Craft Imaginaries – Past, Present and Future

Abstract

This paper contributes to debates about craft authenticity by turning attention to the craft imaginary. We suggest that the significance of craft stems from its role in constructing an alternative social imaginary that challenges dominant, modernist imaginaries of industrial production and consumption. Our focus is on the role of imaginaries in determining how societies, communities, organizations and individuals embody temporal relations to the past that extend into the present and future. We show how the craft imaginary comprises histories, traditions, places and bodies and use this to develop a distinction between the imaginary of craft-in-the-past and future-oriented craft imaginaries. Through this, we seek to highlight the organizational possibilities of craft as a source of innovation, inclusivity and disruption.

Organizing Tekhnē: Configuring processes and politics through craft

“…The designers in our study do not approach their work through a nostalgic craft-in-the-past approach, but as future-oriented craft imaginaries that engage with disruptive organizational, societal and ecological changes (as in Bell, Dacin et al, 2021). Heritage is represented and preserved, and value is placed on craft techniques.…”

Management as craft and developing craftership

“…In an intriguing reversal, she suggests that “real facility with abstractions … may in fact be a process of ‘concretion’, bringing abstractions closer to the self.” The body has been examined in leadership (Pullen and Vachhani, 2013), but materiality is more than the body (Bell and Vachhani, 2019), and although “the social and the material are constitutively entangled in everyday life” (Orlikowski, 2007, 2010), the material is more than technology. Dawney (2011, p. 2,011, in Bell et al. , 2021, p. 3) suggests “a materialisation of imagination in order to understand how bodies, individually and collectively, act on the world in order to manage affects, bring about change and in doing so produce subjects”.…”

“…, 2021, p. 3) suggests “a materialisation of imagination in order to understand how bodies, individually and collectively, act on the world in order to manage affects, bring about change and in doing so produce subjects”. The emphasis is on materiality, temporality, and imagination that arises from the disjuncture between experience and expectation (Schinkel, 2005; in Bell et al , 2021, p. 3). That disjuncture arises within individual bodies and between them and raises issues of power and control, of “‘targets’ enacting aspects of quantification and the ideal of perfect control and fabrication” and mental well-being (Jones et al.…”

James March and the poetry of leadership

“…"Little-r" rationality is a more open, liberal and self-critical view of reason. As an embedded "imaginary" (Bell et al, 2021;Kroezen et al, 2021), it is pragmatic, tolerant and more sympathetic to craft skills, professional judgement and reflective practice. One of the main concerns of "little-r" rationality is the danger of uncritical and authoritarian "big-R" rationality, as yet another religion.…”

“…Adherents to "little r" are also simply adherents to an alternative aesthetic, in this case not the coherence and dignity of the architectural dream but the playful experimentation, professional dedication and craft pride that inspires the reflective practitioner and the courageous conviction and perseverance of the radical entrepreneur (Bell et al, 2021;Kroezen et al, 2021;Suddaby et al, 2017). In addition, in both cases, March's ironic twist and wry smile is evident, in his acknowledgement of the partiality, limitations and narrative entrapments, as well as the beauty, delight and inspiration that comes from such aesthetic visions.…”