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Material Inheritances: How Place, Materiality, and Labor Process Underpin the Path-dependent Evolution of Contemporary Craft Production

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  • Chris Gibson
Abstract
This article explores the historic–geographic evolution of contemporary craft production, with sensitivity to materiality of labor process, product design, and accompanying place mythologies. Craft production—increasingly interpolated as a form of creative work—is shaped by concerns about retrieving archaic tools and ways of making things, celebrating provenance and the haptic skills of makers, and delivering (and marketing) manual labor process. In contrast to evolutionary economic geography’s seeming immateriality and abstraction, attention is drawn to material aspects of place and path dependence that undergird geographies of new craft industries: how labor process evolves, in iteration with technical lock-ins that stem from production method, product design, and capacities of component materials, but also how legacies of mass manufacturing linger in putatively authentic places—shaping new geographic concentrations. An especially vivid case is explored: a cluster of cowboy bootmaking workshops in El Paso, Texas. Bootmaking has metamorphosed from artisanal to factory to a craft-based creative mode of production. Crucial were continuity in product design and evolution of labor process. So, too, was geography: an iconic borderland city location with historic legacies of labor intensive mass manufacturing; migrant workers with requisite embodied skills; antique tools; and significant stocks of leather, the core input material that must be seen, felt, and smelt by makers before fabrication. I argue for a grounded, critical evolutionary economic geography that requires stronger intersection with labor process, with the cultural logics infusing capitalism, and with greater recognition of material inheritances that are reconfigured in place over successive generations.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Gibson, 2016. "Material Inheritances: How Place, Materiality, and Labor Process Underpin the Path-dependent Evolution of Contemporary Craft Production," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 92(1), pages 61-86, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:92:y:2016:i:1:p:61-86
    DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2015.1092211
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    Cited by:

    1. Greg Schrock & Marc Doussard & Laura Wolf-Powers & Stephen Marotta & Max Eisenburger, 2019. "Appetite for Growth: Challenges to Scale for Food and Beverage Makers in Three U.S. Cities," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 33(1), pages 39-50, February.
    2. Roy Kevin, 2024. "Institutional work and institutional entrepreneurship in the Ontario craft beer industry," ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, De Gruyter, vol. 68(2), pages 97-110.
    3. Di Wu & Neil M. Coe, 2023. "Bottom-up cluster branding through boundary spanners: The case of the Jingdezhen ceramics cluster in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(14), pages 2874-2900, November.
    4. Robin Holt & Yutaka Yamauchi, 2023. "Ethics, Tradition and Temporality in Craft Work: The Case of Japanese Mingei," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 188(4), pages 827-843, December.
    5. Merli Reidolf & Martin Graffenberger, 2019. "How local resources shape innovation and path development in rural regions. Insights from rural Estonia," Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, Fundacja Upowszechniająca Wiedzę i Naukę "Cognitione", vol. 15(3), pages 131-162.

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