Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making

Front Cover
Trevor H.J. Marchand
Routledge, May 15, 2017 - Social Science - 278 pages
This volume brings together a cross-disciplinary group of anthropologists, researchers of craft, and designer-makers to enumerate and explore the diversity and complexity of problem-solving tactics and strategies employed by craftspeople, together with the key social, cultural, and environmental factors that give rise to particular ways of problem solving. Presenting rich, textured ethnographic studies of craftspeople at work around the world, Craftwork as Problem Solving examines the intelligent practices involved in solving a variety of problems and the ways in which these are perceived and evaluated both by makers and creators themselves, and by the societies in which they work. With attention to local factors such as training regimes and formal education, access to tools, socialisation and cultural understanding, budgetary constraints and market demands, changing technologies and materials, and political and economic regimes, this book sheds fresh light on the multifarious forms of intelligence involved in design and making, inventing and manufacturing, and cultivating and producing. As such, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology, and cultural geography, as well as to craftspeople with interests in creativity, skilful practice, perception and ethnography.
 

Contents

List of Figures
Problem Work in the Relationship between
Craftsmanship with Sentient
Making Sense in the Bike Mechanics Workshop
Crafting Solutions on the Cutting Edge of Digital Videography
Strategies of Transference in PrintBased
Breaching Normal
Weaving Solutions to Woven Problems
Social Strategies and Material Fixes in Agotime Weaving
Affective Problem Solving
Embodied Problem Solving and
The Problem of the Unknown Craftsman
The Craftsperson
A Flexible Connective Strategy for Concept
Malcolm Ferris
Index

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About the author (2017)

Trevor H.J. Marchand is Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. He is the author of The Masons of Djenne and Minaret Building and Apprenticeship in Yemen, editor of Making Knowledge and co-editor of the Handbook of Social Anthropology.

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