User:Luisa Moura/thematic/trimester III/Work V2

CRAFTS AND THE IDEOLOGY OF SELF-EMPOWERMENT

Research sketches on various labor structures and the role of the Individual within it; from medieval craftsmanship to a post-welfare state system (participatory society?)

Personal growth and creative drive are essential ingredients of an emergent participatory society, in which bottom up decision, community interests, do-it-yourself mentality and integrity of action come to substitute the decaying welfare state. People are stimulated to embrace entrepreneurship, flexibility of work, schedule and income; to look after each other and prepare their own future. Everyone should try to do what is best at, adapting to market fluctuations and finding his own personal way within it.

The power of the individual is depicted as immense in this moment; now that any government has to assume its incapacity to actually protect the citizen and its social rights. The articles on communitarian initiatives, picturesque markets, creative one-man businesses abound in the media and in political discourse; together with reality shows and documentaries on the decay of the welfare system like the 'Tokkies' in the Netherlands or 'Benefits Street' in UK. The message is clear, we should all believe in our own super power and, despite the fact that we are paying for a welfare state, we might not get it, so we should find a way to go around it.

Craft is deeply related with the notion of manual pleasure and authenticity, rooted in personal skill and creative capacity. It is therefore ideologically associated with the contemporary fight for personal identity and freedom. Paradoxically though, craftsmanship has historically and in its essence a collective nature. Craftsmanship serves the gathering of different expertise at the service of a group, based on need, functionality and excellency of standards; which meaning does it have to speak about Crafts nowadays without this socioeconomic purpose? What is the meaning of Crafts in a global market and Individual-based logic?

News from Nowhere, in CHAPTER XVII: HOW THE CHANGE CAME

"Therefore, though they knew that the only reasonable aim for those who would better the world was a condition of equality; in their impatience and despair they managed to convince themselves that if they could by hook or by crook get the machinery of production and the management of property so altered that the ‘lower classes’ (so the horrible word ran) might have their slavery somewhat ameliorated, they would be ready to fit into this machinery, and would use it for bettering their condition still more and still more, until at last the result would be a practical equality (they were very fond of using the word ‘practical’), because ‘the rich’ would be forced to pay so much for keeping ‘the poor’ in a tolerable condition that the condition of riches would become no longer valuable and would gradually die out. Do you follow me?” (...) “Well, since you follow me, you will see that as a theory this was not altogether unreasonable; but ‘practically,’ it turned out a failure.”