Neo-craft Work as Meaningful Work: Longing for Resonance

Abstract

This article illustrates the most common trajectories that bring workers of different walks of life to undertake a career in ‘neo-craft’ work. This is a postindustrial form of craft work whereby manual occupations that are traditionally considered to be low-status, or performed by the working class, are transformed into ‘cool’ jobs through the infusion of craft principles. Based on extensive qualitative research in the European Union, we show how neo-craft work has been the beneficiary of patterns of exit from other forms of waged work, both preceding and following the pandemic, and document the motivations underpinning these workers’ professional reconversions. Drawing from social theorist Hartmut Rosa, we argue that neo-craft work is considered to be meaningful since it is perceived as a conveyor of resonance, and propose to consider resonance as an emergent dimension of meaningful work.

Introduction

In recent years, many workers have quit their jobs with a desire to change their lives. Following the pandemic, this ‘quitting’ trend has been all over the news, labelled with the term ‘the Great Resignation’ (Gittleman, 2022). This grasps the larger-than-usual number of workers who have voluntarily left their employment on the back of the global health crisis, especially (albeit not exclusively) in the US. The wider sociological significance of this phenomenon is still under question. Yet, this coincides with a revival of the debate about meaningful work in the Western setting (see Laaser and Karlsson, 2022). Research suggests that many workers in the purported knowledge economy (Drucker, 1959) are placing greater importance on their work–life balance following the experimentation of remote work during lockdowns (Gandini and Garavaglia, 2023). Contextually, a rising ‘anti-work’ sentiment has been recorded on digital platforms, as witnessed by the popularity of fora such as r/antiwork or social media trends such as TikTok’s ‘quiet quitting’, which promotes working to the strictest of what is demanded, without going beyond any immediate contractual duty (Scheyett, 2023).

This article shows how so-called ‘neo-craft’ work has been the beneficiary of patterns of exit from other forms of waged work, both preceding and following the pandemic. Neo-craft work has gained popularity in recent years as a postindustrial form of craft work marked by original features. This term encompasses a diverse range of manual occupations that have traditionally been viewed as low-status, or performed by the working class, which come to be perceived as ‘cool’ jobs through the infusion of craft principles (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023; Land, 2018). In the foundational Masters of Craft (Ocejo, 2017), sociologist Richard Ocejo demonstrates how some traditionally blue-collar, manual and service-oriented jobs, such as bartending, butchering, barbering and distilling, have become appealing for urban workers from a middle-class background who look for a better alignment between their employment and their identity, passion and values. These jobs – together with some ‘restyled’ old crafts such as jewellery or woodworking – become ‘neo-craft’ inasmuch as the material aspects of work intertwine with discursive practices that valorise authenticity and the ‘particularisation’ of the production process, based on artisanal principles. This contributes to portraying these jobs as ‘cool’ (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023), thereby turning them into status-inducing occupations (Ocejo, 2017). Combined with the idea of craft work as authentic and meaning-making, ‘good work’ (Sennett, 2008), this provides them with the allure of ‘a less alienated form of work’ (Land, 2018: para 6).

Research on neo-craft has grown in recent years, adding to the cross-disciplinary field of craft studies and its new ‘configurations’ (Kroezen et al., 2021) by exploring new craft practices situated specifically within the postindustrial, consumer and digital economy (Bell et al., 2021). Yet, empirical accounts remain sparse and somewhat contradictory. While workers are drawn to neo-craft work as a status-rewarding activity, the high levels of engagement they demonstrate clash with often physically strenuous and relatively low-paying work (Brewer, 2024; Delgaty and Wilson, 2024). Unsurprisingly, the notion of meaningful work has acquired relevance within this setting to explain why workers turn to neo-craft work in lieu of other, often more remunerating and traditionally status-inducing activities (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023; Rostain and Clarke, 2024). However, more empirical research is required to explore in greater depth the professional pathways of workers who turn to neo-craft work from other forms of waged work in search for meaningful work, especially outside of the Anglo-American setting and the widely studied sector of craft beer brewing (Land et al., 2018). This article aims at filling this gap.

Drawing upon extensive qualitative research on neo-craft work in the European Union, we illustrate the most common trajectories that bring workers from different walks of life to quit their jobs and reconvert professionally by undertaking a career in neo-craft work. Based on this evidence, we argue that neo-craft work is considered meaningful work since it is perceived to be a conveyor of resonance. We take this concept from Rosa (2019), who defines it as a relationship formed through affect and emotion in which the subject and the world are mutually affected and transformed. Indeed, among the examples of experiences of resonance, Rosa mentions how the artisan relates to material and inanimate objects as (potentially) ‘immensely satisfying’ ones (Rosa, 2019: 26). In doing so, we propose considering resonance as an emergent dimension of meaningful work that extends the notion of recognition (Honneth, 1996; Laaser and Karlsson, 2022) and sets itself in positive contrast to the Marxian notion of alienation, broadly conceived as an obstacle to the achievement of a ‘good life’.

Our contribution is threefold. First, we present original, wide-ranging empirical evidence on neo-craft work, an under-researched ‘new form of work’ that combines significant elements of novelty with some remarkably contradictory aspects. Second, we add to the emergent body of empirical works on the ‘quitting’ trend that has been at the heart of the post-pandemic discussion on work, showing that practices of abandonment of office work in favour of such new forms of craft work were already underway before the global health crisis. In doing so, we provide fresh empirical evidence about the trajectories of professional reconversion that follow one’s decision to quit a job, with a particular focus on the motivations that tie the choice of quitting to a search for meaningful work. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we advance the sociological debate on meaningful work by introducing the notion of resonance as a concept that accounts for the importance played by the emotional and affective relationship with one’s job in the assessment of its meaning – while remaining anchored to a labour process framework, broadly intended, that maintains its chief focus of inquiry on the content of the work itself.

