Processing Formulating and Manifesting. A History of the Present Moment.
History repeats itself, but not exactly, inventing new species and new social paradigms
In preparing to formulate a fellowship proposal to write an official history of Andersen Design, I am reading historical research papers. The official story is needed to advance the search for board members for the American Designer Craftsmen Museum but the newsletter is a much more immediate way to communicate. Practicality dictates: Let both streams merge and influence each other.
The London Society of Correspondence is an early historical newsletter started by working class entrepreneurs in the 18th century and described as drawing “largely upon working men (artisans, tradesmen, and shopkeepers). The London Society of Correspondence was preceded by an early institutional version of the newsletter called Secret Committee of Correspondence organized by the Continental Congress to communicate with sympathetic Britons and other Europeans early in the American Revolution. It eventually led to the establishment of the US Department of Foreign Affairs
The Continental Congress established the Committee of Secret Correspondence to communicate with sympathetic Britons and other Europeans early in the American Revolution. The committee coordinated diplomatic functions for the Continental Congress and directed transatlantic communication and public relations. source
The grassroots societies of correspondence were directed at parliamentary reform. My newsletter considers legislative and ordinance reform, including recognizing the business in a home as contributing to society. When such a faction is not included in the community conversation, even as it is a growing cultural and economic choice, how can it have rights? Before a faction has rights— it has to be recognized as existing. Andersen Design’s history qualifies as a spokes-brand for businesses in a home.
Another Bronze Age paper that inspires interest was written by Jonathan Thomas, Approaching Specialisation: Craft Production in Late Neolithic/Copper Age Iberia.
Thomas’s abstract begins with these words
While political models of craft specialisation are integral to archaeological frameworks describing social complexity, they do not adequately describe the emergence of nascent specialists in the absence of concomitant regional, political and economic organisation. (author’s emphasis)
When archeologists refer to “nascent specialists”, they mean the makers of prestige goods. Andersen Design falls into a unique category of “nascent specialists” because its founding mission was to create a handmade product affordable to the middle classes but much of what archeologists discuss about “nascent specialists”, by which they mean the makers of prestige goods likewise applies to Andersen Design, born in the absence of concomitant regional, political and economic organization as a self-sustaining system unto itself. It will be interesting to follow the development of this idea in archeological studies. It seems that there are instances where prestige goods are found but the connection to the complex society that would explain them is missing.
Following Brumfiel and Earle’s (1987: 5) suggestion that craft specialisation is not tied to a specific threshold of social complexity, but represents a continuum between independent specialists (who produce goods for a variety of consumers in a variety of contexts) and attached specialists (a class of worker who provides staple and finance goods to elites), more attention has recently been given to specialisation as a social practice with a complex set of rationales. Approaching Specialisation: Craft Production in Late Neolithic/Copper Age Iberia Jonathan T. Thomas
Translating that continuum into today’s terminology, the first group called “independent specialists” becomes grassroots entrepreneurs and it is indeed their independence that sets off the ire of their distractors in the centrally managed economy that exists today. “Attached specialists” in today’s jargon are the workforce employed by large corporate interests.
Archeologists distinguish prestige objects from wares made in a home environment and considered home-produced crafts as an occasional activity rather than a full-time productive activity.
