Page 202 - Constructing Craft

not detached in the worker’s mind from the product being made; the worker was

free to control their own working action; the worker was able to learn from their work
and to use and develop their skills and capacities undertaking a task; there was no

split between work and play, or work and culture; and the worker’s livelihood
17
determined and infused their entire mode of living. The author of the report, Dr
Kerr Inkson, although identifying the contrast between ‘home craft work’ and ‘factory
work’ in explaining how potters controlled their work, noted that ‘craft work is still

embedded in economic institutions which may affect it through their own

18
dynamics.’ Inkson selected studio potters because he believed being a
craftsperson involved a complete integration of work, learning and living and, as

previously stated, potters were the most economically integrated of all craftspeople.

Many craftspeople agreed with him and for some this aspect of craft was as
important, if not more important, than the objects they created.

Thinking about Work

A number of philosophers have considered the role of craft as work in Western

society. For instance, both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx believed that
19
craft was the most satisfying form of work. Another, the Austrian philosopher Ivan
Illich, like Bourdieu, believed that attitudes to work were established and reinforced
by mass education. He was also convinced that craft had suffered because of this.

He concluded that mass education had conditioned people to accept industrial

working conditions as natural. Moreover, like Bourdieu, he believed that planning,
standardisation and the control of occupations through the awarding of formal

qualifications and licensing of ‘professionals’ were forms of control demanded by
the education system.

Work is productive, respectable, worthy of the citizen only when
the work process is planned, monitored, and controlled by the
professional agent, who insures that the work meets certified
need in a standardised fashion. … The infrastructure of society
is so arranged that only the job gives access to the tools of
production, and this monopoly of commodity production over
the generation of use-values turns even more stringent as the
state takes over. Only with a licence may you teach a child; only
at a clinic may you set a bone. Housework, handicrafts,

Constructing Craft