regarding the historical and social functions of technology. For Marx, technology is not a neutral tool but a manifestation of capitalist social relations, reinforcing modes of production that privilege efficiency, control, and the commodification of labour. Within this framework, craft is not simply a nostalgic remnant of the pre-industrial past but also a labour form that continues to be shaped, constrained, and at times subsumed by capitalist dynamics.
However, the Marxist analysis also reduces work into labour and underplays the creative nature of making as a human inclination that is part of all making, craft- or industrial-based (Sennett, 2008). Imagining alternatives, actualizing tactical responses to attempt to dominate and control, this has always been part of also industrial production (de Certeau, 1984; Foucault, 1980). The paper therefore moves on to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of desire and assemblage to reconceptualize the relationship between craft and technology (Hjorth & Holt, 2022). Assemblage thinking allows for an analysis of craft and technology as entangled elements within a broader socio-material ecology, evolving together rather than existing in opposition (Braidotti, 2018). This perspective foregrounds the importance of agency beyond an anthropocentric view: human and non-human, material, and discursive elements have to be included to grasp the entanglement with matter and non-human elements in the distribution of agency (Barad, 2003) and the subsequent potential for alternative configurations of work and value creation that thereby follows.
By integrating these theoretical perspectives, the paper challenges analyses that either celebrate technology as the inevitable future or romanticize craft as an idyllic past. Instead, it proposes a nuanced and affirmative-processual framework for understanding how craft and technology interact in contemporary organizations of work.
References
Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs, 28(3), 801–831.
Bell, E., & Vachhani, S. J. (2020). Relational encounters and vital materiality in the practice of craft work. Organization Studies, 41(5), 681–701.
Blundel, R. K., & Smith, D. J. (2013). Reinventing artisanal knowledge and practice: A critical review of innovation in a craft-based industry. Prometheus, 31(1), 55–73.
Braidotti, R. (2018). A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(6), 31–61.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press.
Deleuze, G. (2006). Nietzsche and Philosophy. Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1977). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Pantheon Books.
Hjorth, D. (2015). Sketching a Philosophy of Entrepreneurship. In Baker, T. & Welter, F. (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Entrepreneurship (pp. 41–58). Routledge.
Hjorth, D., & Holt, R. (2022). Entrepreneurship and the Creation of Organization. Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment. Routledge.
Kroezen, J., Ravasi, D., Sasaki, I., Żebrowska, M., & Suddaby, R. (2021). Configurations of craft: Alternative models for organizing work. Academy of Management Annals, 15(2), 502–536.
Marx, K. (1976). Capital, Vol. 1. Penguin.
Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press.
O’Neil, M. (2015). Labour out of Control: The Political Economy of Capitalist and Ethical Organizations. Organization Studies, 36(12), 1627–1647.
Raffaelli, R. (2019). Technology reemergence: Creating new value for old technologies in Swiss mechanical watchmaking, 1970–2008. Administrative Science Quarterly, 64(3), 576–618.
Rippin, A., & Vachhani, S. (2018). Craft as Resistance: A Conversation About Craftivism, Embodied Inquiry and Craft-based Methodologies. In Bell, E., Mangia, G., Taylor, S., & Toraldo, M. L. (Eds.), The Organization of Craft Work: Identities, Meanings and Materiality. Routledge.
- Authors: Giulia Maragno & Fabrizio Panozzo
Looking Back to Move Forward: A Craft-Centered View of Technological Evolution
Abstract
Over the past decades, digital and algorithmic technologies have largely been understood in computational terms, as programmes containing a fixed set of instructions that run until a solution is reached, operating independently of their application contexts (Faraj et al., 2018). This acceptation echoes two dominant views of the relationship between technologies and humans in modern society, both of which have shaped our engagement with these tools. On one hand, the idea of technological somnambulism (Winner, 1986) suggests that technologies are morally and ethically neutral. On the other hand, technological determinism (Pfaffenberger, 1988) frames technologies as powerful and autonomous tools that shape social and cultural life as independent variables.
