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Traditional occupations in a modern world: implicationsfor career guidance and livelihood planning
Anita Ratnam
Received: 18January 2011/Accepted: 28 February 2011
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
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Abstract This article is an attempt to examine the place andsignificance of traditional occupations as careers in today’s world. The areasof tension and compatibility between ideas and values that signify modernityand the practice of traditional occupations are reviewed. The meaning of‘‘traditional occupations’’ is unravelled, the potential that traditionaloccupations in agriculture and crafts offer for building inclusive andsustainable societies is explored, and attention is drawn to the implicationsof such potential for career guidance practice.
A. Ratnam (&)
SamvadaYouth Resource Centres and Baduku College, Bengalooru, India e-mail:ratnam.anita@gmail.com
Keywords Career Livelihood Traditional occupations
The meaning of traditional occupations
Traditional occupationshave been described as occupations practised by successive generations, rootedin customs and practices and focused on subsistence economies, pre-datingcolonisation and the industrial revolution. Often these refer to occupations withinagriculture and crafts, with crafts encompassing a range from weaving to theconstruction of buildings. Does that mean that all old occupations are to beconsidered traditional? Although occupations like medicine, teaching,winemaking, politics, and the making of music, have been practised forcenturies, they are considered modern because of the newness of theinstitutional frameworks and technologies that are being deployed today.Super-speciality medicine and computer-aided textile design evoke and suggest amodernity of the occupation itself, though these are old occupations withmodern support structures and scaffoldings. Traditional occupations are oftenconflated with traditional modes of practising occupations. While ‘‘old’’ and‘‘new’’ refer to a chronological timeline, modernity and tradition are morecomplex concepts that refer to embedded values and ideologies, productiontechnologies, knowledge systems, levels of mechanisation, and integration withcapitalist modes of production and marketing.
This article focuses on agriculture andcrafts for three reasons. First, the wide spectrum of occupations andlivelihood systems within agriculture and crafts caused by changes inknowledge, trade systems and markets, social structures and institutional frameworks,international agreements, national policies, and the emergence of transnationalcorporations, offer many insights relevant to career guidance practice. Second,the dynamism and willingness to adapt to contemporary realities demonstrated bythose who practise traditional modes of agriculture and crafts calls for acoherent examination of their role and significance today as they co-existalongside the modern. Third, the increasing demand for organic foods and fortraditionally produced goods and services suggests that they could belong tothe future as well as the past. Their scope for constant innovations, thepotential for entrepreneurship, and the unique dilemmas of the artisan/peasant,demand an enquiry into the place of traditional agriculture and crafts in theworld of modern careers and career guidance. While these issues provide arationale for the focus on agriculture and crafts, they are also a sombrereminder that the task ahead is both complex and layered.
Watts (2001) defines career as ‘‘theindividual’s lifelong progression in learning and in work’’ (p. 2).
The scopefor crafts and agriculture to be part of a long-term progression in a person’slife is a key theme in this article. The sustainable livelihoods frameworkdeveloped by Chambers and Conway (1991) refers to livelihoods as a system comprising people’scapabilities, natural resources, material and social assets people draw upon,the strategies they adopt for subsistence, social and cultural contexts inwhich they make a living, and risk factors that determine vulnerability. Careerguidance involves helping people make choices and plans and within thisframework, planning as a component of guidance refers to planning forlivelihoods.
Traditional crafts in a modern world
Crafts refer to artisanalproduction through the highly skilled use of simple tools on raw materials fromnature. Prior to the industrial revolution, almost everything that humans usedwas made this way—ships, textiles, clothes, furniture, jewellery, carts andchariots, artefacts, and tools themselves. Buildings of all types and sizes—homes, palaces, cathedrals and temples—were the combined efforts of differentartisans. In fact, some early machines as well as watches and cars were craftedby the skilled use of tools and techniques, and ships and boats even today arereferred to as craft.
