Crafts production and resistance to domination in the late 20th century

Artisanal work has been used through the late 20th century by individuals and groups to resist domination. This article presents a conceptual framework for viewing occupations, including crafts production, as political phenomena. The author's research in Israel and the Occupied West Bank in 1986 provides examples of crafts used to support competing national struggles and claims to contested territory. Although often relegated to the category of pre‐industrial folk arts and assumed irrelevant to post‐industrial economies, crafts are a strategy for economic and cultural self‐determination. Further, they show how everyday activities rooted in cultural traditions can be used to mobilize community development.