Is Artisan labour sustainable?

As a universal language of its own, clothing represents a powerful dimension for cross-cultural creativity and communication. The textile industry when considered on it’s most basic level, is a supply chain capable of weaving relationships while simultaneously alienating people. The industry is deliberately fostering and showcasing this ability to work with people along the supply chain. Globalization and sustainability movements have led to an emergence in artisan labour and goods, often based in the Global South, that subscribes to the damaging white moralism and white saviorism impulses of the fashion industry. The rise in support for global artisans poses limitations and in ways, it harms because of its operation in the current capitalist systems that perpetuate colonialism, extractivism and the exploitation of labour, people and culture; I will attempt to disabuse the false narrative taken by the white saviour mantle of the conscious fashion industry through mediations of cultural, economic and social dynamics between the Global South Artisan and the Global North brand.  My interests in studying this subject stem from the industry’s increased interest in artisanal traditional craft work without considering the precariousness of artisan employment and the harmful realities for artisans, their culture and communities. The essay identifies the practices that can decolonialize the employment of artisans and counters the Global North’s rationalizations to perpetuate the white saviour fantasy within this discourse.  I approached this nuanced topic with an objective consideration to understand the frameworks and power dynamics, while acknowledging my privilege as a white, female living in the Global North.

There are misconceptions that communities with strong craft traditions are unable to pursue these traditions because of their socio-economic standing. Brands in the Global North profit from strategically crafting narratives around practiced traditions that are co-opted, appropriated and employed without the cultural, historical and political contexts associated with them. In Globalization and Artisan Labour in the Third World, Scrase highlights the inevitable issue of employing the artisan to compete in the global market as the “artisanal crafts and skills are shared, owned and practiced by a community and so [it stands] in sharp contrast to the Western view of knowledge as a commodity owned by the individual or an incorporated company.” (Scrase 157) These generational traditions brought into the realm of capitalism and international commercialization conflicts with the Indigenous cultures in terms of their life, labour and craft (Chappe and Lawson,82). The overwhelming majority of the artisans, their history and the culture surrounding these techniques become a part of the commodity chains and the exchange happening within the market that were traditionally embedded with social and cultural heritage are being transformed in ways that threaten the continuation of the meanings and knowledge embedded into this social fabric (Chappe and Lawson,80). These crafts are often taught by elders and community members who have deep connections to the people and process, but when brought into the global market they become disconnected from their work. The commodification of craft within artisanal communities contributed to the valorization and diminishment of value within their work through a failure to recognize the local and ancestral knowledge of these processes and traditions. The brand Adish Studios is a controversial blend of Palestinian and Israeli culture - at first glance the brand seems to be working to restore Palestinian traditions through redeveloping peaceful partnerships with Israel, but, these Palestinian weavings have been appropriated and removed from their historical and political context. The gatekeepers at the company coopt the image of the Palestinian and Israeli tradition through marketing techniques that fetishes the artisans, exploits the Palestinian culture and experience, and robs the traditions and technique associated with the weavings while removing the agency of the artisan worker. For example, Adish’s collections highlight “everything in Palestinian life is imposed by Israel,” (Roberts) but they fail to acknowledge their own role in the colonization and culture erasure their company participates in. Palestinian textiles possess deep connections to a rich cultural history.  However, this connection is broken by how Israel treats Palestine as a non-state, with their apartheid of the Palestinian people and, also through harmful partnerships artisans are forced to enter into, with actors like Adish. Adish may fancy itself as an honest broker as it aims to create cultural and social ties of unity and support the revival of a lost craft while simultaneously detaching the Palestinian cultural heritage and co-opting spaces of resistance through disassociating their collections of weavings from political realities and cultural values of Palestinians.  Because of the continual extraction, colonialization and the power that the Global North wields, they are the ones who cultural decimation in their wake and in the economic pursuits, leaving artisans to work within the garment industry’s factories while the Global North continues to devalue their labour, skills, and traditions.

