ETAPAS DEL PUERPERIO

While literature on maker spaces and the so-called ‘maker movement’ is, at the time of writing, essentially non-existent within human geography (though see peripheral work by Smith [2017] on hacklabs and experimentation; Meyer [2013] on DIY biology; Jiménez [2014] on open source infrastructure)15_{, work on craft,}

drawing on many of the debates and developments presented above, is of growing prominence in the field (Carr and Gibson, 2017). It has attained less centrality in the discipline, however, than its occurrence either in the popular literature or in other social scientific disciplines such as anthropology (Atkinson, 2013; Ingold, 2007a, 2013, Marchand, 2008, 2010; Walls, 2016; Warnier, 2007) and archaeology (Barrett, 2014; Bleed, 2008; Crown, 2014; González-Ruibal, 2014; Hodder, 2014; Webmoor, 2013).

Yarwood and Shaw (2010), writing on craft as a hobby, put this disciplinary neglect, in part, down to a privileging of outdoor, easily-monitored activities in geography, such as tourism, travel and sport, as well as an uncertainty amongst geographers with regard to where craft should be placed in the work/leisure binary. However, much recent geographical work tangential to questions of craft has tied into a renewed interest in geographies of creativity and practice in spatial thought (Hawkins, 2013; Nash, 2013, 2000; Ferraro and Reid, 2013). There has been a significant output in recent years relating to creative geographies, although, perhaps displaying ‘ocularcentrism’ (Paterson, 2009), this has largely focused on traditional art media and visual methodologies (Dixon et al., 2012; Hawkins, 2013, 2014, 2015; Hunt, 2014). Engagement with those practices which have been traditionally conceived of as craft, in this growing area of research, has been more limited.

That said, Richardson (2016a) has explored the various spaces of artistic knowledge co-production, including the workshop, the event and the project,

15 _{Last (2013) also makes passing reference to the notable German hacker organization the Chaos} Computer Club (CCC).

focusing specifically on creative writers, though the discussion has broader implications for geographies of creativity and, indeed, draws on craft literature, including that of Sennett, cited above. She notes the importance of face-to-face interaction in workshop spaces both for learning and feedback, and for the emotional work of building trust between participants. This trust was then crucial in allowing for frank feedback, facilitating improvements in future work.

In their one-off paper researching model railway builders, Yarwood and Shaw (2010: 425) also focus on the relationality of craft practices, examining “the nature

of the relationship between the individual consumer and wider networks of craft

practices”. This is important, for them, in order to examine the spatial processes associated with craft-consumption, in a discipline where little is known about “the

spaces of indoor leisure, where it is practiced and how these places are linked to

wider networks of production and consumption” (Ibid: 426). This neglect is particularly strange given what Watson and Shove (2008) – cited by Yarwood and Shaw – call the “transformative” nature of craft and DIY, both in terms of the

people who do it, the physical structures within which they work, and their consumption and production activities:

One round of DIY has implications for what might be tackled next and for the confidence, or otherwise, with which new projects are approached. As a result,

practitioners’ ‘careers’ – both individually and collectively

– determine related forms and types of production and consumption. (p. 72)

Taking a different angle, Nigel Clark, in a series of recent publications (Clark, 2015, 2016b, 2016c, 2016a), has examined the early history and subsequent development of pyrotechnology, that is, fiery arts of production and metallurgical crafts. This project looks to the relevance of making for “any renewed negotiation with the stuff of the earth”, and builds upon Clark’s (2011) earlier monograph,

Inhuman Nature, which placed human sociality more fully within the context of a dynamic, unruly and tumultuous planet. He notes (2016a: 17) that:

Our focus on the long durée [sic] of artisanal practice serves as a reminder that metaphors of forging, shaping, molding or constructing social worlds have literal traces, and in turn hints at the distance that has opened up between modern social thought and what was once the everyday work of manipulating matter-energy to make useful and beautiful things.

Working with a broad conceptualisation of ‘making’, Carr and Gibson (2015) have

formulated a geographical research agenda which acknowledges that “ecological

crisis demands more, rather than less, attention to materials and making

processes that constitute our world.” This review sets the broader scene for a growing, albeit patchy, selection of recent work on the geographies of craft, which has thus far included taxidermy (Patchett, 2015b, 2017), ceramics (Miller, 2016), knitting (Mann, 2015, 2017; Price, 2015), surf-board construction (Warren, 2016), leather boot making (Gibson, 2016), creative clusters (Harvey et al., 2012), craft metalwork (Drake, 2003), craft brewing (Thurnell-Read, 2014), friendship in craft circles (Hall and Jayne, 2015), regional craft networks (Thomas et al., 2013), quarrying, dry-stone walling and stonemasonry (Paton, 2013; Edensor, 2011, 2013; Paterson, 2015), making-as-methodology (Carr and Gibson, 2017), and discussions of sustainability (Ferraro and Reid, 2013).

While each researches a different domain, such work somewhat contradicts Chris

Anderson’s (2012: 47) statement in Makers, that “”Place” matters less and less in

manufacturing these days—ideas trump geography.” Rather, it underlines how questions of skill and material competence have been of interest, particularly in recent cultural geography (Banfield, 2017; Vannini and Taggart, 2014), coupled with broader questions of dwelling and practice (Cloke and Jones, 2001; Hunt, 2016). Often drawing on the work of Ingold, this rapidly expanding body of work also shows echoes of Pye’s legacy, whether through direct citation (Miller, 2016; Patchett, 2015a), or through parallel development of notions of risk. Carr and Gibson (2015: 7), for example, describe making as “a material conversation – a physical provocation and a response, iterated over and again, working with the

material to understand its capacities, analyse error and make adjustments”. Miller

(2016: 6) notes how “matter enables and constrains, playing its agentic part in

making practices, which involve embodied skills and familiarity, cognitive

knowledge and an active role for tools and materials.” And Harrison (2009: 995) notes that failure is a central aspect of skill; “highly skilled activity [is] highly skilled

precisely insofar as it takes place as close to this limit as possible, without crossing over. The dancer can slip and break his ankle; the rock climber lose her grip and

fall.”

Ingold (2017: 1) has himself drawn together this interest in an Afterword for the journal cultural geographies, writing that “skill is the ground from which all

knowledge grows”. His meditation on skill highlights how the merging of body, mind and environment which takes place in skilled practice is an “endlessly creative” and inherently risk-laden activity:

A seasoned practitioner knows that to embark on any venture means pushing the boat out into the stream of a volatile and ever-changing environment, with no knowing what will transpire. It is an inherently uncertain business. Over-confidence is the mark of the novice…to practice any skill means exposing oneself to the befalling of things, and enduring whatever they have in store. (p. 3)

Attempts to grapple with questions of making and skill in human geography have drawn, to varying extents, on non-representational theory (NRT), an approach which has come to prominence over the last two decades, predominantly in UK- based human geography (Lorimer, 2005; Thrift, 2008; Phillip Vannini, 2015; Hunt, 2014). NRT shall be examined in more detail in Chapter 3, given its focus on social life not solely as a site of human meaning and interpretation, but as composed of material-discursive practices (Anderson, 2014; Miller, 2016; Thrift, 2008). For now,

it’s adequate to note that, given Adamson’s comment above on the paradoxical

challenge of writing about something as obviously tacit as craft, NRT-inspired

geography (Paterson, 2009; Dixon and Straughan, 2010), seem an apt theoretical development within human geography for the investigation of craft.