With the industrial revolution, theartisanal mode of production was considered too slow, sometimes even crude, andrelegated to the margins as mechanised mass production took centre stage. Overthe last three centuries, mechanisation has forced artisans to abandon theirtraditional livelihoods and join the pool of agricultural labour in atumultuous process of de-industrialisation, which continues today. Ironically,it was a combination of capital and technology, along with artisanal skills andknowledge, which made the industrial revolution possible (Green, 2002).
Despite this marginalisation, in manyparts of the developing world traditional crafts have struggled and survived.Using increasingly scarce materials like cotton, jute, clay, copper, brass,bell metal, bamboo, palm leaves, wood, reeds, shells, tree barks, stones,vegetable extracts, cow dung, leaves, mud, sand, feathers, gems, silver,copper, brass, and gold, artisans work their magic with nimble hands, complextechniques and simple tools, to produce a delightful array of textiles,crockery, furniture and furnishing, accessories and jewellery etc. Handmadegoods jostle for space in craft fairs, designer boutiques and fashionable mallswhere they have carved a market niche. Indian craft alone has an estimated 8.6million artisans, with annual output valued in US dollars at $6.1 billion in2000–2001, with an export market of $3.3 billion (Liebel & Roy, 2003). Global craftsexports were at $30 billion in 1986, having grown four times faster thanoverall world trade, with developing countries supplying 40% of world demandfor crafts (Kathuria, 1988).
In fact, the social and ecological costsof mass production and consumption, the alienation experienced by industrialworkers and the increasing gaps between rich and poor, have prompted a culturaland economic critique of the industrial modernisation paradigm. More recently,with globalisation, the issues of de-industrialisation and unemployment in thefirst world, workers’ wages and rights in sweat shops in the third world,mobility of capital, and the over-emphasis on financial services/capital marketsin the North—which some claim led to the subprime crisis—are all coming to thefore. Within developing countries this paradigm is also taking its toll. TheUnited Nations estimates that in the last 30 years, the number of artisans inIndia alone has dropped by 30% (Bouchart, 1993). Artisans who persevere withtheir crafts are faced with new problems due to the failure of cooperatives andstate patronage of crafts (but not of the artisan). The exits and suicides ofartisans as researched by the 2008 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labouris no surprise and is the tip of the iceberg, as elaborated by Galab andRevathi (2009).
Can traditional crafts be careers in today’sworld?
In the wake of thecritique of industrialisation, there is a renewed interest in the cultural andsocial dimensions of development. Therefore, crafts and indigenous knowledgesystems are now being discussed more deeply as sustainable livelihoods, as sourcesof employment for women and as sources of supplementary income for thoseengaged in crafts on a part-time basis. Crafts’ families have been found tohave incomes above the national average in India (Pye, 1988). Movements like the GreenBuilding Congress, World Crafts Council, and Craftmark, reveal that crafts arebeing recognised for their scope to address problems of unemployment,migration, sustainability and cultural diversity [United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 1995]. UNESCO (2006) has a 10-year planfor Cultural and Creative Industries and in India the 11th five-year plandocument (Planning Commission of India, 2007, p. 108) views villageindustries as engines of sustainable and inclusive growth, calling handlooms‘‘hope-looms’’. The existence of skills, the demand for craft products, theforeign exchange earning potential and the need for decentralised,non-capital-intensive rural off-farm employment, have forced policy-makers totake a fresh look at traditional crafts.
However, does this mean that traditionalcrafts can be considered careers in the modern world? For young people toaspire towards careers in crafts, several issues need to be addressed:recognition of the role of multiple modes of production; blurring of linesbetween art, craft and design; consumer awareness; skill building andapprenticeships by and for artisans; and most importantly, the modernisation ofthe artisan. These issues are discussed below.
