Craft-orientation as a mode of organizing for postgrowth society

Abstract

How may a “craft-orientation” facilitate a shift toward an ecologically sustainable economy that does not perceive the pursuit of economic growth as a self-evident good? Responding to this question, this paper is rooted in the argument that efforts to increase economic growth collide with ecological sustainability goals and pose a substantial threat to human prosperity. Drawing on key insights from scholarship on craft, we establish the notion of craft-orientation, understood as (i) activity guided by the desire to do a job well for its own sake, (ii) prioritization of human engagement over machine control, standardization and efficiency, and (iii) an epistemic rather than instrumental relationship to objects of production. By linking this orientation to postgrowth ideas, we advance knowledge of the relationship between craft and sustainability in three related ways. First, we add craft-orientation to the postgrowth toolbox by conceptualizing craft as a mode of organization that embodies and concretizes postgrowth ideas. This particularly involves the need to rethink efficiency and labor-intensiveness, the role of technology, and the localization of production and consumption. Second, addressing craft scholarship that seeks to understand the relationship between craft and sustainability, we strengthen the relevance of craft in discussions on sustainability by linking it with the concept of postgrowth. Third, grounded in the ontological assumption that the formulation of alternatives is performative, we situate our conceptualization of craft within current societal movements and show how these movements create enabling conditions for the future influence of craft-orientation as an important mode of organizing for postgrowth society.

In this paper, we explore how a turn to what we call a “craft-orientation” can contribute to ecological sustainability. Research has for quite some time pointed out that the ways in which humanity organizes the production and consumption of goods and services are causing climate change and the over-exploitation of natural resources (e.g. IPCC, 2021; Wright and Nyberg, 2015: 2). To address this, there are two main approaches. The first, often referred to as “green growth” or “ecoefficiency” (Banerjee et al., 2021; Jackson, 2021), is based on the assumption that economic growth is desirable and that we can increase the current levels of production and consumption—that is, increase global GDP—while simultaneously decreasing pressure on the environment (Stoknes and Rockström, 2018). Accordingly, efforts to solve the problem focus on technological changes, such as the development of fossil-free energy and recycling practices or the production of more energy-efficient goods and services. This approach rests on the assumption that economic growth is necessary for human prosperity, and it has long shaped and continues to shape the thinking and action of firms, nations, and the United Nations: in the UN Sustainable Development Agenda, economic growth is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. As a result, goals such as minimized water waste, development of clean energy, decreased CO2-emissions, improved life on land and below water, are to be achieved while maintaining the goal of increased GDP. ¹

The second approach, which is the basis of this article, makes the counterargument that we cannot continue to produce and consume as much as we do if we are to reduce environmental impacts, that is, if we are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the throughput of materials and energy. This approach is known as the case for postgrowth or degrowth and has attracted increasing attention from scholars (e.g. Banerjee et al., 2021; Chertkovskaya et al., 2019; Jackson, 2021; Kallis et al., 2018). ² The postgrowth approach is grounded in the empirical insight that economic growth tends to generate increased resource use and CO2-emissions, and that there is little evidence that this will change sufficiently in the foreseeable future (Hickel and Kallis, 2020). Indeed, even some scientists who have advocated for green growth have suggested that it rests on an overly optimistic theoretical model which makes it appear as “wishful thinking” rather than something that is practically feasible before it is too late (Rockström, 2019). In short, the postgrowth view argues that we (mainly rich countries) must produce and consume less if we are to live within the planetary boundaries (Jackson, 2021; Parrique et al., 2019).

Despite the postgrowth critique, however, nations and organizations are still organized based on the assumption that economic growth is desirable, and management and organization theory and practice are still dominated by industrial and brand orientations. This is problematic from a postgrowth perspective because these orientations assume that “more is better” and prioritize modes of organization that optimize efficiency and economies of scale in the pursuit of growth, market shares and shareholder value (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Jackson, 2021). Organization scholars have recently begun to acknowledge this problem and explore a postgrowth worldview—proposing principles such as sufficiency (focus on collective sufficiency and fulfillment of basic human needs), conviviality (focus on the social rather than economic benefits of technology), and relocalization (localizing production and distribution to minimize the ecological footprint)—but they have also acknowledged that more work is needed and called for further research on how we should reconceptualize work and imagine new forms and norms of organization (Banerjee et al., 2021).

Heeding this call, our paper turns to research on craft and aims to advance understanding of the relationship between craft and ecological sustainability by developing a link between craft- and postgrowth scholarships. In pursuit of this aim, we theorize craft-orientation as a mode of organizing that embodies postgrowth ideas, especially around the need to reconceptualize work. We particularly show how craft-orientation implies alternative ways of understanding efficiency and labor-intensiveness, the role of technology in work, and the localization of production and consumption processes, all of which rhyme with and concretize postgrowth ideas. We thus side with Bell et al. (2021: 2) who see potential in craft for “the formation and transformation of alternative ways of organizing,” and we suggest that part of this potential resides in linking craft with the imaginary of postgrowth society, which highlights how craft-orientation may serve as a guiding principle if our unsustainable economies are to operate within the limits of our planet.

