Craft work: Understanding the relationship between identity and work in the context of the “future of work” (CRAFTWORK)

The CRAFTWORK project is a multi-methodological, pan-European study that explores the revival of craft and artisanal labour as a postindustrial 'new form of work' in the digital economy. The project maps the emergence of 'neo-craft' enterprises across different sectors and geographical contexts in the EU. In so doing, it explores the individual and collective lived experiences of work by 'neo-craft' workers, their subjectivities and pathways to employment, their perception of class location and social status, the existence of a new urban-rural divide and the role of social media in this context. The overarching goal of the CRAFTWORK project is to produce a new framework to understand the relationship between identity and work in a society transitioning out of the industrial era and in the midst of a prolonged period of economic downturn, whereby a resignification of the cultural understanding of work in society seems to be underway, based on a new search for meaningfulness. The CRAFTWORK project addresses this challenge through a research programme that advances the debate on the “future of work” beyond its main focus on the societal consequences of job automation and technological advancement. Yet, the rise of 'neo-craft' work is emblematic of a new set of tensions between production and consumption, entrepreneurship and salaried work, manual and creative labour, which bring to the fore new questions about why we work and what is the role of work in society. The project is ground-breaking for 3 reasons: a) empirically, it is the first comprehensive inquiry in the EU area on 'neo-craft' work and enterprises, currently hidden in existing data; b) methodologically, it experiments an innovative combination of digital methods and qualitative research for the study of work; c) theoretically, it aspires to provide a rethinking of the interpretative categories for the study of the relationship between identity and work that contributes to different scholarly traditions.