Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
FrancoAngeli Journals

Articles

No. 2 (2025)

Fermented reflexivity in practice: Learning, tradition and innovation in artisanal experience

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/erpoa2-2025oa23792
Submitted
settembre 21, 2026
Published
2026-10-23

Abstract

Reflexivity is recognized as a key element in artisanal learning processes, supporting the integration of tradition and innovation and enabling artisans to adapt to rapid technological and social change. However, it remains unclear how reflexivity is practiced in the daily lives of artisans, especially in the digital era, and what the ethical and cultural implications of such transformations are. This article addresses these questions through a critical literature review and the analysis of case studies in the craft beer sector, examining the use of reflexive tools and digital technologies in learning and production processes. The findings highlight that reflexivity supports preserving artisanal identity and adopting new practices, fostering sustainability, collaboration, and innovative capacity within communities of practice. Understanding and promoting reflexivity is fundamental to strengthening the resilience and the cultural and economic relevance of artisanal work in a constantly evolving global context.

References

  1. Adamson G. (2013). The invention of craft. Bloomsbury Academic.
  2. Barnett K., & Jackson J. (2019). Ecologies for learning and practice: Emerging ideas, sightings, and possibilities (p. 312). Routledge.
  3. Becker H. S. (1982). Art worlds. University of California Press.
  4. Bell E., Mangia G., Taylor S., & Toraldo M. L. (2018). The organization of craft work: Identities, meanings, and materiality. Routledge.
  5. Beers P. J., & Van Mierlo B. (2017). Reflexivity and learning in system innovation processes. Sustainability, 9(7), 1-17. Doi: 10.3390/su9071008.
  6. Bendassolli P. F., & Ramos T. S. (2019). O aprendizado do ofício em contextos artesanais: experiência, tradição e criatividade. Revista de Administração de Empresas, 59(6), 445-457. Doi: 10.1590/S0034-759020190608.
  7. Billett S. (2016). Work, subjectivity and learning. Springer.
  8. Boas F. (1955). Primitive art. Dover Publications.
  9. Bourdieu P. (1972). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press.
  10. Brew A., Boud D., Lucas L., & Crawford K. (2018). Academic artisans in the re-search university. Higher Education, 76, 115-127.
  11. Brown J. S., & Duguid P. (2001). Knowledge and organization: A social-practice perspective. Organization Science, 12(2), 198-213. Doi: 10.1287/orsc.12.2.198.10116.
  12. Brown J. S., & Duguid P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation. Organi-zation Science, 2(1), 40-57. Doi: 10.1287/orsc.2.1.40.
  13. Bureau M. C., & Corsani A. (2016). New forms of employment in a globalised world: Three figures of knowledge workers. Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, 10(2), 101-112.
  14. Campbell C. (2005). The craft consumer: Culture, craft and consumption in a postmodern society. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(1), 23-42. Doi. 10.1177/1469540505049843.
  15. Carr C., & Gibson C. (2016). Geographies of making: Rethinking materials and skills for sustainable futures. Routledge.
  16. Coleman J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95-S120. Doi: 10.1086/228943.
  17. Cook I. (2004). Follow the thing: Papaya. Antipode, 36, 642-664.
  18. Crawford M. (2009). The case for working with your hands: Or why office work is bad for us and fixing things feels good. Viking.
  19. Dormer P. (1994). The art of the maker: Skill and its meaning in art, craft and design. Thames & Hudson.
  20. Dormer P. (1997). The culture of craft: Status and future. Manchester University Press.
  21. Dreyfus H., & Dreyfus S. (1986). Mind over machine: The power of human intui-tion and expertise in the era of the computer. Free Press.
  22. Fabbri P. (2007). Comunità di pratica e apprendimento riflessivo. In: Per una formazione situata. Carocci.
  23. Fabbri L. (2023). Il lavoro come costrutto trasformativo. Società Italiana di Pedagogia, 12, 33-39.
  24. Fox Miller C. (2017). The contemporary geographies of craft‐based manufacturing. Geography Compass, 11(4), e12311.
  25. Gandini A., & Gerosa A. (2025). What is ‘neo-craft’ work, and why it matters. Organization Studies, 46(4), 577-595. Doi: 10.1177/0170840624123456.
  26. Gherardi S. (2006). Organizational knowledge: The texture of workplace learning. Blackwell Publishing.
