Crafting objects, selves, links: the embodied production of relational exchange in performances of craft in the United States

Abstract

"Crafting Objects, Selves, Links" formulates an ethnographic analysis of craft practice in the contemporary United States. Using performance as an analytic frame, the author examines the ways that crafters use the productive gestures of craft to generate opportunities for relational contact, achievement, learning, buying and selling, and other forms of exchange. The manuscript is divided into four sites: craft in recognizable sites of performance, the performance of leisure craft in craft circles, craft sellng spaces formed by crafter entrepreneurs, and sites on the World Wide Web where crafters take action together.