Meaningful work: A critical perspective

The sociological debate on meaningful work has revived in recent years. Perhaps the most relevant contribution in this discussion has been that by Laaser and Karlsson (2022, 2023; see also Laaser and Bolton, 2022), who highlight the need to overcome the dichotomy between subjective experiences and objective job characteristics in the determination of what makes work meaningful. Against this backdrop, building broadly on labour process analysis and critical realism, they propose a novel conceptual framework based on three key aspects: autonomy, recognition and dignity. This is principled on the idea that meaningful work is ‘created, experienced and defended at the agency level, but shaped, constrained or denied by wider dynamics of the employment and workplace level’ (Laaser and Karlsson, 2022: 799), and must thus be appraised in a constant tension between individual and structural dynamics.

Besides the narrow focus on waged work, which arguably overlooks the growing relevance of ‘nonstandard’ forms of employment, such as self-employment, in present-day labour markets, this contribution has the merit of bringing back more firmly in sociological studies what has been for long a lively discussion across other disciplines, particularly organisational and workplace research. Within this setting, the work of Bailey and colleagues (Bailey et al., 2019, 2024) proposes a multidimensional understanding of meaningful work that strives to encompass both subjective and objective features (Bailey et al., 2019). Building upon Lepisto and Pratt’s (2017) ‘dual conceptualisation’ of meaningful work, it distinguishes between a dominant ‘realisation’ perspective – centred on individual fulfilment through needs, motivations and self-actualisation – and a less developed ‘justification’ perspective, which acknowledges the ambiguity of subjective experience and emphasises the moral worth and perceived social value of work.

Yet, a sociological understanding of meaningful work must necessarily take into account that identity and self-actualisation, on the one hand, and the moral notion of worth, broadly intended, on the other, are ultimately grounded in the social relations under which work takes place, following a labour process perspective. Laaser and Karlsson’s (2022) framework advances this line of thought by proposing a tripartite model in which autonomy – intended as a worker’s capacity to influence the conditions and direction of work, both individually and collectively – and dignity – that is, the sense of self-worth and social value, broadly intended, derived from one’s labour – are complemented by the notion of recognition. This is broken down into several dimensions that examine how workers are acknowledged as human beings with a meaningful role in the organisation, highlighting the central role of recognition in shaping and affirming one’s identity and self-worth. It may be argued that, for Laaser and Karlsson (2022), recognition represents a conceptual bridge between autonomy and dignity: when recognition is withheld – through micromanagement, demeaning treatment or being considered as replaceable, for instance – workers may develop feelings of worthlessness, insignificance and alienation, which undermine the meaningfulness of their work. Yet, despite its value, this conceptual framework largely overlooks the affective and emotional relationships workers develop with their work, and how these also concur to shape their sense of meaning. To better account for this aspect, and thus extend Laaser and Karlsson’s (2022) framework, we introduce the concept of resonance.

Resonance: A new dimension of meaningful work

According to Rosa (2019), the way humans relate to the world and themselves can either be an alienated, mute relationship – or, conversely, a resonant one. In the accelerated society described by Rosa (2010), individuals are caught in a relentless race of competition and self-optimisation that often leads to alienation – of which burnout represents its most emblematic form. Human life, in turn, is marked by a search for non-alienated – that is, resonant – relationships: ‘human beings long to experience the world as sustaining, nourishing, warming and accommodating, and to experience themselves as effective within it, and they fear being exposed to a silent, merciless world in which they are powerless’ (Rosa, 2019: 718). Thus, resonance for Rosa is fundamentally the opposite of alienation. While alienation arises from a lack of meaning and power in individuals’ lives, resonance is a transformative way of relating to the world, characterised by affection, intrinsic interest and a sense of self-efficacy.

In Rosa’s (2019) theory, work is a crucial sphere of resonance. Drawing on the Frankfurt School tradition, he argues that work is a primary way through which humans relate to, and actively shape, their identity and the world. Rosa’s concept of resonance builds on Honneth’s (1996) notion of recognition: both scholars stress that recognition is vital for developing identity and self-worth, and that work is a key site for this process. For Honneth, work is central especially to the moral grammar of recognition, where individuals seek esteem by contributing to society through labour. Likewise, Rosa sees work as a potential source of resonance, whereby individuals can experience a responsive, meaningful relationship with the world.

Coincidentally, Rosa uses craftsmanship to illustrate this point. In his own words: ‘working on or grappling with material – whether kneading dough in a bakery, sawing boards in a carpentry shop, treating the soil in a nursery, writing on paper at a writing workshop, or interpreting an experiment in a chemistry lab – always generates its own resonance with things’ (Rosa, 2019: 374). He argues that the relationship an artisan forms with their tools and raw materials generates what he calls ‘diagonal’ resonance, which arises in the active engagement between the self and the material world. This contrasts with the ‘horizontal’ axis of resonance, which involves interpersonal relationships like those with family or friends, and the ‘vertical’ axis, which relates to transcendent experiences such as religion, art or nature. Each represents a distinct domain where individuals can experience a resonant, transformative connection with the world.

We argue that resonance, here understood as active engagement with the material world through work, provides a valuable conceptual bridge to reconcile the subjective experience of work, which often centres on material conditions, with the social value, the self-esteem and moral worth workers actively build through their labour (Bailey et al., 2024; Laaser and Karlsson, 2022; Lepisto and Pratt, 2017). Through resonance, Rosa extends Honneth’s idea of recognition beyond its legal and intersubjective dimensions. While both emphasise the role of recognition in identity formation and self-realisation, Honneth (1996) focuses on how intersubjective recognition, mediated by shared norms and ethics, builds self-esteem. In contrast, Rosa’s concept of resonance extends beyond shared norms to operate into the material world, as exemplified by artisans and their relationships with their work. Adding resonance as a component to Laaser and Karlsson’s (2022) conceptual framework of meaningful work, we argue, provides a useful complement to the notion of recognition and enriches the triangulation with autonomy and dignity with a notion that better grasps the positive emotional connection that workers might develop with their work. Figure 1 provides a visual synthesis of this conceptualisation.

