SKOPE seminar: Woven worlds and crafted selves – Towards an alternative framing of craft apprenticeships

In this seminar, Abismrita will present some key findings from her multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with handloom weavers in India, examining how artisan communities sustain and transmit craft traditions while adapting their knowledge practices to navigate the shifting challenges of contemporary times. Craft apprenticeships emerge as complex social fields where identities, livelihoods, and everyday life are intricately interwoven. Highly specialised skills are passed down across generations through informal, embodied modes of learning—what may be understood as a form of embodied capital.
Drawing on detailed narratives from the work lives of women in Kethun (near Kota) in Rajasthan and villages in the Kamrup region of Assam, the study explores how women relate to their craft and articulate aspirations within and beyond their practice. In recent years, skill intervention programmes have introduced new opportunities for weavers to augment their embodied knowledge with ‘professional’ skills in digital marketing and design, aimed at product innovation and livelihood enhancement. The research traces women’s varied engagements with these programmes, uncovering sites of negotiation, resistance, and tension as they navigate notions of authenticity, tradition, modernity, and empowerment.
By weaving together ethnographic insights into how communities learn, labour, and strategise from within their social worlds, this study offers a grounded perspective on apprenticeships, agency, and the politics of development around craft in contemporary India.

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