However, the rapid pace of technological development calls for the adoption of different perspectives and research has increasingly focused on exploring the theoretical connections between social organising and technology (Bailey et al., 2022; Faraj & Azad, 2012; Orr, 2006), emphasising that technologies have always been intimately connected with humans (Bruun & Wahlberg, 2022). Among these lines of inquiry, recent studies have started to question the human-centred narrative of technological evolution (e.g., Sage et al., 2020), advocating instead for a focus on technologies themselves (Leonardi & Barley, 2008) and a rethinking of their role within organisational boundaries (Beyes et al., 2022).
Building on this shift, we argue that the decentring of human agency should be rooted in the etymological concept of technology. Technology, as defined by Ingold (1997), is not only a non-human agent, but also the connection between ‘tekhne’ and ‘logos’, understood as the “modes of operation, sets of practices, and ways of thought attached to and objectified in technical objects” (Beyes et al., 2022, p. 1002). Thus, to investigate technology both as a technical object and as a set of practices, we focus on the digitisation process and ask: how does this process relate to other organisational processes? What technological tools are involved? How do the organisational members engaged in this process interact with the technologies they use? What kinds of practices are emerging? And how has this relationship evolved over time?
Drawing on an ongoing ethnographic study (Van Der Waal, 2009) of the Lund University Library – specifically the digitisation undertaken by the Department of Preservation and Digitisation – we seek to propose an alternative way of thinking about and researching technology as both a key non-human actor in organising and as a set of work practices tied to technical objects. Following Rostain and Clarke’s (2025) suggestion, we turn to the literature on craft to shed light on how this notion can be used to contribute to the existing discourse on digitisation. Etymologically, craft encompasses multiple meanings (Bell & Willmott, 2020) and recent organisation studies have depicted its multifaceted nature (e.g., Bell et al., 2021; Gasparin & Neyland, 2022; Holt & Yamauchi, 2023). In this study, craft is considered as a way of working (Sennett, 2008) – “a humanistic approach that prioritises human engagement over machine control” (Kroezen et al., 2021, p. 5) – and this analytical concept is used as a template for reading how organisational work practices are (re)designed and assembled (Latour, 2008) around technologies.
The preliminary analysis carried out so far reveals three themes as initial contributions:
i) the importance of time, challenging the perception of digitisation as a rapid and automated practice;
ii) the relationship between workers, their environments, and the material objects they handle, which shape the digitisation process; and
iii) the attitudes and skills that shape this relationship.
- Authors: Martin Quinn, Marta Gasparin & Elena Raviola
Articulating the Value of Craft and Culture: A Mixed Methods Approach
Abstract
This paper seeks to develop a methodology for interpreting and understanding the value(s) created by the craft and creative industries. It can be difficult to measure the value culture and creative industries bring to a city/region/country using traditional methods based on an positivist economic methodological approach. This is because a. much of the value created is a. beyond economic and b. normal economic measurements miss much of the economic value being created as culture impacts on many other sectors and there is a SIC code issue when defining the sector(s). The paper will outline the problem with examples from our fieldwork across seven countries since 2015 and then suggest solutions on understanding the broader set of values created by cultural and creative industries. We argue that rather than focusing on measurement, we should shift to an approach which allows for the articulation of value through a comprehensive methodology comprising of mixed methods – ethnographic storytelling and mapping approaches coupled with an extended economic lens to uncover economic, social, cultural and heritage values of culture and craft.
- Author: Vishv Priya Kohli
Ethical and Sustainable Innovation in the EU Craft Sector: Changes in GI Regulation and Impact in Practice
Abstract
In recent years, the European Union (EU) has placed growing emphasis on ethical and sustainable innovation across diverse sectors, including crafts. The craft sector—steeped in cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and localized production practices—holds significant potential for sustainable development, provided the right regulatory frameworks and supportive ecosystems are in place. This paper explores the recent EU regulations aimed at extending Geographical Indication (GI) protection to craft and industrial products, focusing on how this shift is poised to elevate the craft sector’s market value, bolster regional development, and foster sustainable production practices. It examines the multi-dimensional impact of GI protection—economic, cultural, and environmental—and highlights challenges to implementation, especially for micro and small enterprises. Central to this discussion is how GI regulations and broader policy measures can be harnessed to drive innovation, cultural preservation, and responsible production. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for enhancing ethical and sustainable innovation in the EU craft sector, advocating for stakeholder collaboration, robust funding mechanisms, consumer engagement, and a balanced approach to regulation.