The power dynamics between a brand and consumer employ practices of white supremacy and western hegemony through branding, marketing and fair-trade business models. Fair-trade consumerism prides itself on being a ‘fair’ approach in the fashion industry to create an ‘equitable’ bridge between the globally wealthy and the globally poor (Amor). Even under fair trade and conscious consumerism, the fashion industry’s long practices of alienation and control emerge. The sustainability movement is calling for brands to be more transparent with supply chains, emissions, and impacts, and as consumers become more aware of the dirty secrets of the fashion industry, Western, mostly white consumers, are engaging with who made their clothes (Amor). There are a number of campaigns like the fashion REvolutions Who made my clothes campaign in reaction to the Bangladesh factory collapse that contributed to this interest (Omotoso), but this call for transparency only had them manipulate the consumer because “in order to be helped, the Other must remain in the past, their designs undistinguished, their stories uniform and interchangeable, and their gratitude to the savior endlessly flowing.”(Amor) Instead of making the consumer feel shame about the conditions that the labourers suffer, the company provided the consumer with a sense of contentment in supporting a ‘struggling’ community, incentivizing continued consumption. To accompany artisan bios and brand messaging like discovery, purpose, and heroism, the familiar images of artisans are encoded with meanings that convince the consumer of the fair treatment and joy they are finding in their work. In the article Precarious Production: Globalization and Artisan Labour in the Third World, Scrase offers an analysis on how images of artisans are staged to fit the narrative of the brand and produce monolithic meanings that frame issues in the Global South through an oversimplified white, Western lens. His research reveals “conclusively that women lack control over their distribution and marketing of craft, exacerbating their inequality within the industry” (Scrase 451) and therefore are displayed with traits like natural, traditional, and authentic rural women in need. The harmful portrayals of the artisans are used to profit from sentimental capitalism and obscure the structural linkages at play that further the economic interests of this with the clout. Furthermore, their racialized body is used to frame the brand as ethical with their bodies being “hyper visible while remaining invisible-seen but not known.”(Amos) Ultimately, the controlled image is not providing an accurate account of their lives, the practice of these artisans and the complex social realities therefore resulting in the fetishization and valorization of the imagined oppressed. The link between consumption and charity commodifies oppression and perpetuates colonial narratives on the Global South. Rafiki bracelets which are made by women in Kenya but are painted or displayed as this othered motherly figure, working and providing for her family.  This fetishization and exoticization is happening in all aspects of the brand identity of the Rafiki bracelets and helps justify their actions and exploitation of the narrative of the rural, poor artisan. In the essay, “The Hidden Costs of Cause Marketing,” Angela M. Eikenberry argues how “consumption philanthropy stabilizes, more than changes, the system (the market) that some would argue led to the poverty, disease, and environmental destruction philanthropists hope to eradicate.” and suggests that “consumption philanthropy is thus not about change, but about business as usual.” (Eikenberry 52) WE Charity, which runs the Rafiki Beads program put the issues these women face into a simplistic model perpetuating stereotypes about rural, poor women of colour.  This program gives the impression that by buying these bracelets you are supporting these women and sustainably lifting them and their communities out of poverty while failing to address the nuances of colonialism, governance structures, climate change and a complex global economic system that are the real causes of their economic hardships. These campaigns maintain a universalizing rhetoric of individualism as the vehicle for change as they use the language of semiotics to situate the artisan as passive and helpless who must be saved through these individual actions. Practices of artisan labour have disturbing consequences as it continues to maintain the hierarchies of the Global North consuming and controlling the racialized artisan as well as distracting our attention from the industry’s critique and individualizing solutions to collective social problems.

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Rafiki Bracelet campaign. The Swahili word means "friend," and in North America these accessories sell for $10 and each chain has a "Track Your Impact" code where one is able to see the 