Recognition of the need for multiple modesof production
The critique ofindustrialism by crafts advocates and practitioners is not antimodernist, nor anostalgia for pre-industrial modes of production: It is a call for a post- ortransmodernity, with multiple modes of production, multiple cultures andcreative diversity that celebrates human dexterity and touch, alongside themarvel of machines. Craftspeople and advocates recognise that while crafts cantake care of a wide spectrum of products and service needs, they cannot providefor all human needs—mobile phones or life-saving equipment, being but twoexamples.
This concept of plural modes of productionis well demonstrated in the works and lives of pioneering American designersand architects, Charles and Ray Eames. Kirkham (1998) traces the way in which theyencouraged an interplay between craft and machine work in their designs ofbuildings and furniture, validating the preindustrial, the personal and thehandmade as well as the industrial, the uniform and the mass-produced, in whatthey later called ‘‘modernism and humanism’’. Many homes in India today offer asimilar hybrid picture, with both manufactured and handcrafted items fillingwardrobes, kitchens and living rooms. However, an understanding ofcomplementing and co-existing modes of production requires an understandingthat craft is neither static nor ahistorical, but is constantly changing,redefining relationships with the past and the present, and challenging themonolithic, totalising and unidimensional view of development. Crafts straddleboth the past and the future while being rooted in the contemporary—whatHabermas (1984) calls a contemporariness that ‘‘repeatedly gives birth to new andsubjective pasts’’ in a search for the true ‘‘presence’’.
The blurring of lines between art, craft anddesign
While craft has beenexcluded from the eclectic worlds of art and design, the need to build aporosity between these is crucial if careers are to be contemplated. Ventureswhere designers collaborate with artisans to create and execute designs havebegun to blur lines between craft and design in a journey fraught with multiplechallenges as well as rewards, as reported by Murray (2010). Though the discipline ofcraft theory is in a nascent stage, with journals like Crafts and the emergenceof disciplines like craft history and craft theory, there is movement from thesimple notion of craft as antidote to industrialism towards a more complexunderstanding of skills, expressions, aesthetics in crafts, and territories of‘‘new crafts’’ that fall between art and craft.Greenhalgh (2002) asserts that the next phase ofmodernity will be characterised by interdisciplinarity, relational rather thanreductive visions, and globality, cultural diversity and pan-technicalityblurring lines between arts and science and eclecticism. Describing crafts as‘‘a set of material discourses’’, he predicts that ‘‘every craft studio will bean effortless me´lange of traditional tools and high technology’’ (p. 2). Yet,there are also notes of caution mixed with hope when Lees-Maffei and Sandino (2004) trace the shiftingallegiances, affinities and tensions, between the three and the increasingspace and significance for crafts in the arts/design discourse.
Consumer awareness
Consumers purchase craftsfor various reasons—patronage, utilitarian consumption, expressing a critiqueof industrial capitalism, buying ‘‘exotica’’ and culture as commodity,aesthetic sensibility, tourist consumption of crafts as memorabilia, and as Scrase(2003)points out, a desire to possess something that addresses a sense of alienationfrom people and nature. Yet, consumer awareness of crafts is crucial to avoidcheap exploitation of artisans, and mechanised imitations of handcraftedproducts as well as invented tradition (Chibnik, 2003). Today, though there is demandfor crafts, it is not always backed by an awareness of artisans’ situations orof what crafts represent.
Skill building and apprenticeships
Crafts learning is along-term process requiring demonstration, verbal instruction, and practicewithin an intimate mentoring relationship. Mastery through observation andimitation is often insisted upon by elders in the family, before a young personis allowed to innovate/experiment using indigenous oral knowledge inhereditary artisan communities. Women mostly learn at home from family membersand techniques are often kept secret within the family/community. The dangersof this practice include a freezing of occupational mobility and a strangleholdof caste and patriarchy.With the European Arts and Crafts movement(from 1880 to 1920), non-kinship based apprenticeships emerged. Donkin (2001) elaborates how theDry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain, Les Compagnons du Devoir inFrance and others have involved craftspeople in architectural restoration sincethe 1960s, thereby moulding new craftspeople equipped with theoretical training,management roles, and technical skills. More recently, non-governmentalorganisations (NGOs) and sometimes governments have been instrumental inarranging such apprenticeships. In Uganda, a project was set up for revivingthe role of traditional clans in maintenance of the Kasubi Tombs. In Bhuj,India, Hunnarshala (an NGO) has been training traditional building artisans todesign and build eco-friendly buildings for contemporary needs and emergingmarkets. At Sheffield Hallam University, an attempt has been made to bringwomen into building trades by providing orientation and training andsimultaneously addressing childcare needs (Eaton, Collins, Morton, &Parnham, 2006).