In approaching the fellowship one must be aware of acceptable writing styles. Mr. Thomas has many interesting papers to read on his Academia Profile, one being titled The Archaeologist as Writer, which begins with this observation
Yet despite all this time spent writing, there seems to be a broadly held yet opaque attitude that attention to the style of rhetoric is a secondary or perhaps even trivial matter. Even as scholars with feet in both the humanities and the sciences, an unapologetic focus on the rhetorical positioning of one’s writing can be viewed as slightly suspect. To say “I’m really focusing on making it well-written and interesting” or “I’m working with different types of historical narratives” is easily misconstrued as “it’s not systematic” or an even worse epithet, “it’s non-scientific.” It arouses skepticism. Source
Later Taylor Writes
If we accept that the central thesis of Geertz’s work is essentially true, that anthropology is not an experimental science in search of law but rather an interpretive science in search of meaning—and I fully believe this to be the case, perhaps even more so for archaeologists, who by necessity must interpret information resulting from events that are unobservable—then we must grapple with how to interpret information and create meaning from events in the past in ways that are historically accurate, ethical, and epistemologically sound.Source
I found the use of language used in Samantha Scott Reiter’s paper so fascinating that I am keeping a list of words that she uses along with their definitions. The turns of phrases have a lyrical rhythm. In writing about large movements that occur across time, the writer must invoke simplicity to describe collective events that coalesce into cadences and form new paradigms.
Since1952 when Andersen Design was established as a ceramic production in a home and chose the specialty of creating a hand-made product affordable to the middle classes, Andersen Design has been operating outside of the targeted sector of the centrally organized economy (est 1976). This has made it difficult for us to procure financing from the newly evolved methods of today. There is a psychological gestalt at work leaving no doubt in my mind that Andersen Design would not have been excluded if we had chosen to pursue the prestige objects market. Choosing the middle-class market was a personal prerogative made at a most unusual point in history when the largest amount of wealth was distributed among the greatest number of people.
it focuses on the production of engraved slate plaques as an example of how Late Neolithic/Copper Age prestige objects may comprise an intermediate step in this process, approaching traditional models of craft specialisation in some respects, but defying them in others. It suggests that social practices such as the systematic production and consumption of rarefied or prestigious objects have a recursive relationship with the emergence of social complexity, forming the underlying basis of more institutionalised forms of specialisation and social inequality. Source
Would it have been possible to start a company with a mission “to create a hand-made product affordable to the middle class” during another era? 1952 was a rare time when the peripheries did not depend on the centers for resources and enabled the development of a niche market that was not a prestige objects market in the ordinary sense. Prestige objects often gain their status through the use of rare and difficult-to-acquire materials. Andersen made its products from locally sourced raw materials and created brand distinction by creating its own ceramic glaze and body recipes. The unique brand signature was not achieved through the rarity of materials but through using materials commonly accessible to create something uniquely distinctive, changing the parameters of rarity from the materialistic to the creative capacity of man.
Prestige Value
Prestige (also called status and position) refers to a person’s social rank. Many goods and services have prestige value, that is, they increase the status of consumers who own or use them. These are called prestige (or status, or positional) goods. Jewelry and fashionable clothing, luxurious homes and cars, and extravagant entertainment are examples of these prestige goods. A conceptual test of prestige value is to ask, “Would I choose this particular good if nobody else knew that I owned or used it, or if it became unfashionable?” source
Today the Andersen Design mission must adapt to very different times when the greatest amount of wealth is distributed among the one percent. The focus is on creating economic opportunities for grassroots entrepreneurs and developing an interactive makers community. The meaningful part of the discussion that archeologists miss is the importance of the work process as an engaging experience.
We are entering a time of large transformational changes. There are environmental concerns. War is rewriting the global world order. Interdependency is being reconsidered, energy sources reconfigured, and we are transiting from the Industrial Revolution to the Automated Revolution.
The balance of power between the center and the peripheries is transforming without direct external organization. How would archeologists explain that?
Researchers were looking into this unusual phenomenon in 2015:
Here, we present results from controlled experiments demonstrating that changes in network connectivity can cause global social conventions to spontaneously emerge from local interactions, even though people have no knowledge about the population, or that they are coordinating at a global scale. The spontaneous emergence of conventions: An experimental study of cultural evolution Damon Centola and Andrea Baronchelli
A subliminal awakening is occurring among the peripheries with the potential to transform the balance of power. It is a time of great mobility and with such mobility interchanges among cultures intensify, usually resulting in creative, adaptive social change. These are times that ask us to think differently.