Traditional Crafts and Capitalism
My name is Merchi. I live in a small village in Israel. I am a ceramicist and make my living by doing manual labor. I was born in Israel and grew up in a working-class family. My parents were both born and raised in Morocco and immigrated to Israel in their teen years.
For several years I have been engaged in thinking about and doing all kinds of traditional crafts, like basket weaving, knitting, and ceramics. I have always had an inclination and love for making all kinds of crafts.
There is a direct connection between capitalism’s mass industrial production and the disappearance of the expertise and knowledge of people who make traditional crafts. Fewer and fewer people know how to weave a basket or make utensils out of clay or wood.
It is not a coincidence that most knowledge of these crafts has been preserved in the less industrially developed countries. The main reason for this is tourism. In Morocco you can find many tourist products for sale, including baskets, ceramics, wood carvings, leather objects, and more.
Ancient traditional crafts have a direct connection with the environment. They are usually made from local and natural raw materials that are less harmful to the Earth because of their ability to decompose. The knowledge of them has been developed from the immediate environment and passed down from one generation to another. The people who engage in them have a connection to their environment that is unique and rare. Most of us live disconnected from our environment. Our lack of connection—to nature, the seasons—is a direct product of the modern industrialized world. Capitalism and the modern world have disconnected us from our surroundings. Oppression makes us mistakenly think that we are “above” nature, that we are separate from it, and that we can manage and manipulate it however we wish.
There is great value in preserving the knowledge of traditional craft makers. We can learn from their connection to nature and how they are integrated into the environment in which they live. We can also notice the harm being done to many people who are making their living from crafts. In the global pandemic, with limited travel between countries, people who earn their living from selling their products to tourists (as in Morocco) have been left without income.
Traditional crafts are part of the cultures and traditions of people around the globe. There are long-standing traditions of slow, meticulous, detailed work, done while the workers are fully connected to the environment. And the crafts are practical arts; the products were in daily use before massive industrial production took over our world. Today’s markets are full of products that have been made by machines, at times with no human contact, and that are cheap. It is hard for traditional crafts to compete.
I have two sisters, and for the last few years we have been meeting every Saturday. Since Coronavirus we have been meeting in open spaces in a park near to where we live. I have been teaching them weaving, so every Saturday we weave together. For me it is closing the circle, because my great-grandmother used to weave baskets in Morocco. We remember her from our childhood when she would come to visit us with a new basket she had made. It’s a wonderful and connected feeling to weave together with my sisters, a sense of something that is familiar and recorded in our hands.
Crafts were an integral part of human life in the past. My great-grandmother knew how to weave baskets along with many other life skills she had. She did not weave in the modern capitalist sense. It was not her main job or profession, or identity, or source of income. It was just one of the life skills that people had back then, something that they knew how to do. If they needed a basket, they knew how to weave one, or they asked a neighbor to make one. They did not have to go to the supermarket to choose one.
There is great value in engaging in slow traditional crafts. They allow us to have honest and simple connections and to preserve cultural and traditional knowledge and skills. It is important to preserve them and not let them get lost. They unite us in the simple connection we human beings have with our place and environment.
Tuval, Israel
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders in the care of the environment
(Present Time 201, October 2020)