Modernisation of the artisan
Advocates of craftsportraying craftspeople as ‘‘practitioners of tradition’’ and crafts as‘‘spiritual revelation’’ have unwittingly constructed the craftsperson as asymbol of tradition and of cultural nationalism (Kawlra, 2001; Lipsey, 1977). This attitudepervades not only Government policies and NGO interventions, but has beeninternalised by many artisans themselves (Crafts Council of India, 2010). However, thepurpose of a critique of industrialism is not an appeal to turn the clock back,but is to be understood in a Foucauldian sense, that is, a modernist’s critiqueof modernity.
In India, the need for artisans to shakeoff the stigma of caste/ethnicity and see themselves as designers, artists, andskilled/creative workers is the first step in the empowerment and modernisationof the artisan. But even today, a majority of artisans are unable to stand upto people of wealth and power, demand a just price, articulate their wisdom andcomprehend markets and people far away. With survival at stake, artisans oftenaccept middlemen’s lowest prices and are unable to confront city-bred designerswho steal their designs and techniques to sell in high-priced internationalmarkets.
Gender relations within crafts communitiesmust be addressed in the course of such modernisation of the artisan identity.Traditional gendered divisions of labour, and restrictions on women sitting atthe loom or potter’s wheel, for example, have been transformed wheregender-sensitive interventions have been made, as in a weaving project inNigeria (Renne, 1997) and the Toe Hold collective in India (Issac, 2005).
At the same time, the dangers ofover-commercialisation and mass-production of crafts should be understood.Crafts have the potential to develop the local economy, butover-commercialisation tends to bring in mechanisation, turning artisans intoquasi-factory workers and in some cases promoting indentured child labour(Scrase, 2003).
To sum up, the potential for crafts to beconsidered careers in the modern world is promising mainly because ofincreasing demand for crafts, the readiness of craftspeople to innovate, andopenness to reflect on their predicament and to change. However, there is along way to go in blurring the lines between art and crafts, expandingnon-kinship-based apprenticeships, and developing institutional frameworks,policy changes, and consumer awareness.
Traditional agriculture in today’s world
Over the years,traditional forms of agriculture—on small farms, using dry-land techniques andintercropping, with a dependence on organic inputs, indigenous knowledge andlocal seed banks—have been portrayed as primitive and inefficient and havetherefore been marginalised. Small-scale traditional farming has been replacedby larger farms through land alienation caused by distress sales by smallpeasants. Plough and irrigation techniques, the use of chemical fertilizers andpesticides, the privileging and acceptance of corporate-sponsored research asthe knowledge that counts, and dependence on corporations for hybrid orgenetically modified seeds are developments collectively referred to as the‘‘modernisation’’ of agriculture—a process often driven by national governmentsin a quest for food security and increases in production.