This linkage contributes in three related ways. First, it introduces craft-orientation as a valuable addition to the conceptual apparatus of the postgrowth literature (e.g. Banerjee et al., 2021; Jackson, 2021), which has paid only limited attention to craft. Second, it extends craft scholarship that seeks to understand the relationship between craft and sustainability. Craft has previously been associated with sustainability because it values constrained production and consumption (e.g. Fletcher, 2016; Luckman, 2015;) and the making of “fewer, better things” (Adamson, 2018). We build on these insights but broaden the scope from a focus on the sustainable mindset of artisans and their organizations (e.g. Luckman and Andrew, 2020; Ness, 2018) to focus more on how craft-orientation embodies postgrowth ideas. Third, our conceptualization is grounded in the ontological position that the formulation of alternatives is performative (cf. Bennett, 2010; Luckman, 2015), that is, linking postgrowth ideas with craft-orientation has performative potential to establish new forms and norms of organization (Gibson-Graham, 2008). From this position, our paper also contributes by situating craft within current societal movements to show how these movements create enabling conditions for the future influence of craft-orientation. Overall, our linking of craft-orientation with postgrowth ideas provides a heuristic device—a device designed to discover new aspects of a phenomenon or avenues to address a problem (Swedberg, 2012)—for thinking about and developing production and consumption that support an ecologically sustainable economy that does not regard the pursuit of economic growth as a self-evident good.

To develop the link between craft-orientation and postgrowth, the rest of the paper is structured as follows. First, we define craft-orientation based on insights from craft-scholarship. Second, we elaborate on this definition and how it relates to postgrowth ideas by illustrating the implications of adopting a craft-orientation within economic activites. We focus primarily on production, but also suggest that the relevance of a craft-orientation extends to consumption. Third, we discuss the challenges and potential of a craft-orientation in contributing to a postgrowth society, considering current societal movements in the economy. While we acknowledge the challenges, we argue for the performative potentiality of a craft-orientation. Finally, we conclude by drawing out key insights from our outline.

Craft-orientation

This paper as a whole is intended to unpack the meaning of a craft-orientation and its relation to postgrowth, but we already here articulate a broad, initial definition. Craft-orientation is to be understood as a guiding principle and attitude to work and production that is rooted in the practice of craft and based on some key aspects that are established by craft-scholarship. The term “orientation” implies that while it is rooted in craft, craft-orientation may be used more broadly to imagine the reform of lines of work that do not consider themselves to be craft. This also implies that it can be contrasted with other orientations to work, particularly industrial and brand-orientations, which we discuss at the end of this section.

Our definition of craft-orientation is based on three aspects. Two of the aspects are often explicitly stated in the literature on craft. The first implies work guided by “the desire to do a job well for its own sake” (Sennett, 2008: 9). Sennet’s oft-cited point captures the non-instrumentality and element of intrinsic motivation in craft. Second, craft-orientation tends to prioritize human engagement over machine control, standardization and efficiency (Kroezen et al., 2021; see also e.g. Jakob, 2013; Luckman, 2015). This is not to say that craft-oriented work does not care about efficiency, but when efficiency is prioritized at the expense of human engagement—as we shall see in the examples below—the work becomes less craft-oriented.

While the two aspects above are explicitly drawn from the craft literature, the third is more implicit and therefore requires some further grounding. Briefly put, the third aspect suggests that craft-orientation implies an epistemic rather than instrumental relationship to the objects of production. This is related to the insight from craft-scholarship that craftspeople tend to develop a meaningful, intimate and caring relationship to the objects they work with (e.g. Becker, 1978; Bell et al., 2021; Gandini and Gerosa, 2023; Luckman, 2015: 112; Luckman and Andrew, 2020; Sennett, 2008). To specify this epistemic relationship, it is helpful to turn to the distinction between “technical” and “epistemic objects” (Ewenstein and Whyte, 2009; Knorr-Cetina, 1997). Technical objects are instruments in the sense that they are means to an end; they are thought of and used to achieve something else. Relatedly, technical objects do not “puzzle” us and they are not objects of our interrogation and knowledge. Epistemic objects, on the other hand, do this. They “puzzle and provoke and invite to action” (Rennstam, 2012: 1075), or as Knorr-Cetina (1997: 10) puts it: epistemic objects are “continually unready-to-hand, unavailable and problematic.” Typical examples are the objects of scientists in laboratories, which can be quite abstract; a chemical reaction can be an epistemic object, for instance. This is indeed what we want to pick up on, but we want to make it more concrete and suggest that for a craftsperson, objects such as yarn (to a craft tailor), grain (to a craft brewer), or coffee beans (to a craft roaster), can also be understood as epistemic objects, in the sense that they are objects with which craftspeople establish a never-ending knowledge relationship.

A related aspect of epistemic objects is that they materialize the collective dimension of craft by their tendency to produce “epistemic communities” (McGivern and Dopson, 2010). Craftspersons’ relationship with objects is thus not bilateral but multilateral. It is not just about the crafter and the object; it is about the crafter, the object, and the others who care about the object, often in the local community (Luckman, 2015). This collective dimension is pronounced in craft, which tends to develop communities of producers (and consumers) who are brought together not primarily because they see economic gain in objects but because they have or desire to develop a deeper knowledge relationship with them. As Adamson (2018: 13) notes, in craft, objects are “points of contact between people.”

