Book section : Chapter
Crafting communist paternalism: the voices of lacemakers in Koniaków, Poland, 1947–1962
- Abstract:
- After the Second World War, communist regimes across the Eastern Bloc brought rural crafts under state control. In Poland, vernacular crafts were reorganised into cooperatives overseen by the Warsaw-based Central Agency for Folk and Art Industry, ‘Cepelia’. Its architects sought to address similar concerns about poverty, exploitation and securing the future viability of craft communities using a non-capitalist model which symbolically and economically downplayed the commercial aspect of craftwork and replaced the consumer with the state at the heart of humanitarian action. This Cold War experiment with socialised craft faced two challenges. One of these was how to balance a desire for authenticity with the need to modernise the product range to suit consumers’ increasingly urban, industrialised lifestyle. Another was balancing the ideological imperative of giving artisans access to stable, equitably paid work while needing to turn a profit. Drawing from archival and ethnographic research, this study examines how one group of rural artisans – crochet lacemakers from the village of Koniaków – experienced the socialist reorganisation of craft. It shows that despite giving local artisans a steady income, social benefits and pensions, the paternalist system of craft production was underpinned by traditional notions of gender and class. Rather than being genuinely equitable, the system reproduced many of the tropes we see in other – non-socialist – interventions in craft communities: low wages and the reproduction of handicrafts as an occupation for those difficult to employ due to sex, physical ability or youth.
- Publication status:
- Published
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 661.6KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.7765/9781526188045.00015
Authors
Contributors
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- Host title:
- Humanitarian handicraft: History, materiality and trade, c. 1840–1980
- Pages:
- 206-223
- Chapter number:
- 9
- Publication date:
- 2025-10-01
- DOI:
- EISBN:
- 9781526188045
- ISBN:
- 9781526188021
- Language:
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English
- Subtype:
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Chapter
- Pubs id:
-
2361331
- Local pid:
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pubs:2361331
- Deposit date:
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2026-05-12
- ARK identifier:
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- Copyright holder:
- Manchester University Press
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © Manchester University Press 2025. An electronic version of this book has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence – thanks to the support of the University of Huddersfield, Leeds Beckett University, and the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester – which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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