Theoretical and methodological aspects of the social topology of the craft

Abstract

In the so-called historical periods of artisanal and industrial development, craft, social, and cultural practices have gained a new position in history and thus in the modern scale of values, their own time and place in the new framework of the «green economy». The formal contradiction between crafts and modernization can be removed if we consider the historical experience of crafts. With their genetic link to trade masters and their workshops, small- and medium-sized enterprises can be drivers of innovation through conservational, ecological, and socially neutral productive processes. The article attempts to outline the theoretical and methodological basis of a social topology of crafts as a new sphere in the philosophy of history and trades. Drawing on ancient, western European and Russian philosophy, the authors show that the social topology of trades can be seen as an alternative theoretical and methodological basis when researching the history of crafts, the development of their form and their deployment in space and time. The timeliness and relevance of this theoretical discussion is defined by the need to answer the conceptual challenges of the space-time of post-industrial development, to open a new historical retrospective on crafts and to realize the current and future sustainable development of trades. A topological research agenda, where the historical personality is seen as a socio-bodily being with a place in the space-time it itself produces, is founded on the key concepts of corporeality and location and interconnectedness within the socio-ontological context. In the framework of social phenomenology and ontology, the schema of flexible networks of small manufacturers takes the following form: «trade fraternities — workshops — practices — the self-organization and self-administration of fraternities». The craft topologeme suggests cooperation within the framework of a global trade fraternity of ecological manufacturing networks.

Keywords

• social topology of the craft
• time-space
• co-capacity
• community
• brotherhood
• polymorphism
• small manufacturing networks