Precarious production: Globalisation and artisan labour in the Third World

This article provides an overview of recent literature and studies of Third World artisans in the context of economic globalisation. Drawing upon recently published research conducted in various countries in Central America, Asia and Africa, it demonstrates that globalisation has intensified the precarious existence of artisan communities through increasing global competition, the mass production of craft goods, and shifting trends in fashion, cultural taste and aesthetics. Both government and non-government efforts at supporting artisans are criticised for providing limited and ineffectual programmes and policies. Moreover, recent consumer trends like 'fair-trade' shopping are likewise only piecemeal and limited in terms of the long-term support they can give to struggling artisan communities. When artisans survive, they do so mainly on the periphery of both global and local capitalist economies; this is a situation that has rarely changed over the decades. In various ways, and in specific regional contexts, the globalisation of production exacerbates, rather than diminishes, the marginal status of artisan communities.