Imagining Alternative Occupational Trajectories and Craft and Technology: Critically Rethinking the Relationship

Seminar on Imagining Alternative Occupational Trajectories with:

Dr. Jochem Kroezen - Rotterdam School of Management - rsm.nl

Dr. Judith Nyfeler - University of St. Gallen - unisg.ch

We build on the emerging craft perspective on work to imagine alternative occupational trajectories and explore the craft-based reconfiguration of occupational fields. We challenge the conventional imagery of bureaucratic professionalization and the implied supremacy of formal expertise by arguing that craft imaginaries can be drawn into occupational fields and reconsecrate embodied and relational forms of knowing and practicing. We draw on various phenomenological examples to imagine three relevant dynamics that craft imaginaries can elicit: (1) enchanting occupational objects, (2) humanizing occupational roles and (3) grounding occupational purposes. 

We suggest that these dynamics can inspire change in occupational practices, status hierarchies, and the demography of practitioners. We discuss how such dynamics may be observed across a variety of occupational fields and how our theory can shed new light on important occupational dynamics in the 21st century.

Seminar on Craft and Technology: Critically Rethinking the Relationship with:

Ph.D. Candidate Adelina Tordiglione - ESCP Business School - escp.eu
Dr. Daniel Hjorth, Lund University School of Economics and Management - lusem.lu.se and Copenhagen Business School - cbs.dk

We re-examine the relationship between craft and technology, challenging the dominant narrative that positions craft as a marginal counterpoint to efficiency-driven technological production. We argue that this binary opposition limits our capacity to imagine alternatives to capitalist modes of production. Drawing on anthropology, philosophy, and critical management studies, we demonstrate how craft and technology are best understood as entangled and co-constitutive, rather than oppositional. 

Combining Ingold’s relational anthropology, which emphasizes the material and embodied dimensions of making, with Marx’s critique of technology as embedded in capitalist social relations, we highlight both the experiential entanglements and the socio economic conditions that shape contemporary labour. To expand this perspective, we mobilize Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of desire and assemblage to reconceptualize craft and technology as interwoven elements within broader socio-material ecologies. We invite organization and management scholars to move beyond nostalgic or deterministic accounts and to explore new possibilities for organizing work and value creation in ways that resist capitalist capture.

About

The Centre for Aesthetics and Business Creativity (ABC) is a centre that loves its periphery-pulling forces. It wants to extend the research-basis for understanding and practicing organizational creativity in pursuit of values that enhance our quality of life, as citizens and consumers.

ABC aims to push the boundaries by engaging across diverse disciplines, such as art history, performance research, literary composition and cultural studies. By becoming a dynamic hub that blends ethics, aesthethics and business creativity, it will continue to inspire new ways of thinking and doing.