Figure 1.

Meaningful work – conceptual framework.

In line with Rosa’s theory, the notion of resonance as a dimension of meaningful work should be seen in positive contrast to the Marxian notion of alienation, broadly understood as a barrier to achieving a ‘good life’. For Rosa (2019), alienation stems primarily from social acceleration and the relentless pace of postindustrial society. In Honneth’s theory of recognition, work is a social and moral arena where individuals seek acknowledgement to shape their identities. When work fails to provide such recognition, it can result in alienation, which is experienced as social invisibility, disrespect or moral injury. This, in turn, gives rise to ‘struggles for recognition’, where workers seek to reclaim dignity and respect, either through collective action such as labour movements and unions, or individual responses, such as disengagement or resignation.

Not coincidentally, the post-pandemic debate on work has seen a revival of the discussion on alienation, in parallel with the growing interest in meaningful work. This was also prompted by reactions to Graeber’s (2018) theory of ‘bullshit jobs’. Although the idea that certain jobs are ‘pointless’ has faced strong criticism, particularly over its empirical validity (Soffia et al., 2022), the popularity of Graeber’s theory signals it has ‘hit a nerve’ in society, resonating with many workers (Walo, 2023: 1123) and highlighting what seems to be a deeper unease. Arguably, following the global health crisis, unusually high levels of job disaffection and resignations were reported (Gittleman, 2022). It remains difficult to empirically verify this ‘quitting’ trend, and more data are required to better assess and provide nuance to this phenomenon. Still, research suggests that many workers, especially in knowledge-based sectors, took advantage of the pandemic’s disruption to critically reflect on the meaning of their work (Gandini and Garavaglia, 2023). Notably, Graeber situates ‘bullshit jobs’ mainly in white-collar sectors such as administration, sales, marketing, corporate law, finance and management. Unsurprisingly, it is from within this very setting that many have, in recent years, turned to new forms of craft work in search of greater purpose and meaning (Ocejo, 2017).

Methodological note

The article builds on extensive qualitative research conducted in the context of the CRAFTWORK project (www.craftwork.unimi.it), which investigates the lived experiences of neo-craft work in the European Union. Overall, this consisted of 78 semi-structured interviews with neo-craft workers, coupled with ethnographic fieldwork at 20 neo-craft activities across different sectors, conducted in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Slovenia, Portugal, Malta, Italy, Belgium, Romania, France, Estonia, Finland, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and the Netherlands between 2022 and 2025. Among these workers, 44 had undergone a professional reconversion from a previous occupation to neo-craft work. The empirical evidence presented in this article refers specifically to this sub-group, which includes 27 women and 17 men from 17 EU countries. Concerning their socio-demographic composition, the majority of our participants are aged between 30 and 40 years old, with only five of them in their 50s and one at retirement age (68). A summary table, detailing participants’ demographic characteristics as well as their previous and current occupations and the type of professional reconversion undertaken (more on this below) is provided in the supplemental Appendix.

Adopting a purposive sampling approach (Bryman, 2016), participants were recruited from a directory of neo-craft activities that was created during the first phase of the research, conducted using digital methods (Caliandro and Gandini, 2016). This consisted in the systematic collection of all posts containing the hashtags ‘artisanal’ and ‘artisan’ published between 30 March 2021 and 30 March 2022 on five social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok). These hashtags were identified through a recursive process designed to locate the most appropriate ‘medium’ for tracing neo-artisanal production activities on social media, in line with the principles of digital methods research (Caliandro and Gandini, 2016), starting from exploratory, small-scale data collection across multiple entry points and platforms, including also other hashtags such as #craft and #natural. This revealed, among other things, that the hashtag #craft, which was initially assumed to be the most relevant one, mostly indexed amateur, hobbyist, or unrelated content (e.g. gaming), and therefore did not align with the targeted sample. By contrast, #artisanal and #artisan proved to be more thematically focused, consistently showcasing content that aligned with the theoretical definition of neo-craft outlined in Gandini and Gerosa (2023). Data were collected through a combination of manual coding and software-assisted procedures, following platform-specific protocols that had been previously approved by the ethical committee of the University of Milan.

Following the extraction of the individual profiles associated to the collected posts (23,433 unique accounts), through a purposely designed coding sheet we employed ethnographic content analysis (Caliandro and Gandini, 2016) on the entire corpus of data, leading to the identification of a set of 346 neo-craft activities across the entire EU territory. All these have been considered ‘neo-craft’ as a result of this ethnographic coding; this qualification was subsequently cross-validated through the qualitative phase of the research in an iterative process. The codebook was designed to evidence the discursive production of these activities on their social media profiles, specifically focusing on the valorisation of authenticity and the ‘particularisation’ of the production process, again building upon the theoretical conceptualisation of neo-craft work by Gandini and Gerosa (2023).

The primary evidence presented in this article comes from the qualitative interviews conducted in the second phase of the project, with ethnographic visits and digital data adding to the contextual understanding of individual conversations. Considerations about gender, age, nationality, economic sector and type of craft activity, urban/rural presence and geographic location in Europe, guided the selection of interview participants, with a view towards constructing a balanced and diversified sample. Interviews were conducted face-to-face with a handful of exceptions, where an interview conducted via Microsoft Teams was deemed necessary to establish contact and thus facilitate the subsequent ethnographic fieldwork. Interview questions were designed following a biographical approach aimed at exploring the lived experiences of neo-craft work, focusing on issues of identity, social status and everyday work practices. Among the neo-craft activities mapped in our research are artisanal tailoring, bike repairing, jewellery, home decor, artisanal food and beverage production, pottery and soap-making, to name a few. Interestingly, women (48) are more represented in our sample than men (30); this constitutes a somewhat counterintuitive finding, since existing research considers the neo-craft setting as a highly masculine one (Land et al., 2018). Although this aspect is not directly addressed in this article, it undoubtedly deserves further inquiry in future research on the topic. Pseudonyms have been used to preserve confidentiality.