In craft-oriented organizations, objects are thus seen primarily as epistemic objects, as objects that cannot be reduced to an instrument for achieving something else, but as ends in themselves. Although there is a technical aspect in the sense that the objects produced need to be sold, research on craft shows that this is downplayed in craft compared to mass production. For instance, Bell et al. (2019: i) note that craft enables “the construction of a meaningful relationship with objects of production and consumption.” In a similar vein, Sennett (2008) maintains that craftsmanship involves treating objects as ends rather than means and that objects are appreciated for their incompleteness; they are something with which the craftspeople are practically (rather than instrumentally) engaged (Sennett, 2008: 20). Another writer on craft, Crawford, indicates something similar when he states that “things can serve as a kind of authority for us, by way of structuring our attention” (Crawford, 2015: 37). Drawing on new materialism, Bell and Vachhani (2020: 683) suggest that craft work draws attention to the “vitality, force and wilfulness of matter.” A final example relates directly to sustainability. Adamson (2021: 325) argues that making things by hand “involves a tightening of focus, a close attention paid to objects. It can heighten awareness of the environment and the systems that produce it,” and it can become a “means of encouraging material concern and responsibility.”

Thus, this suggests that crafted objects function as epistemic objects in the sense that they are the objects of the craft producers’ knowledge. As a result, in craft-oriented organizations, objects of production tend to be treated not primarily as instruments for growth and profit but as ends in themselves. They are worthy of engaged and long-term practical attention, valued for their incompleteness and the focus of attempts to understand the objects both in their own right and as parts of a production system.

In light of this, we can conclude that craft-orientation implies three aspects:

• (1) Activity guided by the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

• (2) The prioritization of human engagement over machine control, standardization and efficiency.

• (3) An epistemic rather than instrumental relationship to objects of production.

While many organizations probably entail some of the aspects above, our point is that craft-orientation implies that these aspects are prioritized over others. It is particularly relevant to contrast craft-orientation with the currently dominant industrial orientation, in which objects of production are primarily instruments for growth and the explicit or implicit goal for organizations is to increase their production by prioritizing efficiency, ³ typically by minimizing the cost per unit produced by benefiting from automation and economies of scale (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Craft-orientation can also be contrasted with brand-orientation, which similarly aims to increase production, but by prioritizing symbolism, producing appealing associations with the organization and its products (e.g. Keller and Lehmann, 2006; Urde, 1999). As we have described a craft-orientation above, these types of pursuits of growth and increased production are not prioritized.

In light of the above, we wish to stress that while craft-orientation is grounded in craft, this neither implies that it applies to all lines of work that we traditionally think of as craft, nor that it is limited to them. For instance, carpentry may or may not be guided by a craft-orientation. And lines of work that we do not traditionally associate with craft may be guided by a craft-orientation. How and the extent to which a craft-orientation characterizes work practice is thus an empirical rather than a theoretical question.

Craft-oriented production

We now move the discussion of craft-orientation to the sphere of work and production. To illustrate what craft-oriented production might mean, consider Sennett’s (1998) description of a bakery’s transformation, arguably from craft-orientation to industry-orientation. In the old, craft-oriented bakery, “baker” signifies people who know how to bake bread manually: they know the methods available for baking and they practice the method by working the ingredients, sometimes with their hands, sometimes using machines. When instruments or machines are part of the process—such as spades or kneading machines—the bakers or other craftspeople use and work with the instruments rather than operate them (cf. Luckman and Andrew, 2020: 176). Thus, manual labor and human engagement are prioritized over automation and standardization. As a result, bakers are close to the objects of their work. For instance, when making dough, they are likely to work manually with ingredients and they may experiment with different proportions of flower, yeast, water and salt, and with different fermentation times and -temperatures, and so on. In the transformed industry-oriented bakery, however, machines have taken over to a much larger extent, “baker” basically means machine operator, and the bakers rarely have any physical contact with the ingredients and therefore tend to develop a detached and instrumental rather than close and epistemic relationship with the ingredients.

The description is obviously very brief but it is indicative of key aspects of craft-orientation and how they relate to postgrowth. The relationship revolves particularly around how we conceptualize work and production, and we shall outline this below in three respects: (1) the role of efficiency and labor intensiveness, (2) the role of technology, and (3) the relationship to local forms of social metabolism.

Efficiency and labor intensiveness

First, while the new bakery operates under the paradigm of industrial production where efficiency is prioritized (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006), the old craft-oriented bakery downplays efficiency in favor of human and manual engagement with the ingredients (Kroezen et al., 2021; Sennett, 2008). Fundamentally, craft-orientation implies a reconceptualization of efficiency and labor intensiveness in the world of work. Craft is slower due to its reliance on human engagement and manual work, as well as its epistemic relationship with objects, which aligns well with the visions of a postgrowth society.

The alignment with postgrowth arises primarily because we need to slow down production to reduce resource use and CO2-emissions. But also because when we slow down the economy, other things being equal, we will need fewer people to do the work. Especially if we continue to focus on efficiency by automating work, as in the industrial orientation, unemployment would increase. Craft-oriented production conteracts this. Craft-orientation acknowledges labor intensiveness to a far greater extent than the current capital intensive economy, and therefore embodies a way of thinking about work that can maintain high employment levels even when the production and consumption of goods decreases.

Returning to the bakery example, if the bakery does not strive to become as large as possible, competing with other bakeries for market share, it does not need to automate the production to the same extent, and it does not need to replace the bakers with (fewer) machine operators. Thus, it would be a craft-oriented and labor intensive bakery, employing more people without maximizing production output. An example at the industry-level is the recent development in the American beer industry. Between 2008 and 2016, the number of breweries sextupled and the number of brewery workers more than doubled due to an increase in the number of craft breweries, while the overall beer consumption decreased (Thompson, 2018). Thus, the labor intensity of craft brewing created jobs without increasing the amount of beer produced and consumed.

