Paper short abstract:

Harold A. Burnham, despite his relative youth, has earned a place in history as a master shipwright. In this era of mass-produced fiberglass hulls built elsewhere, Burnham has successfully revived long-dormant techniques in Massachusetts, reconnecting a town to its shipbuilding heritage.

Paper long abstract:

Referencing Henry Glassie's idea of "robust centers of culture," I focus on the shipbuilding industry of Massachusetts's North Shore and its "star" Harold A. Burnham who, despite his relative youth, has earned a place in history as a master shipwright. The Burnham shipyard is located on the banks of a tidal river where, for eleven generations, members of the same family have built and launched wooden vessels. The town once supported fifteen shipyards, but after WWII, the industry collapsed. Economically, Essex turned away from shipbuilding and toward restaurants and tourism. As a consequence, traditional woodworking skills largely fell out of use.

For the next fifty years, a few Essex shipwrights continued to build smaller vessels like lobster boats and pleasure craft. It was in these small shops that traditional shipbuilding methods were kept alive. Harold spent his youth watching and learning from these men, including his own father who, despite his day job as an engineer, spent weekends and evenings in the boatyard.

In this era of mass produced fiberglass hulls, Burnham holds true to elders' materials and techniques. Using hand tools familiar to a 19th-century shipwright, he works outside through New England winters and launches vessels the old way using wedges, grease and gravity. He cuts timber from local sources and mills it himself. Rather than use computer-aided design, Burnham works with a more tactile design tool, the half model. By successfully reviving long-dormant, shipbuilding techniques, Burnham have successfully reconnected a town to its shipbuilding heritage.

Paper short abstract:

At Han Herred Havbåde, a boatyard in northern Jutland, Denmark, young people learn the art boatbuilding and local people attempt to create a resilient community through apprenticeship in manual craftwork, which seen to be as important as the informal 'making of a fisherman' aboard fishing boats.

Paper long abstract:

Han Herred Seaboats is a community project that functions as a yard for clinker crafts and a service center for the fishermen. The fishermen use the beach as a landing place. This practice depends on the flexibility of the clinker build hulls made of oak which has been used for fishing, transportation, and trade in UK and Scandinavia since ancient times. Together with the fishermen's cooperative quota company the boatyard of the association of Han Herred Seaboats is an element of the local people's attempt to create a resilient local community. The education of young boat builders during apprenticeship and making boats by hand is just as important as the informal "making of a fisherman" onboard the fishing boats.

Paper short abstract:

The paper will present the experience of collaborative work between an anthropologist and a pottery designer working with design students and village potters of two generations in an old pottery centre in Poland. It will discuss the methods of work and the knowledge acquired during the workshop.

Paper long abstract:

Medynia Głogowska is a village in south-east Poland, with a long pottery tradition. Before WWII the local potters worked for local markets, providing basic kitchenware for villages and towns of the region. After WWII, with the political stress on folklorized folk art and craft, and its production within the framework of centralized communist economy, the production of the centre rocketed in numbers but plunged down in quality, especially as it was not meant for use in the kitchen anymore, but mostly for decoration. After the political and economic transformation the potters ceased to produce any ware, as the state organized distribution system collapsed. In the early 2000s a cultural officer of local administration started reviving the pottery tradition in order to create a tourist attraction in the region. In early 2013 she contacted a design academia in Poznan asking for co-operation in developing a local pottery product. The paper will present the experience of collaborative work by an anthropologist (with teaching experience in design) and a pottery designer, working with design students and local potters of two generations. It will present the methods used in work, as well as will discuss the relationship between the knowledge acquired during the workshop by different parties and different interests of participants of the knowledge exchange.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the use of craft traditions as a vehicle for community-driven social change in Glasgow, Scotland. I examine the aspirational language used, the quasi-political stance espoused, and the role of seagoing craft and boatbuilding in actualizing these abstract elements.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the use of craft traditions as a vehicle for community-driven social change and activism in urban Glasgow in southwest Scotland. The GalGael boatbuilding project benefits from a close engagement with tradition of a particular kind: manual craftwork. A number of studies from Jones and Glassie to Crawford and Ingold have explored, hands-on work is a powerful way of learning, but as the GalGael project shows, more than just skills are taught.

