Slides from my presentation at the 2010 National Communication Association convention.

1. Crafting Articulations:
The Mode of Production of Online Crafts
Chris McConnell
Department of Radio-TV-Film, UT Austin
NCA, November 16, 2010

2. Crafting Articulations
• Crafts sales on the Internet
– Crafts, a working definition
– online retail
• Articulation
• Informationalization
• Cultural Capital

3. Microcosm - Zines

4. Crafts: a working definition
• Not necessarily handmade, contemporary
crafts are produced on a limited basis by
a small number of self-employed
producers.
– Hand-knit and sewn items
– Printed items such as t-shirts and ‘zines
– Bricolage such as belts and handbags made
from found items.
The limited scale of production and aura of
personality defines “craft” for the purpose of
this paper.

5. The Dark Ages
• Crafts are certainly not a new form of
cultural production
• Sources of crafts
– Made for self/friends/family
– Craft fair or flea market
– Specialty retail such as record store,
boutique, or bookstore
– Mail Order
• Purchasing crafts often depended on time
spent searching face-to-face… and luck

6. DIY
• While crafts have been associated with
the traditional or conventional, an
oppositional stream of crafting emerged
in the 1980s and 90s.
• Reaction to industrialization and mass
production
• Reaction to mass media and corporate
culture (Duncombe, 2000; Spencer, 2005)

7. Examples of Craft Online
• Microcosm Publishing
– “a not-for-profit*, collectively-run publisher and
distributor of zines and related work”
– Established in 1996
• BuyOlympia.com
– ‘a way to help our friends sell their awesome
handmade items online’
– Established in 1999 in Olympia, now in Portland
• Etsy.com
– “Your place to buy and sell all things handmade,
vintage and supplies” est. 2005

8. BuyOlympia.com

9. Microcosm - Stickers

10. Microcosm - Buttons

11. BuyOlympia – Bicycle Related

12. Etsy

13. Articulation
• Hall (1978) uses the concept of
articulation to explain how local cultures
and modes of production can exist within
global capital
• A punk/indie/DIY mode of production can
resist global capital at the micro level,
yet feed into the broader global capitalist
economy.

14. Online Craft Sales and
Articulation
• These sites such as Microcosm and
BuyOlympia nurture small-scale
production
• Yet their sales and distribution are firmly
situated within global systems of
information and commerce
– Internet
– Credit card transactions
– Shipping (US Mail, FedEx, UPS)

15. Informationalization
• Castells (2000) describes the global trend
of documenting and measuring commerce
and labor as “informationalization.”
• Informationalization rationalizes
transactions for capital
• Makes transactions more convenient or
efficent
• Improves discovery of suppliers

16. Etsy and Informationalization
• Does not sell items itself
• Provides a marketplace for buyers and
sellers
• Offers a variety of discovery tools
• Processes credit-card transactions
• Charges sellers 20¢ listing fee
• Takes 3.5% cut of each sale

17. Etsy-Discovery

18. Etsy – Discovery by Locality

19. Etsy – Color Discovery

20. Etsy – Specialty Goods

21. Etsy – Specialty Goods
• Customers can find
good they might
not be able to find
in their local
markets
• Offensive to local
sensibilities?
• Possibly illegal?

22. Cultural Captial
• For customers, Etsy takes a lot of the
work out of finding handmade goods
• Allows these persons have the artifacts of
a DIY lifestyle without the effort of
visiting craft fairs, boutiques, etc.
• Presents the image of a hip,
countercultural lifestyle without
necessarily living it - hipsterism

23. A Return to Cottage Industry?
• 95% of Etsy sellers are women (average
age, 33), mostly stay-at-home moms and
college students looking to supplement
their income rather than make a full-time
living. (Miller, 2007)
• $10 million in sales in first two years.
• Most items sell for $15-$20
• Sellers work by the piece, for dubious
margins

24. Conclusion
• Online craft retailers articulate between
craft/DIY modes of production and the
norms of contemporary global capital
• Provide customers the opportunity to
participate in subcultures unavailable in
their local communities
• Yet…
– Entry into a DIY lifestyle becomes all to easy for
poseurs
– Potentially exploits women, particularly stay-at-
home moms and others alienated by labor
market.