While large-scale modern agricultureincreased food production, the human and ecological costs of such modernisationhave slowly become evident. In India, for example, 182,936 farmers, unable topay back crop loans, committed suicide between 1997 and 2007 (Sainath, 2009). In addition, theplight of more than 30 million people displaced by irrigation dams, soil andwater pollution, and pesticide related deaths, deformities and disease, hasraised serious questions about the violence of this paradigm of agriculturalmodernisation. There are now reports across both developed and developingcountries of peasants shifting away from inter-cropping and production ofcoarse grains (the staple source of food and protein for the poor), towardsmono-cropping of cash crops and non-food crops, leading to nutritiondeficiency, food insecurity, and indebtedness. Yet, sustainable and organicagriculture is practised today in various cultural, ecological, andsocio-economic eco-systems across the developing world, as farmers have eithermaintained their faith in traditional knowledge or were unable to afford andaccess chemicals and commercial seeds.
Can traditional agriculture be considered acareer option?
Traditional forms ofa*griculture are increasingly recognised as containing solutions to problemsranging from toxicity in foods, water and soil pollution, climate change andthe pauperisation of small and medium farmers, to the risks of corporatecontrol over agricultural production and marketing. The erstwhile‘‘modernisation’’ of agriculture is thus being challenged and the scope formodernity through traditional forms of agriculture is being explored.
While sustainable organic farming isnecessary to save the planet and human life, it can be a career option only ifcertain key issues are addressed: feudalism in agrarian societies, recognitionof indigenous knowledge, land expropriation of small holdings by largelandowners, youth migration, state policies, and the emergence of the modernfarmer. Each of these is discussed briefly below.
Feudalism in agrarian societies
Small peasants are notonly marginalised because of their land-holding size, but often belong tocastes, tribes, ethnicities, and communities that have lower social prestige,are considered less credit-worthy, and have almost no political voice or power.Their combined experience of poverty and powerlessness has historicallyresulted in a replication of inequality and systemic destitution for those whoare pushed to the margins. Modernity in agriculture requires a transformationof agrarian relations from feudal to entrepreneurial. Whether it is therelationship between small farmers and landlords, or between small farmers andtheir workers, creditors, distributors and family members, the ability tonegotiate on an equal basis and arrive at arrangements that are notexploitative is the need of the hour. This process has already begun as aresult of education and exposure of young people from farming families, thefeminisation of agriculture, and an enabling environment created by socialmovements of farmers, marginalised castes and communities.
Youth migrations and exits from agriculture
As lifestyle aspirationsand farming risks increase, farming families across the developing world areseeking to supplement their incomes through a diversification of their incomebase with off-farm work and seasonal or permanent migration. Extensive researchthroughout India by the International Water Management Institute, indicatesthat while youth from affluent rural families are abandoning farming in searchof professions such as medicine, engineering and business, youth from landlessand marginal farmers’ families are migrating to cities in search of precariouswage employment as they find their land holdings too small to be viable (Sharma& Bhaduri, 2009).
As a result, youth from mid-sized farmerfamilies are beginning to lease lands from rich and/or poor farmers who,despite their migrations, are reluctant to sell or part with the land since itis a source of security, food and prestige. For this class of youth, there arepossibilities of making a meaningful career through sustainable farming ontheir own land, as well as leased land. However, despite several experimentsthat have demonstrated the long-term profitability of traditional agricultureon small holdings, the historic vulnerability of small farmers has made themaverse to risks, even in the short run.
Recognising issues of biodiversity,ecological sustainability, financial viability, and cultural diversity, theInternational Labour Organisation, ILO (2010) and other United Nationsbodies have made efforts not only to protect rights and cultures of indigenouspeoples, but to protect agriculture itself from a destructive paradigm. UnitedNations Conference on Environment and Development (1992) and the World Commission onEnvironment and Development (1987) also highlighted sustainable agriculture. Through the efforts ofNGOs and farmers’ movements, organic farming is being re-introduced in regionswhere chemical intensive farming has been in practice, and local, national, andinternational movements of organic farmers, such as the InternationalFederation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), active in 116 countriesand the International Farming Systems Association (IFSA) have succeeded indrawing the attention of agricultural universities and research institutions.