Located in Govan, part of urban, socially deprived, post-industrial Glasgow, GalGael was founded with a clear social remit: to give people with drug and other social problems, some with prison sentences in their past, a second chance. Here they can focus on the all-consuming quest of learning a new and challenging skill, diverting them from past patterns through role modelling and cultural engagement, and have a chance to re-start their lives as fully responsible members of society. The explicit aspiration is towards engagement, creativity and social(ist) responsibility.

Using interviews with project organizers and participants, I will examine (1) the aspirational language used by the project; (2) the quasi-political stance espoused; (3) the role of seagoing craft in its ideology; and (4) the role played by the work of boatbuilding itself in actualizing these three abstract elements.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how human and non-human actors form perceptions of a modern subject and human society in manual practices, drawing on the examples of urban gardening projects and sewing cafés.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how human and nonhuman actants 'collaborate' in forming perceptions of a modern subject and sociality through manual practices. In ethnographic fieldwork, two examples of 'doing it yourself' (DIY), i.e. manual practices, are examined: The cultivation of crops in an urban gardening project and the crafting of clothing and the like while drinking coffee and eating cake in a so called sewing café.

First results of the field studies indicate that makers - as Tim Ingold puts it - 'join forces' with materials to shape sociality. In the examples of DIY presented in this paper, it seems that these manual practices help to form what appears to be an almost ethical concept of being an 'authentic' and 'creative' modern subject. 'Authentic' in this context means aspiring after the ideal of a genuine, autonomous self developing ideas, concepts and needs on its own terms, unaffected by external influences. Andreas Reckwitz works out the emergence of a 'postmodern creative subject'. He even notes a social creative imperative in contemporary western societies that apparently no one can evade without being labelled as a less 'valuable' person. Here, 'creative' is understood as the longing for something new, not necessarily new in idea, or design, but in terms of affective stimuli. In regard to the fieldwork results and the addressed reflections, it can be asked what perceptions, visions, ideals, or utopias of human society become apparent in current pervasive DIY approaches.

Paper short abstract:

There is a new wave of 'local-scale social entrepreneurship' happening in Taiwan. Through this type of 'hand-crafting community', they constitute a new form of politic which has the potential to change the too globally dominated 'state politics'.

Paper long abstract:

In face of the globalization's abstractness, there is a new wave of "local-scaled social entrepreneurship" occurred in Taiwan. The new generation graduated from the discipline of sociology and anthropology breaks a new path for their future profession. They choose a locality, not necessary their hometown, to start their social enterprise. This type of social enterprise is distinct from its original form in UK. The newly graduated young people combine the domains of agriculture, hand-crafts, social work and local politics to form their mini-scale entrepreneurship. This new type of social movements opens a new scope to view the world, a revalue to the concreteness, hand-crafting, and proximity. But it's neither a type of de-politics nor a regression to the local womb. On the opposite, these young people aware of the political impact are the frequent protestors against the state's politics which too often compromise with the global sized corporation. Through this type of "hand-crafting community", they help the promotion of agriculture, revive the crafts work, arrange the mini local trip, accept the foreign backpack students for life experience, finally create a new distribution of the sensible. Then they constitute a new form of politic which is potential to change the too global dominated "state politics".

Paper short abstract:

The Bloomington Community Orchard is a community building project founded in Indiana, USA, in 2010. Sustainability and food security are prominent in the design of the Orchard, while aesthetics, ritual, and creative expression inform the vision of resilient community (writ large and small).

Paper long abstract:

Bloomington's Community Orchard, in Indiana, USA, began as an idea in the mind of Amy Countryman, an undergraduate student at Indiana University. The idea was brought to the City of Bloomington, where it was supported. Through the enthusiasm of volunteers and grants received, the Orchard is being shaped into existence by a broad array of participants. While the ethos of sustainability and local food security are prominent in the design and manifestation of the Orchard, aesthetics, ritual, and creative expression inform the vision of resilient community (writ small and large). From the spring of 2010 through 2012, I conducted observer-participant fieldwork at the Orchard. I also interviewed key players who took part in the early stages of creating the vision for the Orchard, designing the layout of where trees would be planted, how the work would be implemented, and how the various skills, talents, and energy of volunteers could be engaged to create a site that would become a sustainable orchard providing fruit for Bloomington community members for years to come, and providing a template for others who might want to emulate the project elsewhere. The implementation of the work has been carried out in a deeply communal process that reflects other gardening trends in Bloomington, Indiana, and further afield. In a time of environmental crisis, political tensions, and world unrest, the orchardists of the Bloomington Community Orchard are quietly responding collectively and individually, with an eye towards community present and local, as well as global and imagined.