The multi-method and multi-sited approach of our research has some important advantages but also carries some inevitable limitations. On the one hand, the identification of neo-craft activities through digital methods made it possible to acquire a large amount of data about businesses that are often ‘hidden’ among existing categorisations and statistics of local craft councils and associations. However, this cannot be considered representative of the entirety of this research population from a statistical standpoint and is subject to the usual biases of digital social research – which, among other things, tends to prioritise the relevancy of certain users, languages and content (cf. Caliandro and Gandini, 2016). On the other hand, while the multi-sited approach allows the observation of a wide array of instances of neo-craft work across different geographic settings, it does not permit engaging in a comparative study across different countries within Europe. Nonetheless, our main objective was to uncover recurrent patterns and shared elements in our dataset, focusing on continuities across different geographical areas while still taking into account the relevancy of local craft cultures and individual socio-economic settings.

Quitting waged work: Three types of exit

Despite individual differences in terms of geographic location, type of craft and previous career sector, our participants clearly believe that the decision to quit one’s job and turn to neo-craft work represents an attempt to achieve greater purpose and meaning in work. Before addressing this aspect more closely, this section begins by illustrating the three most frequent trajectories of exit from other waged work (and towards neo-craft work) that we encountered in our research: a gradual, lateral or radical one.

A gradual exit (14 participants) occurs when the decision to quit one’s existing job and turn to neo-craft work is taken through different steps that incrementally lead to the final decision. This is frequent among workers who abandon a job that does not belong to the craft sector but previously experimented with craft work as a hobby. In such cases, the attractiveness of neo-craft work as a career option grows over time in parallel with the realisation that such a move might actually be feasible. Jenny, for instance, is a Finnish woman in her late 30s who, in 2020, quit her clerical job at an import/export corporation in Helsinki to become an artisanal textile producer. In the years prior, she used to sew and weave scarves and hats in her free time. When the pandemic hit, and she transitioned into working from home, she started stocking the cabin adjacent to her house with textile production equipment, sharing her creations on Instagram. Before long, clients from all over Finland began contacting her to purchase her handmade clothes. Ultimately, she decided to quit her office job to fully dedicate herself to craft, aiming to reshape her work–life balance in a direction that she describes as more meaningful. While her interest in tailoring was always there as a hobby, the pandemic offered her the opportunity to turn this into a career choice. This was enacted through different steps: first, the relocation to home working; then, the refitting of her cabin; and finally, the quitting, which came on the back of an assessment of the economic sustainability of her artisanal enterprise. Inevitably, Jenny’s path to neo-craft work has been facilitated by a set of existing resources: the possession of real estate property, which afforded her the opportunity to set up a textile workshop with no rent to pay, but also the economic sustainment of her husband, which effectively enabled her to switch careers with some degree of comfort. As she recounts:

While I was on maternity leave [a few years prior], I started studying clothing craftsmanship. I still had my job, but after my second child, there was a merger at my workplace, so I didn’t have the same job when I returned. That’s when I decided to dive deeper into the clothing business because I was really interested in it. The artisan school gave me a basic foundation, but I wasn’t yet ready to start my own business. Then, when the Covid pandemic hit, and everything shut down, that’s when I thought: ‘Maybe this is the right time to give it a try’.

While many of our stories of quitting and professional reconversion coincide with the pandemic outbreak, many others actually precede the global health crisis. Maria, for instance, is a 38-year-old leather maker originally from Freiburg (Germany) who works from a small workshop in eastern Berlin, where she produces artisanal handbags. Growing up with a passion for sewing and leatherwork, she pursued a degree in economics and marketing, which eventually led her to work in the marketing and communication division of a fashion brand in Germany. However, her dissatisfaction with corporate work grew alongside her passion for craft, which she kept cultivating on the side over the years. An unexpected collaboration and an internship with a leatherman in New York finally persuaded her to move to Berlin in 2018 and set up her own business. Like Jenny’s, Maria’s story is marked by a gradual exit from waged work, whereby the idea of quitting matures over time, while different forms of employment sometimes are held simultaneously in the early stages of activity. As she explains:

I have always worked for fashion brands, in fashion marketing . . . a kind of office work. I’ve never liked it and I tried to find other jobs, without really finding anything good. But I’ve always sold my own clothes or I’ve liked to modify my clothes since I was a teenager. [. . .] [After the internship in the US] I took these new ideas back to Germany and tried more and more to make bags. And then I just reached a point where I felt comfortable with the quality of my bags to sell them. And then I had orders from friends and friends of friends and I was doing open-air markets, and I thought: ‘Why not just try it?’. So I definitively quit my job and focused on my little brand.