Technology

Second, the role of technology is different in the craft-oriented bakery. Technology is used to make the work easier, but only as long as it does not alienate the workers from the production process. Arguably, technology is used as what postgrowth theory calls a “convivial tool” (Illich, 1973), that is, an enabling tool but not a master. In other words, technology under craft-orientation is acknowledged as long as it still offers a “visible, understandable process of making” that workers can relate to (Luckman, 2015: 85). In the industry-oriented bakery, in contrast, technology has become the master in the sense that it alienates workers from the process of baking—technology makes it difficult for them to relate to the process of baking, and without it, they would not know how to bake. The bakers in the craft-oriented bakery relate to the ingredients (e.g. flower and yeast) and products (e.g. bread) as epistemic objects. Because of this, the bakers are more likely to develop pride in what they are doing and a desire to do their job well for its own sake (Sennett, 2008).

This view of technology also differs from the dominant, industry-oriented view, where technology is to a large extent used and thought of as an instrument for gaining competitive advantage and maximizing profit, often by replacing human labor. We talk to chat-bots instead of humans, we interact with a scanning machine instead of a human when paying for our groceries, we are excited about cars and buses without (human) drivers, and so on. These technological advances are good when they replace humans where the work is clearly harmful. But in most cases, work is not harmful to humans, and some postgrowth scholars even argue that work “creates the foundations for society to flourish” (Jackson, 2021: 78). A craft-orientation, as noted above, embraces this by favoring a view of technology as an enabler rather than a master (Illich (1973). Or, as Campbell (2005: 28) notes: “the contrast [between craft and non-craft] is not really between hand production and machine production, but rather between a production system in which the worker is in control of the machine and one in which the machine is in control of the worker.” Thus, the point is not that craft-orientation shuns innovation and technology. In particular, “neo crafts” such as beer brewing and coffee roasting combine traditional methods with innovation in both product and process (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023; Land, 2018), and the interaction of craft and technology is a topic worthy of further exploration. Rather, the point is that craft-orientation moves away from the industrial ideal of technology as an automatizer of human activity, and suggests that instead of asking, “Why should humans do what machines can do?” we should ask, “Why and when should machines do what humans can do?”

Localization

Craft-oriented production is also related to postgrowth in a third way through its tendency to support localized forms of “social metabolism,” that is, the social processes by which natural materials are extracted, consumed, and eventually returned to the environment, usually in the form of waste (Chertkovskaya and Paulsson, 2021). Social metabolism is a central concept in postgrowth scholarship, and localized forms of metabolism are often advocated as crucial for reducing environmental harm because they encourage the use and re-use of local materials and facilitate transparent production and consumption (e.g. Banerjee et al., 2021; Parrique, 2019). In addition to limiting the extraction and long-distance transportation of raw materials, localized forms of social metabolism also work against the exploitation of low-wage labor in other parts of the world by encouraging the development of local value chains rather than dependence on large multinational corporations. Craft sits well with this ideal, since it has historically been situated “at the junction between individual and community” (Adamson, 2021: 326; see also Fox Miller, 2017).

Due to this positioning, craft-oriented production has the potential to both enable individual expression and embed this in local forms of social metabolism. For instance, scholars have shown that craft breweries embody the ideal of relocalization by closely engaging with local communities and sourcing raw materials locally (Gatrell et al., 2018; Ness, 2018). This differs from large, industrially oriented corporations, which are more likely to scan world markets for cheap materials and labor in their pursuit of maximizing profits and/or evading government regulation (Luyckx et al., 2022), thereby obtaining resources in a less transparent and more exploitative manner.

It is worth noting that the reconceptualization of work outlined above deviates from a fairly common suggestion among postgrowth scholars, namely that postgrowth requires a reduction in the total number of hours worked in the economy (Gough, 2013; for a similar argument, see Graeber, 2020). Craft-orientation envisions a different “future of work” (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023) that rests on the assumption that work is not an activity to be avoided, but something that can improve human well-being if done in a more meaningful and slower way (cf. Crawford, 2015; Sennett, 2008). While a reduction in the number of hours worked might be welcomed for other reasons, craft-orientation suggests an alternative route to postgrowth.

Craft-oriented consumption

So far we have described craft-orientation as related to production. This is the most direct relationship, but craft-oriented production is intrinsically related to consumption in a postgrowth economy, to which the gist craft-orientation can be translated. Particularly relevant here is the non-instrumental, epistemic relationship with objects.

In the current economy, mass- and status-consumption play a key role (Soper, 2020). From a postgrowth perspective this is, of course, a problem: mass consumption encourages increased production and consumption, and status consumption encourages the consumption of goods as a way to gain an elevated social position. Like craft-oriented production, craft-oriented consumption relies on an epistemic relationship to objects, derived from the human engagement with objects that is central to craft (Bell et al., 2019; Crawford, 2009; Fletcher, 2016; Sennett, 2008). This is in line with the thinking of consumption scholar Campbell (2005) who suggests that consumption can be a “craft activity” in the sense of an “activity in which individuals [. . .] bring skill, knowledge, judgement, love and passion to their consuming in much the same way that it has always been assumed that traditional craftsmen and craftswomen approach their work” (p. 26). Campbell is primarily discussing how craft consumers can take mass-produced commodities and transform them into personalized objects, but he also highlights, which we pick up on, that just like craft-oriented production, consumption can be a knowledge-intensive and skillful activity (see also Liberman, 2022; Maciel and Wallendorf, 2017). And through the analogy with craft production, he indicates that craft consumption can imply an interest in the manufacturing process as a whole, not only the finished commodity (Campbell, 2005: 27).

