Crafting Identity

"By contrasting American experience with the Canadian context, which includes a unique Quebec identity and a Native dimension, Sandra Alfoldy argues that the development of organizations, advanced education for craftspeople, and exhibition and promotional opportunities have contributed to the distinct evolution of professional craft in Canada over the past forty years. Alfoldy focuses on 1964-74 and the debates over distinctions between professional, self-taught, and amateur craftspeople and between one-of-a-kind and traditional craft objects. She deals extensively with key people and events, including American philanthropist Aileen Osborn Webb and Canadian philanthropist Joan Chalmers, the foundation of the World Crafts Council (1964) and the Canadian Crafts Council (1974), the Canadian Fine Crafts exhibition at Expo 67, and the In Praise of Hands exhibition of 1974. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unexploited materials, this richly documented survey includes descriptions and illustrations of significant works and identifies the challenges that lie ahead for professional crafts in Canada."--Pub. desc

Crafting Identity explores the complex interplay of social relations, values, dominations, and performances present in the world of Mexican mask making. The book examines how art, media, and tourism mediate Mexican culture from the margins (“arte popular”), making Mexican indigeneity “palatable” for Mexican nationalism and American and global markets for folklore.

Crosses conventional theoretical, temporal, and geographical boundaries to show how the Ndau of southeast Africa actively shaped their own identity over a four-hundred-year period.

In the different versions of multiculturalism that have re-shaped English-speaking societies and political systems, identities appear more plastic than in societies which have constructed their national narratives on more stubborn denials of their colonial and patriarchal pasts; yet, the myth of purity (or authenticity) and separatist temptations remain very real parameters of identity politics. In such contexts, crafting an identity for oneself implies expectations of consistency, linked not only to the individual need to prove oneself and disprove stereotypes and statistics, but also to the broader political goal of dis-alienating or, as it were, de-Othering oneself and one’s community. The contributors to this book explore the different ways – from the most institutional to the most intimate – in which people articulate the politics of memory and the creation of national narratives, or communal and personal identities.

By contrasting American experience with the Canadian context, which includes a unique Quebec identity and a Native dimension, Sandra Alfoldy argues that the development of organizations, advanced education for craftspeople, and exhibition and promotional opportunities have contributed to the distinct evolution of professional craft in Canada over the past forty years. Alfoldy focuses on 1964-74 and the debates over distinctions between professional, self-taught, and amateur craftspeople and between one-of-a-kind and traditional craft objects. She deals extensively with key people and events, including American philanthropist Aileen Osborn Webb and Canadian philanthropist Joan Chalmers, the foundation of the World Crafts Council (1964) and the Canadian Crafts Council (1974), the Canadian Fine Crafts exhibition at Expo 67, and the In Praise of Hands exhibition of 1974. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unexploited materials, this richly documented survey includes descriptions and illustrations of significant works and identifies the challenges that lie ahead for professional crafts in Canada.

"The ethnography of Japan is currently being reshaped by a new generation of Japanologists, and the present work certainly deserves a place in this body of literature. . . . The combination of utility with beauty makes Kondo's book required reading, for those with an interest not only in Japan but also in reflexive anthropology, women's studies, field methods, the anthropology of work, social psychology, Asian Americans, and even modern literature."—Paul H. Noguchi, American Anthropologist "Kondo's work is significant because she goes beyond disharmony, insisting on complexity. Kondo shows that inequalities are not simply oppressive-they are meaningful ways to establish identities."—Nancy Rosenberger, Journal of Asian Studies

"Published in collaboration with Harbourfront Centre".