Crafting Designs: An Archaeology of “Craft” as God Term

Small-batch, artisan-made, handmade, bespoke—this article examines the use of “craft” as a stabilizing design god term during periods of technological flux. Using Foucauldian archaeology, I survey three common synecdoches of craft: craft as crafting, craft as product, and craft as set of rights. In doing so, I reveal a system of contradictions, determinisms, and romanticisms circulating around the logic of craft as technological good. But I also suggest that by reviewing a community's uniquely nostalgic definitions of craft, designers might uncover which technological traditions, values, and goals users desire to take from past designs into the future. By understanding craft as a local process, a cross-culturally variable logic, and a product that hails active consumers, this essay ultimately argues that designers and writers alike might come to create more user-centered and emancipatory compositions.