State policy
For traditionalagriculture to be considered a career, state policy is another vital element.The Green Revolution in India was a collaboration between the state and middle-and large-scale farmers who could afford to try out the technologies. In thepost-Green Revolution era of liberalisation and globalisation, third-worldgovernments are now focused on collaborating with agribusiness corporations forexport oriented agriculture, side lining small and marginal farmers. Instead ofbeing critical of past policies, which created the crisis in agriculture, theIndian government is strident in its critique of the agricultural sectoritself, often calling it a ‘‘stagnant sunset sector’’ that needs to make wayfor industrialisation. In fact, the government is pursuing policies to attractyoung people towards urban centres, as exemplified by the Finance Minister’sinterview to Tehelka (Chaudhury & Shanthanu, 2008) where he spoke of his visionof 85% of Indians living in cities.
Despite this general bias, recentdevelopments internationally include government schemes to promote organicfarming practices, organising international organic fairs and rewarding organicfarmers: vital steps in creating an environment for traditional agriculture tobe considered a meaningful career.
The emergence of the modern farmer
Contrary to the image of atraditional peasant cowering before the might of landlords, moneylenders andagents of the state, the modern farmer needs to emerge as a rationalsmall-scale producer who recognises the merits of sustainable farming bycombining traditional knowledge with a modern attitude to farming as aprofession. This farmer will need to be functionally literate, informed aboutmarkets and the political economy of agriculture, and able to approach farmingwith a sense of entitlement—as comfortable in his/her cowshed as at a farmers’movement meeting or in negotiations with agribusiness corporations. Ideally,this farmer will be able to mediate between science and the use of traditionaltechniques of production, embrace modern institutional frameworks, and questionthe oppressiveness of feudalism or of forms of capitalism that feed on a legacyof feudal power structures.
Since key obstacles to traditional farmingbeing considered a career are only beginning to be addressed, the chances of itbeing considered a career option on a significant scale in the near future areslim.
However, in the light of increasing market demand, state support,recognition of traditional organic farming, consumer awareness, and strongfarmers’ movements, traditional farming can become a career in India,especially for youth from middle-class households who consider themselves tohave a greater resilience and access to knowledge and resources. Sustainableand organic farming offers prospects for lifelong progression in learning andwork through innovation in production methods, crop diversification rangingfrom coarse grains to niche products, expanding of market avenues to includelocal and global markets, and value addition to farm produce. In addition, farmtourism and community-supported agriculture are emerging as new avenues tostrengthen interaction with consumers, ensure farm viability, householdnutritional security, and national food sovereignty.
Modernity through traditional occupations:points to ponder for career guidance
Today, it is being arguedthat tradition and modernity are not binaries, but hybrids, and in the tensionsbetween political economy and culture studies, a discourse on hybrid worlds,dialectic identities and transmodernity is emerging with a clear emphasis ongoing beyond dichotomies. In this section, we explore what this means in termsof traditional occupations finding their place in the modern world as careersthat offer economic reward and meaning, especially for men and women fromdisadvantaged backgrounds.
Youth in the 15–24 years’ age-groupcomprise 18% of the world’s population, amounting to 1.1 billion young people(World Bank, 2006). In the developing world, where 85% of youth live, the need forrural farm and non-farm livelihood opportunities for youth is a stark reality,as they are faced with a growing deficit of decent livelihood options and workopportunities, as well as high levels of economic and social uncertainty(Bennell, 2007; ILO, 2010). A majority of youth from disadvantaged backgrounds are lookingnot only for employment, but also for security, dignity, meaning, economicmobility, and status. Yet, meaning, challenge, satisfaction, and scope forintellectual growth, the elements of an ideal career, are often compromised inthe quest for survival.
Members of crafts communities/agriculturehave felt compelled to quit their traditional occupations as they have seen thehardships faced by their parents and peers. They are caught between survivalneeds, lifestyle aspirations, attachment to the craft/farm, to family and tovillage, and lack of information about options. Being treated as ‘‘unskilled’’labour as one approaches middle age or even later, and beingpushed to the bottom end of construction retail/farm work often seem the only way out.
