Short Abstract

Taking craftspeople seriously as knowledge producers, this panel asks how material engagement relates to broader forms of knowledge and authority, and explores the trajectories and histories of craft knowledge across places and generations.

Long Abstract

Current debates on knowledge production in and about Africa have raised important questions about whose knowledge is recognized and which ways of knowing remain marginalized. Yet craftspeople and their expertise occupy a marginal place in dominant understandings of knowledge (Mavhunga 2017). What becomes visible when craftspeople are approached as knowledge producers? Work on material engagement has shown how knowing and thinking emerge through interactions with materials and processes of making (Malafouris 2013). This also raises questions about the role materials themselves play in processes of knowing (Bell 2020). Such ways of knowing materials may encompass knowledge of human and multispecies relations (Lee 2022), histories, religion and cosmology. In many African contexts craftspeople are recognized as knowledgeable people and may hold genealogical and historical knowledge, expertise in verbal arts and music, or particular relations with non-human worlds. The panel is particularly interested in the relation between knowledge through making and these broader forms of knowledge and authority attributed to craftspeople. We are also interested in the trajectories and histories of knowledge that become visible when we follow networks of expertise across places and generations. We invite contributions that examine craftspeople and workshops as sites of knowledge production. What do craftspeople know through making, and what kinds of knowledge are involved in their engagement with materials? How does this knowledge relate to broader forms of knowledge and authority? How is knowledge exchanged among craftspeople and across workshops, and how does it travel across places and generations?

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