Craft Economies

Craft Economies provides a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary craft production, situating practices of amateur and professional making within a wider creative economy. Contributors address a diverse range of practices, sites and forms of making in a wide range of regional and national contexts, from floristry to ceramics and from crochet to coding. The volume considers the role of digital practices of making and the impact of the maker's movement as part of larger trends around customisation, on-demand production, and the possibilities of 3D printing and digital manufacturing.

Are we aware of the values of craft? In this edited volume, cultural economists, researchers and professionals provide an interdisciplinary discussion of the relevance and contribution of the craft sector to the economy, as well as to society at large. Mignosa and Kotipalli bring together contributors to compare the craft sector across countries, analysing the role of institutions, educational bodies, organisations and market structure in its evolution and perception. The Western approach to craft and its subordinate position to the arts is contrasted with the prestige of craftmanship in Eastern countries, while the differing ways that craft has attracted the attention of policy agencies, museums, designers and private institutions across regions is also analysed. This volume is vital reading to those interested in the economic features of craft and craftsmanship around the world, as well as for those interested in the importance of policy in bringing about effective sustainable development.

Craft and the Creative Economy examines the place of craft and making in the contemporary cultural economy, with a distinctive focus on the ways in which this creative sector is growing exponentially as a result of online shopfronts and home-based micro-enterprise, 'mumpreneurialism' and downshifting, and renewed demand for the handmade.

A review of the Heckscher–Ohlin framework prompts a noted economist to consider the methodology of economics. In this spirited and provocative book, Edward Leamer turns an examination of the Heckscher–Ohlin framework for global competition into an opportunity to consider the craft of economics: what economists do, what they should do, and what they shouldn't do. Claiming “a lifetime relationship with Heckscher–Ohlin,” Leamer argues that Bertil Ohlin's original idea offered something useful though vague and not necessarily valid; the economists who later translated his ideas into mathematical theorems offered something precise and valid but not necessarily useful. He argues further that the best economists keep formal and informal thinking in balance. An Ohlinesque mostly prose style can let in faulty thinking and fuzzy communication; a mostly math style allows misplaced emphasis and opaque communication. Leamer writes that today's model- and math-driven economics needs more prose and less math. Leamer shows that the Heckscher–Ohlin framework is still useful, and that there is still much work to be done with it. But he issues a caveat about economists: “What we do is not science, it's fiction and journalism.” Economic theory, he writes, is fiction (stories, loosely connected to the facts); data analysis is journalism (facts, loosely connected to the stories). Rather than titling the two sections of his book Theory and Evidence, he calls them Economic Fiction and Econometric Journalism, explaining, “If you find that startling, that's good. I am trying to keep you awake.”

In today’s new economy—in which “good” jobs are typically knowledge or technology based—many well-educated and culturally savvy young people are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual labor occupations as careers. Masters of Craft looks at the renaissance of four such trades: bartending, distilling, barbering, and butchering. In this engaging book, Richard Ocejo takes you into the lives and workplaces of these people to examine how they are transforming once-undesirable jobs into “cool” and highly specialized upscale occupations. He shows how they find meaning in these jobs by enacting a set of “cultural repertoires,” resulting in a new form of elite taste-making. Focusing on cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men’s barbers, and whole-animal butcher shop workers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and upstate New York, Masters of Craft provides new insights into the stratification of taste, the spread of gentrification, and the evolving labor market in today’s postindustrial city.

This edited book focuses on the organization and meaning of craft work in contemporary society. It considers the relationship between craft and place and how this enables the construction of a meaningful relationship with objects of production and consumption. The book explores the significance of raw materials, the relationship between the body, the crafted object and the mind, and the importance of skill, knowledge and learning in the making process. Through this, it raises important questions about the role of craft in facing future challenges by challenging the logic of globalized production and consumption. The Organization of Craft Work encompasses international analyses from the United States, France, Italy, Australia, Canada, the UK and Japan involving a diverse range of sectors, including brewing, food and wine production, clothing and shoe making, and perfumery. The book will be of interest to students and academic researchers in organization studies, marketing and consumer behaviour, business ethics, entrepreneurship, sociology of work, human resource management, cultural studies, geography, and fashion and design. In addition, the book will be of interest to practitioners and organizations with an interest in the development and promotion of craft work.

This book investigates the birth and evolution of craft breweries around the world. Microbrewery, brewpub, artisanal brewery, henceforth craft brewery, are terms referred to a new kind of production in the brewing industry contraposed to the mass production of beer, which has started and diffused in almost all industrialized countries in the last decades. This project provides an explanation of the entrepreneurial dynamics behind these new firms from an economic perspective. The product standardization of large producers, the emergence of a new more sophisticated demand and set of consumers, the effect of contagion, and technology aspects are analyzed as the main determinants behind this ‘revolution’. The worldwide perspective makes the project distinctive, presenting cases from many relevant countries, including the USA, Australia, Japan, China, UK, Belgium, Italy and many other EU countries.

An incisive guide that helps up-and-coming economists become successful scholars The Economist's Craft introduces graduate students and rising scholars to the essentials of research, writing, and other critical skills for a successful career in economics. Michael Weisbach enables you to become more effective at communicating your ideas, emphasizing the importance of choosing topics that will have a lasting impact. He explains how to write clearly and compellingly, present and publish your findings, navigate the job market, and more. Walking readers through each stage of a research project, Weisbach demonstrates how to develop research around a theme so that the value from a body of work is more than the sum of its individual papers. He discusses how to structure each section of an academic article and describes the steps that follow the completion of an initial draft, from presenting and revising to circulating and eventually publishing. Weisbach reveals how to get the most out of graduate school, how the journal review process works, how universities decide promotions and tenure, and how to manage your career and continue to seek out rewarding new opportunities. A how-to guide for the aspiring economist, The Economist's Craft covers a host of important issues rarely taught in the graduate classroom, providing readers with the tools and insights they need to succeed as professional scholars.