The time, energy, years of fostering this skill, and emotional labour in an artisan's craft is discounted when brands from the Global North use artisan labour and traditions within the current hierarchical economic systems. In the chapter Unfolding the Artisanal Fashion, Maarit Aakko discusses how skillful production, and the concept of the Artisan is sensitized to the cultural and innovative processes that contemporary fashion is amplifying. Aakko explains how “distinctively apart from the current practices of mass manufactured fashion” (Aakko 544) as well as the emphasis to time as she uncovers “the artisanal approach to fashion stands in opposition to this dominant production strategy in the sense that achieving the quickest design and production cycle is not its primary goal.” (Aakko 541) The artisan’s craft is dignified in the conscious fashion industry to justify their work as sustainable because artisans do not use conventional practices of deadlines and multiple seasonal production. Because of the opposition to dominant ways of production, the fashion industry has ceased the opportunity to use artisans in their collections but lack any understanding of the artisan’s practice, labour and time that is put into their work, disregarding the contrast between artisanal practices and the fast-paced capital system. The article Artisans and Designer: Seeking Fairness within Capitalism and the Gig Economy, by Raphaele Chappe and Cynthia Lawson, discusses that brands emphasize the economic opportunities companies provide artisans in their vision statements because “the production of goods that provide income and generate wealth for these poor producers.” (Chappe and Lawson 81) But in reality, Nyshka Chandran, in Elevating artisans: What luxury fashion can learn from social enterprises, claims that when “craft practitioners do find work, it never pays enough to reward their labour. That is because designers looking to source from South Asian artisans typically hire an agent to coordinate on their behalf, triggering a system of ruthless intermediaries eating into the artisan’s share of income and separating buyers from suppliers.” (Chandran) The issue remains that there is an extreme commodification of labour that reveals how the current compensation of artisans is determined by the supply and demand for those skills in the marketplace rather than the sweat of the labourer. (Chappe and Lawson 84) BIPOC bodies are put in situations of precarious work and are left with little options to reject these situations. Capitalism and philanthropy will never be there to support these artisans as they rely on the oppressed to function. This saviourism although seemingly harmless, “is complicit in the network of domination”(Amos) and relies on the systemic oppression of the Global South and therefore will never actually address the source to this oppression. The same power dynamics are present, creating a system where their work is undervalued and are not receiving the support, money, or legislation they need to alleviate this economic precarity many artisans find themselves in. Our current models that rely on artisans for economic opportunities do not acknowledge the capitalist system that functions on colonialist, exploitative practices, in turn perpetuating the same problems rather than offering truly sustainable solutions that values artisans in the global south as equals rather than an opportunity to incentivise consumption and promotes artisan’s community agency. 

Fig 1

Practiced in the Bedouin community Manajel (sickle in Arabic), a type of embroidery used at ADISH is called A‘qided Gazeh, which was traditionally applied as a joining seam for the dress worn in the Gaza area.

There are practices to disrupt these harmful practices and come with their own challenges and go against the co-option movement and are premised on centralizing the artisan. Co-founder and creative, Zain Ahmad from the brand Rastah dismantles the power dynamics at play with profit sharing agreements, giving ownership to the artisans and involving them into the design process. Ahmad’s brand, Rastah is “the site where western silhouettes and traditional eastern motifs, contemporary art and Mughal miniature, stories of exodus, all are brought into conversation with each other. The garment is, like most things, political, and has profound regional and global consequences. While the inspiration is frequently transnational, each collection is imagined, sourced, and crafted in Pakistan.” (Ahmad) Rastah communicates the connections of culture, heritage and clothing through craft traditions and the importance of establishing these relationships with artisans and the entire supply chains. Ahmad expresses the importance of creating opportunities for workers to have social mobility, joy in labour and a steady salary that is above average wages and include them into the design process, center their culture and experiences as well as giving the artisan ownership. Rastah is establishing a relationship of respect with the artisan and investing with supply chains to ensure the workers have creative liberty and social productivity. (Chandran) In doing this there is a dismantling of the longstanding power hierarchies and supply chains that take on greater meaning as each person involved is an equal artist to this bigger project. An emerging brand called Salim Azzam is proposing a fairer approach “to poverty alleviation, artisan empowerment, and the celebration of cultural heritage” (Chappe and Lawson 80) Azzam’s brand “inspired by the remote mountain life where he grew up... embodying Azzam’s intent to revive this heritage skill through his designs. Following the Lebanese civil war, low levels of literacy meant embroidery became a means of creative expression for the local craftswomen” (Azzam) His studio is in the village of Chouf, giving him the opportunity to provide local and ethical employment and foster relationships with these artisans. 

We cannot use the system that caused these problems to solve the very social ills that capitalism caused in the first place. Instead of simply outsourcing skills, these brands must integrate craftspeople into the very essence of the process. By working together with social enterprises or ethical initiatives, it is as much about creating employment and upholding the skills of makers around the world as it is about using clothing to build bridges and re-centre the fashion narrative on human creativity at every step of its supply chain. The conscious fashion industry is using them to make the fashion industry look better and re-centre humanity in fashion and uphold your image.