In such a scenario, livelihood planningand career guidance are essential and need to be available at school and in thecommunity for people over their life span. Yet, efforts to link individualpotential, knowledge and skills, with opportunities in traditional occupationsor with formal sector employment, are in their infancy in India. Apart from thepioneering efforts of organisations such as The Promise Foundation (Arulmani, 2009; Arulmani &Nag-Arulmani, 2004), and Samvada, few guidance or livelihood planning services havereached underprivileged people.
While access to career guidance indeveloping countries is a major need, equally important is the question of itsnature and thrust. In the preceding sections, it has been argued thattraditional agriculture and crafts have the potential to offer meaningful work,with scope for livelihood, social innovation, individual creativity, growth,and cultural expression, while addressing global, social and ecologicalconcerns of the modern world. How can this perspective inform and shape careerguidance and livelihood planning? The challenges are many if one seeks to buildan inclusive and sustainable society while addressing individuals’ aspirationsand the social mobility of disadvantaged groups. Generally, civil societyorganisations that work with craftspeople and farmers, focus on the craft orthe farming and not on the farmer/artisan’s needs, aspirations and dilemmas.Career guidance and a focus on people’s life paths needs to permeate theseorganisations. At the same time, the issues surrounding the modern practice oftraditional agriculture and craft need to broaden the scope of career guidanceservices. This shift implies integrating traditional occupations into the rangeof options and avenues made available within the basic tenets and principles ofa career guidance service. Also needed is a guidance service that offersoutreach to those in traditional occupations. Furthermore, career guidance canoffer a critique of established notions of work and success and help analysethe personal, social, and ecological costs of mainstream corporate careers.
Integration of this perspective does notimply either promoting or preventing exits from traditional occupations, butrather an expansion of options to help people make informed decisions beyondthe immediate push/pull compulsions and seeming attractiveness of formal sectorjobs or corporate employment. While career guidance practice is generally basedupon the notion that occupational mobility is a positive aspect of modernsociety, we need to help clients explore the nature of their motivation—to distinguishbetween a personal affinity/desire to do something else and a derision ordespair vis-a`-vis crafts and farming. Career guidance and livelihood planningservices help individuals analyse options, motivations and possible outcomes sothat each individual can make informed decisions best suited to his/herinterests, affinities, heritage, realities and aptitudes (UNESCO, 2002).
The individual is important and cannot bemerely ‘‘the unknown craftsman’’ (Yanagi & Leach, 1972). Career guidance andlivelihood planning need to be based on a recognition of community-politydynamics, and then go beyond the group to persons and personalities in a waythat embraces both structure and individual agency, especially regarding familyrelationships and autonomy of young people. This would be in tune with theprinciple of integrating self-awareness with information about occupations(McMahon & Patton, 1995).
Even more important than mere information,is the need for the career guidance encounter to offer a space to reflect onvalues and notions of success and to broaden aspirations beyond the hegemony ofcorporatism that permeates career guidance theory and practice. It also impliesexpanding the scope of career guidance and livelihood planning by helpingyouth, from all socioeconomic backgrounds, to perceive the potential ofindigenous crafts/agriculture as youthful—creative, innovative, rebellious,exploratory and rewarding. In India, such an approach entails helping youth tobreak traditional taboos/norms around caste/class and gender in craft, so thatanyone, irrespective of socioeconomic background, can aspire to learn andpractise traditional craft/agriculture. This would mean including a widespectrum of traditional crafts/farming as modern career options in informationsystems for career guidance clients. It also means redefining and positioningcrafts as part of green jobs and decent jobs options, developing culturallysensitive career guidance modules for youth from crafts/farming/ indigenouscommunities, and paying special attention to self-awareness, choices andcommunity leadership. An excellent example is the Native Indians’ careerguidance system designed in Colorado (Arviso-One Feather & Whiteman, 1985).
