CHANGING THE WORLD ONE STITCH AT A TIME: KNITTING AS A MEANS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM

Abstract

The latest revival of knitting, which began around the year 2000, is part of a history of hand-crafts revivals occurring over the last 150 years.What sets the current revival apart from its predecessors is the use of knitting in the larger context of Progressive social and political activism.The revival has its roots in the social movements that began in the 1960s (feminism, ecology, civil rights, and anti-war) that became permanent though often unrecognized fixtures of Western culture and thought.As part of the larger Post-Modern world, activist knitters in the twenty-first century have continued their advocacy of human rights and the peace movement and have further championed a broad spectrum of social justice and ecological causes.The communication revolution afforded by the World-Wide Web has allowed like-minded individuals to connect and participate in a grassroots movement largely unrecognized and unreported by corporate media, leading knitting to become a personal and collective symbol of both empowerment and dissent as well as a tactic of protest.

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