Craft-oriented consumption can thus be understood as a consumption process in which consumer goods are to a large extent viewed and treated as epistemic objects. Currently, this is rarely the case, in part because growth-oriented firms have worked so hard to convince us that we don’t need to understand our objects of consumption but rather that we need more stuff, encouraging a consumer culture guided by the norm that more consumption is better consumption. Their efforts have succeeded—more consumption has become the norm for “the good life,” as Soper notes (2020: 28–29)—which has become deeply problematic in both the global South and North.

Craft-oriented consumption resists this. Viewing goods as epistemic objects rhymes badly with mass-consumption, which encourages a superficial attitude to goods. Craft-oriented consumption instead invites consumers to engage epistemically with goods, to learn about them, how they are made and where they come from. Consumption does not take place in isolation, however, but is related to how producers market their products, and craft-oriented production can support the development of a more epistemic attitude to consumption. There are indications that this is happening, that epistemic communities are developing around crafted products such as beer (Fox Miller, 2017) or handmade clothing and accessories (Luckman, 2015). For instance, many craft breweries rarely engage in marketing through advertisements. Instead, they organize festivals, tastings and brewery tours where consumers taste and talk about the beer (Fox Miller, 2019; Watne, 2012).

This type of craft-oriented marketing encourages craft-oriented consumption, which is less “automated” than mass consumption and incorporates a much stronger element of knowledge development and education. As Crawford (2009: 101–102) notes, craft-oriented consumption encourages the consumer to engage with questions such as “What kind of labor was involved in the production?” and “Who benefits from my consumption?” Fletcher (2016: 16–17), who studied consumption of fashion, makes a similar point, advocating for a focus on the use rather than the consumption of clothes, which involves a focus on context:

Pay attention to the practices of use, and we pay attention to fashion in larger contexts [. . .]. Hone our attention on using garments and we may start to question the legitimacy of the assumption, firmly lodged in global understandings of success and development, that continuous growth in sales is essential, that more is better, that it leads to life.

Basically, since craft is closely associated with the desire to know (Crawford, 2009: 199), craft-oriented consumption is associated with the desire to know the product, including the materials, the labor put into it and the environmental impact of its production.

In status consumption, in turn, goods are treated as instruments for achieving an elevated position in society (e.g. Üstüner and Holt, 2010). This is potentially problematic from a postgrowth-perspective since consumption, which in turn uses natural resources, is used to build identity and cultural capital (Hirsch, 1976). While consumption of crafted goods might be a way of elevating one’s position in society, the key to distinguishing status consumption from craft-oriented consumption lies in how the consumed object is treated rather than in what we consume. As Maciel and Wallendorf (2017) suggest in a study of beer aficionados, despite consuming the same product, status consumers are more focused on consuming what is considered the “best” beer by the consumption community, whereas craft consumers are more focused on learning about the consumed object.

Again, the distinction between epistemic and technical objects is helpful. When we treat a good as an epistemic object, we do not purchase (or produce) it for the sake of status, but because it attracts our attention and interest in its own right. Not as a means to an end (an instrument for status), but as an end in itself. This means that we would not consume more than we need, nor more than we can epistemically engage with. Thus, craft-oriented consumption implies slower and less consumption.

Craft-orientation as performative for postgrowth society

By concretizing new ways of conceptualizing production and consumption, we have suggested above that craft-orientation can constitute an important guiding principle in a transition to a postgrowth society. But given the three key aspects of craft-orientation, this begs the question: what is required for craft-orientation to take-off and have an impact on a larger scale, possibly contributing to a normative change? In the following, we will first discuss some key challenges and tensions related to craft that are important to acknowledge, and then move on to the performative potential of craft-orientation.

Class challenges, global inequalities, and beyond

It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss in depth the challenges surrounding craft, but it is important to acknowledge that these exist (for in depth discussions, see Bell et al., 2019; Land, 2018; Ocejo, 2017). In the context of this paper, we find issues revolving around class and global inequalities to be particularly relevant because they are established aspects of both craft imagery and postgrowth theory. To the extent that craft raises issues of injustice and class, postgrowth theory entails perspectives on how to address them.

When it comes to craft production, what we said above regarding labor intensiveness and the recognition of manual labor is not without problems. Although manual labor can be healthy, there is nevertheless a risk of neglecting the aspects of craft work that can wear out people’s bodies. For instance, working in a craft brewery can be precarious, including long working hours, heavy lifting and working with high temperatures, steam and pressure (Fox Miller, 2019). Relatedly, craft is sometimes associated with “cool jobs” that are primarily occupied by middle-class and well-educated men. Sometimes also cultural capital, rather than a craft-orientation, is required for access to these jobs (Ocejo, 2017). The role of precariousness and gender and class in craft organizations therefore warrants more exploration (Land et al., 2018), and more awareness of these contentious issues would increase the heuristic value of craft-orientation.

The consumption side of craft also involves a class dimension in the sense that it, like much consumption, rests on unequal relations of production and consumption. Crafted goods are often expensive and can be the priviledge of high-income parts of the world (Luckman, 2015). Although we defined craft-oriented consumption above as distinct from status consumption, it is nevertheless a phenomenon that locally, organically and transparently produced crafted goods can be consumed for status by a rich class of people who aspire to and can afford to “do good” (Currid-Halkett, 2017). According to Currid-Halkett (2017), this produces an “aspirational class” that increasingly distances itself from other social groups with less buying power.