As we move forward, it is important not to consider this categorisation of the quitting pathways as an excessively rigid one. On the contrary, the trajectories of exit illustrated here often combine or overlap with one another, in a fluid and flexible way. Maria’s story, for instance – which we qualified as a gradual exit – might also be seen, at least in part, as a lateral exit. This is enacted by workers who already work in a craft-related or contiguous sector, who decide to escape an unsatisfactory job while remaining in the same industry (11 participants). In Maria’s case, this consisted of a switch from knowledge-based work to neo-craft work in the fashion sector. Caterina, instead, is a 30-year-old professionally trained jeweller who worked for several years as a blue-collar worker at a jewellery company. Together with her friend Michela, in 2017 she started a small neo-craft jewellery company in Milan, which they run from a tiny but well-equipped workshop converted from Michela’s uncle’s basement garage in the western periphery of the city. Again, pre-existing resources have facilitated this move; today, they both work full-time for their business, splitting duties between production, marketing and sales, and are now able to make a living from their neo-artisan work:

We started basically from nothing, making a few pieces, joining the local markets that cost little, using the energy we could. Then, we put aside what we earned for future projects together, and in 2017 we got fed up with our work context and decided to get together and dedicate everything to [our brand]. We said: ‘better do it now than who knows when, in how many years . . .’. We were lucky to have Michela’s space, this laboratory that was already designated as such in the land registry. [. . .] This was a bit of a springboard, a fundamental condition . . . not having a large constant expense that other colleagues must support with rent or shared spaces. We bought the equipment little by little, like little ants.

A third type of exit trajectory that we encountered in our study may be defined as radical, which is also the most recurrent one in our sample (19 participants). This is the case of Paulus and Lara, two creative workers in their late-30s, who left their well-paid, high-status job at an advertising agency in Germany in 2016 to found an artisanal drinks business in Portugal. Having worked at a high pace for four years, they decided to take some time off work and, subsequently, to quit and move to Lisbon, where they set up their neo-craft activity. Also for Paulus and Lara, existing resources were instrumental to the success of their micro-enterprise. They set up the business by using the savings they accumulated through years of work; then, upon their arrival in Portugal, they employed their knowledge work competences to win a grant for artisanal startup funding. In Paulus’s words:

I was working for four years for a big German company that has over 300,000 employees worldwide. Incidentally, my wife was working in the same company. And you know, it’s one of those companies where, I mean . . . if you want to do your career there, you can do it somehow. And it’s not one of these companies where you don’t really get fired. So, we could have had this kind of life if we wanted to. But as I said, we travelled a lot in our business life already. So, we took some time off from work and we noticed that, you know, life is not just about this kind of career, and then also in a big company like this, some things just feel without an impact. So we left our career in Germany behind and moved to Portugal and started our business.

Be it gradual, lateral or radical, what these workers seem to share is a striving for work meaningfulness against the constraints of their previous jobs. These are discussed more extensively in the next section.

Motivations: Endemic constraints and trigger events

Looking at what underpins our participants’ decision to quit their jobs and turn to neo-craft work, a multifaceted tapestry of constraints emerges. These can be classified according to two primary dimensions: (a) endemic constraints and (b) trigger events. Concerning the former, we can isolate two sub-dimensions: the organisation of the labour process and personal well-being. Regarding the organisation of the labour process, one recurrent aspect is the sense of monotony stemming from repetitive and daunting tasks. The predictability of daily duties, pointless and stressful routines, coupled with a lack of autonomy, compound their disenchantment with waged work. Ilaria, a 37-year-old craftswoman from the countryside of Lecce, in southern Italy, who left her job in a call centre to become a self-employed paper quiller, explains:

All my friends were happy that I was able to leave after 11 years in a call centre, which were pretty tough. What annoyed me the most was working with people on the phone. I never sold anything, it was market research. But in the end, I just hated the idea of calling people – after so many years, always the same: ‘I’m not interested! I’m not interested!’ . . . People don’t understand that you don’t want to sell anything, you just want to do a survey. They slam the phone down on you, they tell you to **** off. I mean, the classic call centre attitude. The last few years have been pretty tough, so I’m glad I’ve been able to get away from that.

Interestingly, similar accounts are reported also by workers who quit traditionally higher-status occupations. See how Paulus, whom we met before, describes his previous advertising job:

You do a lot of presentations, you do a lot of talking, you do a lot of meetings and you have the feeling that you’re just part of this cycle that repeats itself without big movement forward. So it sometimes feels like . . . it’s like a paid way of keeping people busy.

Another frequent factor contributing to the decision to quit is the presence of toxic work environments. Instances of interpersonal conflicts and a general lack of support from colleagues or supervisors emerge as key stressors and driving forces in the search for meaningful work. Closely intertwined with these aspects is the oppressive role of hierarchical structures within organisations. Jacob, a 34-year-old Berlin-based French potter, who left a corporate job at a fashion platform in 2019, explains:

So basically, five years back, I was working for a fashion platform. I worked for them for three years and towards the end I was getting a little bit annoyed by the whole thing. I still enjoyed my work but I didn’t like the way they treated me. I was saying, OK, I work really hard for you, I expect payback now. I understand that at first they put you under a lot of stress, but once they take everything, I expect payback. At least that’s how I, in my head, expected corporate work to work. And, of course, it didn’t happen. And since it didn’t happen before for the previous company I was working for as well, I was like, okay, let’s make it happen [switching to pottery].

Some respondents explicitly cite the presence of fixed working hours as a source of strain. Adherence to rigid schedules is seen as limiting personal freedom and autonomy, thus contributing to a sense of dissatisfaction. Caterina, whom we met earlier, explains:

I personally realised that working so many hours on the same thing, feeling like a machine, doing the same thing every day, was quite alienating. With large quantities, every piece of jewellery that passed through my hands I really didn’t even have the time to get attached to it, to feel it mine, to care about that thing you’re creating with your own hands. [. . .] It was quite frustrating for me, for my expression. There are people who prefer to have a steady job and a fixed salary, but to me even the idea of having to clock in and out every day and that if I was even five minutes late I would be punished, I mean, that was suffocating, quite a lot.

Interestingly, the stories of Jacob and Caterina show that some of these workers actually enjoyed their previous job but found themselves so dissatisfied with its conditions that they ended up leaving. Amandine, who quit a job as a specialised educator for children with severe disabilities to become an artisanal soap maker, helps us to clarify this aspect. She says she somehow felt obliged to leave her position – with a gradual exit – despite loving it, because of the structural issues that aggravate this professional field:

I have been gradually able to reduce my working hours so that I could be in the soap atelier. In any case, I loved my job as a special educator. There’s no doubt about it. It’s really something I’ve enjoyed doing. But I think that the sector was going very badly and I had to leave at some point. So I took advantage of this thing that I was doing as a hobby . . . to leave sooner.