The hegemony of Western science andtechnology, the racism inherent in disdaining the knowledge of tribes, castesand races, the tyranny of the written word, the search for the meta/universaland disregard for the local, all culminate in a skewed political economy ofknowledge. Career guidance and livelihood planning practitioners need to engagewith these themes. Validating traditional knowledge is paramount in a modernknowledge economy and here, career guidance can play a critical mediation role.The poverty and destitution of craftspeople/traditional farmers, and theextreme wealth of the professional designer, the marketing professional oragri-businessperson, bring us face-to-face with the uncomfortable reality thatone set of knowledge is overvalued and another undervalued. The artisans’ andfarmers’ knowledge is generated from the experience of many generations, rootedin local culture, passed down orally, repeatedly tested and argued with,empirical rather than theoretical, and based on repeated innovation (Kummera,Aigelspergerb, Milestadc, Chowdhury, & Vogla, 2010). When such systematically andrigorously-generated knowledge is disregarded, it indicates that knowledgeitself is a site of domination, as Foucault (1972) has repeatedly elaborated inhis critique of modernity.
Some argue that traditional knowledgeshould be codified and incorporated into the formal education system asaccredited courses in traditional crafts/farming, with mastercraftspeople/farmers as mentors and as repositories of knowledge, skills,wisdoms and worldviews (National Council for Education, Research and Training, 2006; Sethi, 2010). Others feardilution, co-option or even the usurping of indigenous knowledge, and advocatefor formal, modern education as a supplement to traditional knowledge in farming/craftscommunities [State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT), 2005]. While thesedebates are evolving, career guidance and livelihood planning services canrecognise alternative learning pathways and help in blurring the distinctionbetween art and craft and between traditional, modern and scientific knowledge.
Globalisation has made the situation ofartisans more precarious, despite booming markets for crafts (Scrase, 2003). Inhibited bytraditional cultural values, the artisan and peasant shy away from tradingtheir products or bargaining for prices. Career guidance and livelihoodplanning can also be actively engaged in the process of re-inventing theidentity of the traditional farmer/artisan into a modern identity, wheretraditional knowledge is combined with modern institutional frameworks, andartisan/farmer youth emerge as leaders and advocates for the rights of theircommunities, engaging with state, markets and mechanisms for certifyingauthenticity and so on, with a sense of entitlement. Career guidance andlivelihood planning practitioners can help in reflecting on notions of culture,critiquing cultural practices that are oppressive, undemocratic, ordiscriminatory, and thus contribute towards the modernising of artisans’ andfarmers’ identities and the re-positioning of their occupations as expressionsof modernity (Tripathi, 1981).
Such a career information and guidanceapproach could focus on modernisation of the farmer/artisan with multiplemodern career roles and identities: artist, designer, entrepreneur, skilledworker, conservation activist, and repository of culturally unique knowledge,whose intellectual property, business acumen and manual dexterity are valuedand validated. The dire and urgent need for new institutional structures tofirmly establish traditional crafts/farming as part of the modern economy andpolity will be fulfilled once the modernisation of the farmer/ artisan isunderway. Further, modernity of the traditional artisan/farming community canbe an engine of creative regional growth, as in Australia and Latin America,where rural and indigenous communities have demonstrated a distinct pattern oftapping into culture, identity and creative expression, affirming and drawingmarket resources into their particular regions (Eversole, 2005).
Conclusion
Ironically, what has beenrecognised as necessary for humanity and the planet as a whole has not beentranslated into meaningful careers in the rush towards a modernisation ofa*gricultural and industrial production. Traditional crafts/agriculture have a marketdemand and a pool of skilled people. They have the potential for promotingdecentralised production, sustainable and inclusive development, culturaldiversity and worker satisfaction, along with the creation of beauty, healthand utility for consumers. They can make the world a more humane and democraticspace—if we let them. Career guidance practitioners can play a key role in thisdirection.
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