While we do agree that these challenges are an important part of the notion of “craft” and deserve further exploration, we would also like to offer some nuance. The notion that consumption of crafted goods is only for the wealthy few is somewhat flawed and context dependent. Currid-Halkett’s (2017) analysis is set in a U.S. context, and the aspirational class refers to people who can afford housekeeping and gardening services, nannies, and paying for a quality college education for their children. Buying locally and transparently crafted tomatoes is, relatively speaking, a small expense in this context and thus a lesser source of class distinction than fees for college and nannies. It makes more sense to suggest that, in high-income countries, crafted goods (e.g. beer, coffee, bread, clothing, furniture) are potentially available to the broad economic middle class, those in high-income countries who earn average or above-average incomes. They may need to rethink their general consumption patterns a little (e.g. less electronics and fewer holiday flights abroad) but a consumption shift in the broad middle class toward more crafted goods is definitely possible. The point is that the shift to slower but more expensive consumption of crafted goods needs to start somewhere and it has already started in the middle class (Luckman, 2015), and then it makes sense that they, who can afford it, will pay for it. It also makes sense that the middle class (as well as those who are richer, of course) pay because it is largely their past and present consumption patterns that have contributed to the overconsumption we see today (Jackson, 2021). Last, it makes sense that the middle class pay because they are a large group with significant purchasing power: if they change, it will have significant effects.

Still, when it comes to class-issues around craft, particularly on a global scale, those will not be resolved by turning to craft-orientation alone and this is why we want to return to our point about linking craft with postgrowth theory. Addressing class-related issues will be facilitated by linking craft-orientation with the redistributive changes that are inherent in postgrowth ideas. The problems briefly discussed above are rooted in the current economy, while postgrowth is a future projection that critiques the current global inequalities and their origins in the colonial system of unequal exchange (Hickel et al., 2022). The postgrowth response to the above issues is that the cheap mass produced products, that we may think are necessary to support poor people are, at the end of the day, mainly consumed by high-income households and they are mainly “cheap” because the long-term costs of exploiting low-cost labor and natural resources are not accounted for (Hickel et al., 2022). A postgrowth society would involve a significant redistribution of wealth that would allow more low-income consumers to afford sustainable, and possibly craft-produced, objects. In other words, it is high-income people and -countries that should carry the costs of expanding craft-oriented production.

In addition, postgrowth problematizes the common argument that low-income countries need to adopt the mass consumption of the global North in order to survive (Latouche, 2009). While trade is important, global trade tends to undermine local craft-based systems of production in the global South, and to make workers and households in the global south dependent on multinational corporations controlled by the global North or by a small group of super-rich people in other parts of the world. Postgrowth theory instead points to the need of developing independent production systems in low-income countries (Hickel et al., 2021), which rhymes with the ideals of localized production often supported by a craft-orientation.

To sum up, our point is not to say that everything should be craft-oriented, that industry-orientation is always bad and craft-orientation is always good, or that craft-orientation alone can solve the class-issues in the global economy. The point is to suggest that if we are to accept the postgrowth argument that the production and consumption of goods cannot continue to grow at the current rate, and if we want to avoid increased unemployment when things slow down, then, without neglecting class issues, we need to change our attitude toward labor-intensiveness, efficiency and technology, and craft-orientation conceptualizes a way to do so.

Craft-orientation as performative

Hence, while there are challenging aspects of craft that need attention, they should not lead us to dismiss the transformative potential in craft. Rather, our position sides with authors such as Bennett (2010), Gibson-Graham (2008), and particularly Luckman (2015, p. 143), who argues that “to erase or close off alternative economic possibilities, or at least the will to embrace them, is to do hegemonic capitalism’s job for it.” Thus, we suggest that in order to make sense of craft-orientation in contemporary society, we need to both pay attention to constraints and try to move beyond them (Bell et al., 2021; Bennett, 2010). As we indicated above, while some crafts are associated with middle-class identity work, one should also, with Luckman (2015: 147) ask: “if those with the education and income to start moving in the direction of better choices are not starting to operate as change agents in this space, who will?” Thus, from our perspective, craft entails a will to work and consume in better and more sustainable ways and failing to pay serious attention to this would be to maintain a vision of an omnipotent capitalism despite its failure to address the issues pointed at by postgrowth scholarship (cf. Luckman, 2015).

When arguing for the potential in craft-orientation, we draw on Gibson-Graham’s (2008) point that we need to think of new forms and norms of organizing as performative. Instead of assuming that capitalist forms of production and consumption are all-encompassing, we need to focus on and speak about other already-existing modes of production and consumption. Gibson-Graham (2008) have introduced the notion of “diverse economies” to suggest that we suffer from a learned blindness—labeled “capitalocentrism”—that makes it difficult to recognize forms of economic transactions that are either non-capitalist or not entirely compatible with capitalism as we usually understand it. Indeed, Gibson-Graham (2008) reminds us that there are many alternative forms of organizing, such as families, co-ops, associations, or unpaid care-work and that the very recognition of this is performative. We consider craft-orientation in a similar way. There are signs already today that craft-orientation may expand and become a new, or at least stronger, norm for how production and consumption could be organized, which we turn to next.

