Special Issue Call for Papers: Contemporary craft work and digital craft economies Craft work can no longer be imagined as separate from the digital. More than a decade after Susan Luckman’s formative description of the “aura of analogue” (Luckman, 2013), craft work and craft economies have undergone a great deal of digitization, shifting and blurring the meanings and associations of long-stable and discrete categories. For instance, “artisanal manufacturing” used to be an oxymoron; today it describes a type of manual labour increasingly understood as offering opportunities for authenticity, creativity, and fulfillment. Digital media and craft have never been mutually exclusive, of course, but craft work and artisanal labour have garnered new appreciation for their pre-digital tools and processes, akin to the rearticulated pleasures that now purportedly flow from consuming non-digital media. However, contemporary appreciations of handmade commodities tend to traffic in nostalgia and obscure a more complicated set of lived relationships among craft workers and their tools, many of which not only utilize digital technology but owe much of their resurgence to the affordances of digital platforms. Craft workers sell their wares on digital platforms, tailor instructional videos for streaming services, and source their raw materials from online marketplaces. Established forms of work are always changing in response to technological shifts, and craft is no different. For instance, concepts like “neo craft” (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023; Gandini 2025) account for craft’s embeddedness with global, digital markets while capturing a growing discontent with white collar work. Contemporary craft work is still (too) often imagined as exclusively the realm of the analog, or as an antidote to digital saturation, but contemporary craft economies are increasingly impossible without engagement with digital technology. And digital craft economies feel increasingly unstable as well as inevitable or unavoidable. Digital platforms have become fraught places to sell and source, with platform owners taking a larger share of craft sales. Advanced automation and AI challenge established notions of authenticity within craft. Craft workers increasingly enter the gig economy. Algorithms nudge crafters to make, promote, and sell their wares in specific ways which are amenable to advertising dollars and circulation in the attention economy. The internet is simultaneously fracturing and consolidating craft markets under the purview of fewer, larger, and more powerful players, not only all-encompassing behemoths like Amazon, but also “crafty” platforms like Etsy. In light of these developments, craft feels as if it is on a precipice: how can craft economies survive in these new conditions, and what do craft workers want that survival to look like? This proposal is for an upcoming special issue which has received strong interest from a leading cultural studies journal. We welcome theoretical inquiry, case studies, and research papers which address the complicated and perhaps inextricable relations between craft, analog and digital technology, and the conditions of artisanal culture and digitized commerce. Possible topics include (but are not limited to): * Cultural exchange via craft work online * Practices and beliefs of digital craft communities * Craft and the gig economy * Rentierism and exploitation on digital craft platforms * The role of algorithmic sorting on digital platforms within craft communities * Philosophical inquiry into craft as a salient category in a digitized cultural economy * Changes in access to craft after digitization as a mode of work along lines of gender, race, and sexual orientation * The role of influencers in the broader craft economy * New challenges to craft work from AI and other forms of advanced automation * Craft’s relation to industry and regimes of mass production * The changing role of video in craft instruction after TikTok/Reels Send abstracts (250-500) words to Ian Williams at igwillia@live.unc.edu<mailto:igwillia@live.unc.edu> or Michael Palm at mpalm@unc.edu<mailto:mpalm@unc.edu> by March 5, 2026. Ian Williams, PhD Adjunct Instructor UNC Department of Communication