In terms of personal well-being, managing the intricate interplay between work and personal life emerges as a salient constraint, especially among those interviewees who experienced stressful routines. The struggle to reconcile work commitments with family responsibilities and personal goals is a recurrent theme, which further underscores the pivotal role that work–life balance plays in the overall job satisfaction and retention of employees. The intertwined relationship between one’s health and job satisfaction stresses the need for a holistic approach to understanding the subjective and objective motivations that bring individuals to consider leaving their employment. See how Claudio, a 53-year-old Portuguese who left his job as a financial consultant to become an artisanal candlemaker, describes his experience:

As you can imagine, working for a bank for 20 years, it was a very stressful job, very, very stressful with all the economic problems. The first time I had the opportunity to quit my job, I quit. Because it was very, very stressful and in terms of health, it was terrible because when you are always stressed, always . . . I still speak with some former colleagues. And they are waiting for the time they can go to reform (sic) themselves, you know. So now I’m happy because I work for myself. Obviously, I have a different kind of stress, but well, it’s different. Yes, I’m free. I am my own boss.

We return to the relationship between quitting, meaningful work, self-employment and entrepreneurship shortly. Before doing so, we must underline how the choice to act upon one’s intention to quit is often prompted by another set of instances, besides endemic constraints, that we may call ‘trigger events’: inspiring meetings, travels, life-changing circumstances, or unexpected contingencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic are taken by many of our participants as opportunities to rethink their work–life priorities. While these do not constitute the main reason for undertaking a career shift, they play a significant role in our interviewees’ recollection of the moment they decided to turn to neo-craft work. We have seen Jenny, our Finnish tailor, who started her neo-craft tailoring business in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Marco, a 41-year-old maker and repairer of artisanal bicycles based in the countryside of Parma, Italy, shares a similar story, only with a longer timeframe. His activity was established in 2015; he works almost exclusively on bicycles produced between the 1930s and 1960s, assembling and selling them mostly online. At the time of our interview (in 2022) he also held another job as a repairman and salesman at a friend’s bicycle shop in the centre of Parma. However, Marco was starting to become financially independent with his neo-craft activity, and he was confident of being able to quit the other job soon. Before starting his own business, Marco used to work as a bartender or waiter in restaurants and wine bars in Parma. He first tried to get out of hospitality work by improvising as a carpenter, then he turned to bike repairing almost by chance. He was not a bicycle enthusiast at first; when he moved to Parma to attend university, he bought an old bike and started ‘playing’ with it, assembling and disassembling parts as he used to do with motorbikes as a teenager. Some friends noticed his skills and commissioned him to repair other bikes. Yet it took the Covid-19 pandemic, when many precarious workers in the hospitality sector were laid off, for Marco to find the strength to definitively quit his waiter work and fully dedicate himself to bikes:

The lockdown was an important psychological springboard. It made me forget everything else and especially the doubts I had in the decision to leave the other job. At the time of the reopening, I said no, this is my moment. It also changed my way of doing things, of living, and I’m happy, even if I earn a little less because there’s no fixed salary. [. . .] Now I do something I enjoy, which allows me to feel free. Free to do what I want: I am free to go on holiday, to go away one day when I want.

Furthermore, we should look at these trigger events not as compartmentalised circumstances, but as situations that can accumulate with one another. This is the case, for example, of Simone, a 40-year-old Milanese who left his family-owned construction work business to start a small artisanal home décor activity with his partner, Gioia, who abandoned a career in the legal sector. A trip together to Belize was the turning point in their biographical transition: both unhappy with their jobs, the journey provided the inspiration to develop a craft business that would be concerned with colourfully decorating homes. Yet, their career switch was not enacted until Simone fell ill. This made him reflect enormously on his life, and ultimately triggered their decision. As he recalls:

Another factor was that I fell ill, something serious . . . I’m fine now, I’ve recovered, but this thing here also made me think a lot, my body made me put everything on standby, work first and foremost, and so since this professional change was already in the air, this became one more reason for a change of direction.

By dissecting the intricate factors influencing individuals’ decisions to abandon their current employment, we can see how the trajectories of exit from waged work to neo-craft work among our participants are intrinsically intertwined with an assessment of the meaningfulness of one’s work. Neo-craft work, as we are about to see, is perceived to be able to absorb this longing for purpose and meaning, expressing, in Rosa’s (2019: 377) words, the ‘desire to defend material resonant relationships against the subversive imperatives of economization’.

Towards neo-craft work: Longing for resonance

Overall, our participants perceive neo-craft work as a more meaningful alternative if compared with other forms of waged employment. At this point, however, one might reasonably ask whether this perception is ultimately a result of the shift to independent work and to what extent the autonomy associated with working independently actually plays a role in this setting. Arguably, the vast majority of our participants turn to either self-employment or micro-entrepreneurship in their shift to neo-craft work; for many, this represents a key source of fulfilment. As the previous section also shows, there is no doubt that the chance to gain more autonomy, to find one’s own pace of work and to regain some control in everyday routines that is afforded by independent work is an important appealing factor that underpins our participants’ career choices. However, when asked to reflect more deeply on the meaningfulness of their work, many of them subdue the importance of their employment status to the sense of purpose and meaning they derive from engaging in material and manual work. See how Marco, whom we met before, describes his relationship with his bike tools and components:

The great thing about my job is just being able to recover and assemble different things. I mean, making a bike fork work well with a different bike frame, using different components. Every time it’s a personal success, because the fact that the components of different bikes work well exalts me, I enjoy it a lot!