Indications of transformative potential in craft-orientation

First of all, it is important to highlight the entities that provide the empirical basis for the aspects of craft-orientation: crafters and the organizations they run. Some of these have recently expanded (Bell et al., 2019; Gatrell et al., 2018), with notable examples being urban food cultivation (Dobernig and Stagl, 2015), craft brewing (Kroezen and Heugens, 2019), craft clothing (Luckman, 2015), sushi making (Holt and Yamauchi, 2019) and wine production (Maguire, 2019). Many of these organizations tend to strive for socially and ecologically sustainable futures (Bell et al., 2019; Luckman, 2015; Luckman and Andrew, 2020; Ness, 2018). For instance, urban farmers embracing what we term craft-orientation have been found to be motivated by socio-ecological concerns and share an ethos of reengagement with nature (Dobernig and Stagl, 2015). Another example is Adamson’s (2018) point that crafters focus on making “fewer better things.” In a similar vein, Luckman & Andrew have shown how various crafters focus on quality and making things last, while expressing an interest in “repurposing, recycling, fixing and maintaining items” (Luckman and Andrew, 2020: 177). Crafters have also been found to embrace a downshifting and less consumerist lifestyle (Luckman and Andrew, 2020).

Notably in light of Gibson-Graham’s (2008) warning of capitalocentrism, the examples above are not representations of non-capitalist organizations; there may be owners and workers as well as market mechanisms guiding the work. But while economic viability is important it does not take precedence. Craft-oriented organizations have been found to focus on satisfactory rather than maximal levels of profit (Adamson, 2021; Bell et al., 2019; Reid and Gatrell, 2017), which resonates with the primacy of sufficiency over efficiency in postgrowth (Alexander and Gleeson, 2022). In short, what we want to show is that the increasing popularity of craft-based production is in line with postgrowth principles and has a performative potential in organizational life. Although one should be wary of capitalism’s tendency to co-opt its alternatives (Jakob, 2013; Stevens, 2011), often understood as “craftwashing” (Wallace, 2019), the very existence of craft-based alternatives challenges and raises questions about the ideals and practices of organizing that prevail in the global apparatus of production—such as automation, bureaucracy, large scale, globalization, focus on cost reduction and efficiency.

A related element that adds performative power to craft-orientation is the increasing demand for both working with craft and consuming crafted goods. In the search for meaningful jobs, people are turning to craft-oriented production, which is frequently associated with meaningful work (e.g. Bell et al., 2019; Crawford, 2015; Sennett, 2008). There are also tendencies that suggest an increasing demand for consuming crafted products (Luckman, 2015). Relatedly, postgrowth scholar Soper (2020: 50) argues that there is a need for “alternative hedonist” lifestyles, in which human well-being rests on “pleasures to be gained by adopting a less high-speed, consumption-oriented way of living.” Soper points to the consumption of crafted goods as an important element in the fulfilment of this need—“Works of craft are especially esteemed for being durable and aesthetically pleasing, capable of acquiring patina in an era when many goods are shoddy and unattractive and marked for rapid disposal” (p. 102)—and notes that activists are now “actively associating craft with escape from the prevailing codes of mass consumerism” (p. 106). Thus, craft is already associated with the increasing resistance to mainstream consumer culture and the development of post-consumerist lifestyles.

In addition to the already existing craft-based organizations, there are also other movements that create enabling conditions for craft-orientation. These advocate practices that are not necessarily craft but are likely to embrace a craft-orientation. One example is the slow movement, which signifies an attitude to life that emphasizes “care and attention” and it encourages us to “engage in ’mindful’ rather than ’mindless’ practices which make us consider the pressure or at least the purpose of each task to which we give our time” (Parkins and Craig, 2006: ix; 3). Another example with performative potential is the increasing talk about and use of alternative forms of organization to the traditional corporation (e.g. Luyckx et al., 2022; Parker et al., 2014). While these—cooperatives, state-owned firms or sharing-economy business models—have greater potential for incorporating a craft-orientation they do not necessarily imply a craft-orientation, but they have in common that they downplay profit maximization in favor of serving multiple purposes (Luyckx et al., 2022). Such forms of organization are arguably better equipped than the corporate form to house a craft-orientation. For instance, reliance on manual labor despite the availability of automated alternatives may sound alien in a corporation guided by profit maximization and cost minimization, while it is likely to make more sense in a cooperative or democratically organized firm where the interests of shareholders do not take center stage.

The view of technology in craft-orientation also has transformative potential. When it comes to the role of technology, one might suggest that the recent development in AI to automate creative labor might suppress craft-orientation. However, as a part of postgrowth thinking, there are signs of a counter movement. As previously noted, postgrowth theory tends to embrace a view of technology as an enabling tool rather than a master (a “convivial tool” (Illich, 1973; Pansera and Fressoli, 2021)). This has been seen in at least two ways in craft organizations. One resembles the notion of “appropriate technology” (Kerschner et al., 2018; Schumacher, 1973), which advocates the development of technologies that are fairly cheap, job-creating, reliant on local materials and fairly simple to repair. For instance, Luckman (2015) describes how a small clothing firm in London works with used and fairly simple knitting machines that they can understand and repair themselves, arguably making the machines both an example of appropriate technology and epistemic objects. The other concerns the use of more advanced technology, such as social media to enable communication with a broader audience or 3D printing to enable customized design (Luckman, 2015). In both cases, technology is not allowed to become the master of human activity, which is arguably a welcome contrast to the automation view in the contemporary debate on the use of technology, and an enabling condition for craft-orientation to gain a stronger foothold.

