Paper Short Abstract:

In my fieldwork on China’s intangible cultural heritage knowledge transmission, I found that Chinese craftsmen transfer different versions of craft knowledge to social members depending on their closeness to the craftsmen's families. I interpret the phenomenon as a negotiation between maintaining social responsibility and knowledge secrecy.

Paper Abstract:

The paper examines how Chinese craftsmen adopt different teaching strategies and principles according to the various contexts. Existing studies on craft knowledge transmission often overlooked the significance of contexts despite the latter’s underlying roles in shaping human behaviours, including craft teaching and learning. With the evidence I collected from being an Intangible Cultural Heritage apprentice in China for 12 months, this paper reveals that Chinese craftsmen would selectively teach craft skills when facing different social groups. On the one hand, Chinese craftsmen share detailed and comprehensive knowledge with their family members (especially males considered the only orthodox inheritors), as it is a family convention. On the other hand, they were heavily encouraged, if not obligated, by the local government to disseminate their craft-making knowledge to the external, non-family social members, such as tourists, etc., to maintain the state’s culture-prosperity policy. Accordingly, many craftsmen took a negotiated pathway in craft teaching, with learners’ closeness to the family as a criterion. For instance, some craftsmen devised different craft-making procedures for tourists and community college students to maintain the secrecy of authentic craft. The paper corresponds to the panel by studying craft teaching and learning with a focus on metaphysical (i.e., social relationships) elements instead of taking the conventional materialised approaches. By offering cases where social relationships actively influenced craft teaching, the paper appeals to pay more attention to the immaterial factors in craft studies.