This suggests that neo-craft work is perceived to be meaningful irrespective of its contractual status and the enhanced autonomy that derives from independent work. On the contrary, it is the possibility of developing an emotional and affective connection with one’s work, characterised by intrinsic interest and self-efficacy, that functions as the main source of purpose and meaning. The notion of resonance, as argued, grasps this meaning-making dimension, which is expressed primarily as an active engagement between a worker and their material work – what Rosa calls ‘diagonal resonance’. This can be found in Marco’s account; the resonance he develops with his bikes makes him visibly happy, and he loves to stay alone with tools and artefacts instead of being forced to constantly deal with customers (as he had to do in his previous job as a waiter). Interestingly, a perceived dysphoria with corporate (or knowledge-based) work emerges from our participants’ stories as a key source of diagonal resonance. This is particularly evident in those accounts that underline how engaging in neo-craft work represents a rejoinder with one’s creativity, which is freed from the constraints of dependent waged work and expressed through neo-craft. Many of our interviewees insist that the (office) jobs they abandoned did not provide them with the possibility of expressing themselves freely in creative terms. Instead, they describe de-routinisation, serendipity and (creative, rather than contractual) autonomy as important sources of meaning. Paulus, again, explains why his artisanal activity provides him with the creativity that was missing from his advertising job:

What I like about it is, you know, everything that happens with our brand comes from us, you know . . . So the decisions that I take, I see immediately if the product that I’ve created tastes like it does, because I was the one or we were the ones deciding what we put inside, and fine tuning it with the professional help, of course. But those are the things I was missing.

Diagonal resonance is very present in our participants’ accounts, often expressed through a (somewhat generic) reference to ‘authenticity’ – which is a classical feature of craft work as ‘good work’ in the manner of Sennett (2008). However, in the cases presented here, a purely technical relationship with the objects and materials involved is rarely sufficient to generate a genuine experience of resonance. Without intersubjective recognition and social validation of the desirability of one’s work, this resonance remains incomplete. This points to the role of the horizontal axis of resonance (the domain of social relationships) as another key aspect of the perceived meaningfulness of neo-craft work. This connects the striving for self-actualisation through material work with the role of social status as a meaning-making dimension – what may be described as the materially mediated relationship of recognition. See how Stefan, a 45-year-old Romanian microelectronics engineer turned artisanal sauce producer, describes how his engagement with material work intersects with the interpersonal, status-inducing dimension it carries:

What I’m doing right now with the sauces, let’s say, I’m a trendsetter. I’m creating the direction, I’m creating the niche. I developed products that nobody else is doing. I’m developing tastes that nobody else is doing. ‘Fermentor sauce’ is my biggest pride because it’s the first fermented hot sauce in Romania. [. . .] Fermentation is a process of enhancing flavour, creating flavour, more than a conservation process. I discovered that fermentation represents a big opportunity to discover new flavours, to create new flavours and new tastes for the market. But it’s also a personal playground for me. I have no constraints on what I’m doing or what kind of product I’m doing. [. . .] The most interesting thing to watch when you’re discussing with the customer are his eyes when he’s tasting a sauce that he’s not expecting. You can achieve a much more complex experience with an artisanal clean product. Much more well separated flavours. The ride is completely different. It’s very difficult, in my opinion, to put it into words, but it’s a completely different experience.

This horizontal resonance is also expressed in the perception of neo-craft work as a career option that permits better alignment of one’s everyday work activity with one’s own personal and societal values. Many of our participants frequently juxtapose neo-craft work vis-a-vis jobs that are in contradiction with some key values in certain aspects, from production practices to broader societal issues, such as capitalism or even climate change. Take the case of Maria, the leather craftswoman, who explains why she left her job at a company that did not want to commit to sustainable production:

The issue of climate change is really there. And, like me, I think people are seeing more and more what industrialisation has done to our world and they just want to rethink things. And of course not everybody is doing it and not everybody has the money to do it, but I think a lot of people are rethinking how they live and how they work. And yes, they want to have a better work–life balance and they want to create something. And maybe leave something behind and not destroy our world so bad anymore.

Comprehensively, our participants’ accounts show that the process of searching for meaningful work typically starts with the acknowledgement of distress with one’s existing job, that may be described as a ‘broken relationship’. This does not entail, at least initially, a sense of pointlessness or hate for said job. Yet, faced with a set of endemic constraints, and perhaps a trigger event, at some point their relationship with their job enters a crisis; this ultimately brings them to quit and look for alternatives. Neo-craft work enters this picture as it is perceived to provide a reasonable compromise between self-actualisation, status acquisition and income generation – at the same time giving them the opportunity to engage with craft as ‘inherently meaningful’ work yet through a more decisively entrepreneurial ethos, as opposed to those who engage in craft work as a hobby. Arguably, however, many of these stories also display quite a sizable deal of romanticisation of neo-craft work as a conveyor of purpose and meaning – an aspect that we must necessarily address in the next (and last) empirical section.

Romanticising (neo-)craft?

To an extent, the romanticisation of craft work as ‘good work’ is nothing new. Yet, arguably, the portrayal of neo-craft work as ‘inherently good’ work that emerges from our participants’ accounts may be described as a new kind of romanticisation of craft work, which does not adequately consider the fact that many of these workers work long hours and do not earn as much as they did in their previous career. Thus, while arguing that resonance is a key dimension in the understanding of neo-craft work as meaningful work, it is all the more important that we as researchers do not indulge in the same rhetoric and also fall prey to a romanticised view of (neo-)craft work. On the contrary, the longing for resonance that animates our participants’ stories cannot be fully understood without acknowledging that, in order to perform a successful reconversion from other forms of waged work to neo-craft work, material conditions matter. We have seen how some of our participants were able to benefit from existing resources to support their career switch. This suggests maintaining a cautioned, pragmatic approach when assessing their reconversion stories. As Iraklis, a 37-year-old Greek who quit a corporate job to become an artisanal ice-cream maker in Athens, says in a quite sarcastic way:

If the money you get at the end of the month working in an office is good enough, you don’t move. If the money is not good, you think of alternatives. [. . .] Of course it’s very nice to do artisanal production. But when we talk about why we have this product, I think the explanation is that we also love it, but we also have the need to do it. It’s a bit of both. [. . .] How do I see the future of my business? To win the lottery, close the business and go to the beach. That’s my biggest dream.