To conclude, social change has for centuries been built on the myth that more is better and that growth is necessary (Jackson, 2021). But what we have sketched above are organizations and movements that are performative in the sense that they are beginning to articulate an alternative to this myth, which is an important enabling condition for a craft-orientation. Compared to a sole focus on postgrowth—on challenging the myth—craft-orientation may have advantages when it comes to generating support and performative power. As Buch-Hansen (2018) notes, postgrowth is mainly ideationally driven and has a weak grounding in everyday worklife and the interests of certain social groups. (Compare, for instance, with strong movements such as the labor union movement serving workers’ interests or the “managerialist” movement serving the interests of managers and owners of large corporations). Craft-orientation may have some more performative power than postgrowth alone because it does not only question economic growth but concretizes key principles in postgrowth thinking, while also speaking to human well-being through its tendency to prioritize work that is perceived by people as meaningful and fulfilling (Crawford, 2015; Luckman, 2015; Sennett, 2008).

Concluding discussion

We began this article with the aim of advancing understanding of the relationship between craft-orientation—broadly understood as (i) work guided by the desire to do a job well for its own sake, (ii) a prioritization of human engagement over machine control, standardization and efficiency, and (iii) an epistemic rather than instrumental relationship to objects of production—and ecological sustainability. By linking two literatures—that of craft and that of postgrowth—we have suggested that craft-orientation embodies and concretizes principles of postgrowth, particularly in terms of how we can reconceptualize work and production. In contrast to the currently dominant industrial orientation’s focus on making work more efficient, craft-orientation embodies alternative views of labor-intensiveness and technology and support localized production processes, all of which are consistent with postgrowth ideas of sustainability through less and slower production and consumption.

We have shown how craft-orientation can be a way of rethinking primarily production and work, but we have also suggested that the aspects of a craft-orientation can be translated to consumption. To summarize:

• In terms of production and work, craft-orientation is a contrast to industrialized work since craft does not strive for efficiency through automation and economies of scale. This is likely to be an important new orientation to work if we are to prosper in a postgrowth society where new jobs cannot be created through increased production and consumption. The usual response to the problem of increasing unemployment caused by negative economic growth is to reduce the number of working hours and distribute the work more equally across the available workforce (e.g. Gough, 2013). A craft-orientation to production and work—by acknowledging labor intensiveness, technology as a “convivial tool” and localized forms of social metabolism—suggests an alternative and complementary solution.

• In terms of consumption, craft-oriented consumption is guided by an epistemic interest in the object consumed, including the how it has been produced and the environmental impact of the production process. This implies a contrast to mass consumption, where more is assumed to be better, and status consumption, where goods are seen as instruments for an elevated social position. Such an orientation to consumption is likely to be crucial if we are to live in a postgrowth economy.

Thus, while craft-orientation alone will not solve the climate crisis, we suggest that inspiration from craft can be instrumental both in shaping an economy where growth is not the goal and in addressing the employment problems that may result from decreasing levels of production and consumption. We thereby join the conversation of those who see craft as related to sustainability (e.g. Adamson, 2018; Bell et al., 2021; Fletcher, 2016; Luckman, 2015; Luckman and Andrew, 2020) but we extend it by linking craft with the literature on postgrowth. This broadens the scope of craft as a concept.

While craft has an established status as a mode of work that can free workers from the alienation associated with industrialized work (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023; Luckman, 2015; Sennett, 2008), and some recent work suggests that crafters and their organizations tend to strive for social and ecological sustainability (e.g. Bell et al., 2019; Luckman and Andrew, 2020), our conceptualization adds that craft as an orientation is also instrumental for transitioning to a postgrowth society. Our focus on “orientation” implies that the focus is not so much on the attitude to sustainability of the crafters themselves, but rather on the aspects inherent in the practice of craft, which give rise to work and production processes that are sustainable from a postgrowth perspective. In other words, even if crafters should not care more about sustainability than industrialists, their “orientation” to production is more sustainable in a postgrowth sense because the pursuit for growth is not prioritized.

Our discussion of craft-orientation also adds novel insights to the postgrowth literature (e.g. Banerjee et al., 2021; Chertkovskaya and Paulsson, 2021). While work has been widely debated in this literature, craft has not received as much attention. There are exceptions; Jackson (2021) has mentioned that craft is aligned with postgrowth principles, Soper (2020) has discussed craft consumption as part of postgrowth, and the de-alienation aspect of craft has been linked to postgrowth (Vincent and Brandellero, 2023). However, neither has explored in depth how craft-orientation might function as a mode of production in a postgrowth society with a focus on ecological sustainability. Thus, in addition to arguing that significantly lower levels of production and consumption are needed to curb CO2 emissions, energy throughput, and resource use (Kallis et al., 2018), we have substantiated craft and particularly craft-orientation as a part of the postgrowth toolbox. In short, craft-orientation offers a number of benefits: it focuses on sufficiency, the relocalization of social metabolism, and appropriate technology, but it also generates jobs due to its labor-intensive character and jobs that are meaningful because of the crafters’ epistemic relationship to objects.

In addition to pointing to the possibilities of craft-orientation and its potential for enabling a transition toward a postgrowth society, we also discussed the potential for such a transition by drawing on the assumption that the very recognition of alternatives to industrial production is performative (Gibson-Graham, 2008). We acknowledge that our social reality is shaped by interactions and institutions, but also that we have the potential to alter this reality by reshaping those interactions and institutions. While much of constructivism stops at showing how the world is constructed, often with a healthy dose of criticism, we have been trying to move beyond this to put forth already existing movements as conditions of possibility for the expansion of a craft-orientation.