In Craft Specialization's Penumbra: Things, Persons, Action, Value, and Surplus

Abstract

Objective approaches to craft specialization founded in systems theory are obsolete and should be replaced by more fine‐grained approaches capable of dealing with human agents, social practice, and meaning. All craft production, not just specialized production, is equally interesting and important for understanding the operation and change of past societies. Agents made, exchanged, and used a variety of objects in daily practice, and these had different meanings and values that affected social relationships, personhood, and social reproduction. This chapter reconsiders the role of things in the unfolding of everyday experience and in the production of meaning and being.

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