In a country as badly hit by the economic crisis of 2009 as Greece, it can easily happen that difficult labour market conditions push people to look for new opportunities. Historically, craft work represents a go-to option in times of crisis (Jakob, 2013; Luckman, 2015). While minoritarian overall, this pragmatic dimension is present also in some of the stories of reconversion coming from other geographic areas and intersects with the striving for meaning and purpose argued here. See, for instance, how Jacob, the Berliner ceramist, criticises this idealised view of neo-craft work, which he sees as quite common, while showing awareness of the relationship between craft, class and social inequality in this setting:

Nearly half of us [ceramists in Berlin] are French-speaking. We come from France, Belgium or Quebec. Often you have the sensation that they don’t really need the money. It’s not their real job, you know. And, so, some of them are wealthy, but a lot of us are not doing pottery as their main activity. A lot of them are graphic designers or interior architects. And then they also do pottery, and their hope is that one day the pottery job will be big enough that they can quit the other one. Like the woman that I’m sharing the space with, she works three days of the week on something else. So, yeah, you have to do a little bit of everything, especially if you don’t have anybody to support you. So, you know, considering the reality of the job, and the amount of money that’s involved, for someone coming straight from the working class, I think it would be really hard.

Put differently, we must take these ‘romanticised’ stories of neo-craft work with the necessary caution, since the longing for resonance that is distinctive of our participants’ stories never operates as an individual factor and cannot be isolated from the socio-economic conditions that underpin one’s professional and life trajectory. This of course articulates differently from one geographic setting to another; in countries that have been highly affected in recent years by economic hardship, such as Greece, the choice to turn to neo-craft work may be more often determined by the lack of alternatives, as argued by Iraklis. Elsewhere, such as in continental Europe, occupational conversions to neo-craft work are more likely derived from the capacity to afford a career shift that provides workers with greater self-actualisation and a more aligned moral grounding, while accepting lower-paying jobs and a comprehensive ‘downshifting’ that is minimised by existing class disparities.

Conclusion

This article has illustrated the main trajectories of exit from other forms of waged work and towards neo-craft work by a set of European workers across different sectors and geographies, along with the main motivations driving their decisions. Based on this evidence, we have argued that neo-craft work is considered to be meaningful work by our participants since it is perceived as a conveyor of resonance. Their ‘broken relationship’ with previous jobs, shaped by endemic constraints, contrasts with the promise of resonance in neo-craft work, which provides self-actualisation through an emotional and affective connection to one’s work that is expressed in two main forms. First, the engagement with material work offers a rejoinder to one’s creativity – a form of ‘diagonal resonance’, using Rosa’s terminology. Second, the status-inducing dimension of social desirability overlaps with material engagement, aligning work with personal values and producing what Rosa calls ‘horizontal resonance’. Overall, we see resonance as an extension of Honneth’s (1996) notion of recognition and a useful complement to the conceptual framework of meaningful work developed by Laaser and Karlsson (2022), based on autonomy, recognition and dignity. Resonance, we contend, accounts for the emotional and affective relationship between individuals and their jobs while keeping the focus of the inquiry firmly on the nature and substance of work itself – thus remaining grounded in a labour process approach, broadly intended, which takes the social relations under which work occurs as its primary interest. At the same time, it allows us to present a more nuanced picture of the intertwined relevance of materiality (diagonal axis) and intersubjective recognition (horizontal axis) in the search for work meaningfulness. As seen, the resonant relationship neo-craft workers experience with the materiality of their work is closely interconnected to its social validation, which emerges from the social desirability of neo-craft work and the feeling of being part of a group of workers who engage in practices that share an implicit horizon of positive values.

We hope future works will explore the critical aspects tied to the perception of neo-craft work as resonant, including how dissatisfaction, economic instability and the search for alternatives unfold across different countries and (craft) work cultures. Our evidence suggests that geographic context shapes perceptions of neo-craft work, with regions marked by job insecurity, such as Mediterranean countries, offering particularly fertile ground for further inquiry. Class and couple dynamics also matter: many participants drew on personal resources, and often on partners’ support, to enable their transitions, highlighting a divide between those who can afford such a shift and those who cannot. We expect future research to address these issues, thus contributing to clarify whether neo-craft work truly holds some transformative potential or simply taps into a profitable niche for affluent consumers, driving gentrification in urban and rural areas.

Finally, one might ask whether these stories of professional reconversion may reflect the same logic of acceleration described by Rosa (2010). What appears as a search for resonance through neo-craft work may ultimately conceal a race towards self-optimisation in a persistently unstable environment, thus ultimately reinforcing the same alienation it seeks to resist. Arguably, meaningful work cannot be reduced to resonance alone, nor separated from the material and relational conditions in which work occurs. We invite further reflection on how resonance intersects with the possibility of genuine autonomy, especially in highly romanticised work settings such as neo-craft.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-wes-10.1177_09500170251386756 – Supplemental material for Neo-craft Work as Meaningful Work: Longing for Resonance

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-wes-10.1177_09500170251386756 for Neo-craft Work as Meaningful Work: Longing for Resonance by Alessandro Gandini, Gianmarco Peterlongo and Marta Tonetta in Work, Employment and Society