Transient craft: reclaiming the contemporary craft worker

Abstract

This article joins with Richard Sennett's (2008) reclamation of the craft worker, but also extends it. Through a focus on craft as experience and repetitive practice, Sennett reveals how craft is a key facet of several contemporary professions. Using the example of hairdressing, this article moves beyond Sennett's conclusions, illuminating how craft is at work within female-dominated service professions. The article adds to the growing body of literature on hairdressing, recognizing that while this literature involves body and emotion work, such growth has been at the exclusion of the craft components of the work. More broadly, the article argues that the craft of service work is obscured by the intangibility of the materials produced and the practices performed, thus limiting the value of such work.

‘Don’t Use “the Weak Word”’: Women Brewers, Identities and Gendered Territories of Embodied Work

“…Although more studies have attempted to redress this (Mik-Meyer, Roelsgaard Obling and Wolkowitz, 2018) and make the often absent, 'naturalised and taken for granted' bodies more visible (Wolkowitz, 2006: 55), female workers' bodies continue to be under-researched. When it comes to work requiring physical exertion, the focus has been mainly on masculine bodies, such as firefighters (Thurnell-Read and Parker, 2008), largely 3 overlooking the significance of the corporeality of women workers in male-dominated occupations requiring physical work and those outside of feminised occupations involving body work (Cohen and Wolkowitz, 2018;Holmes, 2015;Wolkowitz, 2006).…”

“…This is important in the context of the changing nature of employment in contemporary Britain, with the revival of craft businesses (Holmes, 2015) and women's increasing participation in these.…”

“…Most importantly, brewsters emphasise gender differences when articulating the collective contribution of women brewers to the industry, accentuating innovation in recipe design and the creative use of diverse ingredients. In this way, they construct a distinctive brewster identity that is situated outside the archetypal male craftworker (Holmes, 2015;Sennett, 2008). Thus, identity work is leveraged not only to achieve acceptance and invisible bodily status (Watts, 2009) but to advantageously demonstrate distinctiveness and collective contribution.…”

“…Providing insight into the working lives of female brewers furthers understanding of the role of the brewer, moving away from the archetypal male craftworker (Holmes, 2015;Sennett, 2008), problematising the role and broadening understanding of the female craftworker experience. In this way, the article joins Holmes (2015) in challenging conventional discourses of craftwork as a male domain. It shows that while the small-scale nature of craft businesses can provide divergence opportunities for women, adaption of physical working environments and ownership of outcomes, this requires increased effort and is a complex process that shifts between foregrounding and downplaying gender; demonstrating physical strength but also acknowledging the limitations of their working bodies; accentuating difference as well as communicating suitability and passion for the craft.…”

Twist and Shape: Feedback Practices within Creative Subject Content of Hairdressing Education

“…There are studies on the professional work of hairdressers from various theoretical approaches (e.g., Billett 1995;Chugh and Hancock 2009;Cohen 2010;Holmes 2015;Lindsay 2004;McMurtrie 2010;YeadonLee et al 2011), although few take an ethnomethodological approach (e.g., Horlacher 2017;Oshima 2014). In the context of vocational education, research of hairdressing is also scarce (Andersson Gustafsson 2002;Öhman 2015;Öhman and Tanner 2017;Klope 2015) and feedback practices in interaction between teacher and student within creative subject content of hairdressing have not been accounted for.…”