  27. Chai-Arayalert S., Suttapong K., & Chumkaew S. (2023). Design of digital environments to enhance handicraft co-learning experiences. Cogent Business & Management, 10(3), 2286687.
  28. Duan Z. Y., Tan S. K., Choon S. W., & Zhang M. Y. (2023). Crafting a place-based souvenir for sustaining cultural heritage. Heliyon, 9(5).
  29. Hockey J. (2009). Art and embodiment: From aesthetics to self-making. Body & Society, 15(2), 1-21. Doi: 10.1177/1357034X09102686.
  30. Nasseri M., & Wilson S. (2017). A reflection on learning crafts as a practice for self-development. Reflective Practice, 18(2), 194-205.
  31. Illeris H., & Riis K. (2023). Teaching, learning, tuning: Towards eco-centric aesthetic learning processes in craft education. In: Crafting relationships with nature through creative practices (pp. 30-46). Routledge.
  32. Ingold T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Routledge.
  33. Ingold T. (2018). Anthropology and/as education. Routledge.
  34. Jones K. E., Van Assche K., & Parkins J. R. (2021). Reimagining craft for community development. Local Environment, 26(7), 908-920. Doi: 10.1080/13549839.2021.1923000.
  35. Kidd W., Viswarajan S., & McMahon A. (2022). Reflexivity for whom? The ethics of a craft identity and the know-how of supporting reflexivity on teacher education programmes. In: Teacher Educators in Vocational and Further Educa-tion (pp. 105-119). Springer International Publishing.
  36. Knorr Cetina K. (1999). Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Harvard University Press.
  37. Kocak S., & Pawlowski J. (2023, June). Digital transformation in the craft sector: Identifying digital competencies and attitudes for managers and employees. In: Proceedings of the 2023 Computers and People Research Conference (pp. 1-6).
  38. Kofler I., & Walder M. (2024). Crafts and their social imaginary: How technological development shapes the future of the crafts sector. Social Sciences, 13(3), 137. Doi: 10.3390/socsci13030137.
  39. Kouhia A., & Kokko S. (2022). At the intersection of the digital and the material: Teaching and learning crafts during the pandemic. Research in Arts and Education, (2), 47-55. Doi: 10.54916/rae.122976.
  40. Kolb D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice Hall.
  41. Hockey J. (2009). ‘Switch on’: Sensory work in the infantry. Sociology, 23(3), 477-493.
  42. Lave J., & Wenger E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
  43. Le-Nguyen H. T. (2024). Ethical dilemmas of AI perspectives towards common digital art and digital crafting: AI artistic view on morality. In: Making Art with Generative AI Tools (pp. 226-257). IGI Global.
  44. Liu G., Shi Q., Yao Y., Feng Y.-L., Yu T., Liu B., Ma Z., Huang L., & Diao Y. (2024). Learning from hybrid craft: Investigating and reflecting on innovating and enlivening traditional craft through literature review. In: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘24), 674, 1-19. Association for Computing Machinery. Doi: 10.1145/3613904.3642205.
  45. Luckman S. (2015). Craft and the creative economy. Palgrave Macmillan. Doi: 10.1057/9781137338522.
  46. Luckman S., & Thomas N. (Eds.) (2018). Craft economies. Bloomsbury Publishing.
  47. Luckman S., & Andrew J. (2020). Craftspeople and designer makers in the contemporary creative economy (p. 259). Springer Nature.
  48. Manzini E. (2015). Design, when everybody designs: An introduction to design for social innovation. MIT Press.
  49. Marchand T. H. J. (2008). Muscles, morals, and mind: Craft apprenticeship and the formation of person. British Journal of Educational Studies, 56(3), 245-271.
  50. Marchand T. H. J. (2010). Embodied knowledge. Anthropology Today, 26(3), 1-3. Doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8322.2010.00729.x.
  51. Melacarne C. (2018). Riflessione, narrazione e apprendimento trasformativo. In: Riflessione, narrazione e apprendimento trasformativo (pp. 201-213).
  52. Melacarne C., & Nicolaides A. (2019). Developing professional capability: Growing capacity and competencies to meet complex workplace demands. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, (163), 37-51.
  53. Møller J., & Riis U. (2021). Exploring craft practice in learning communities. FormAkademisk, 14(2), 1-10. Doi: 10.7577/formakademisk.4204.
  54. Nimkulrat N., Kane F., & Nimkulrat N. (2019). Crafting textiles in the digital age: Learning and teaching between generations. Textile: Cloth and Culture, 17(3), 240-255. Doi: 10.1080/14759756.2019.1667961.
  55. Nonaka I., & Takeuchi H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company. Oxford University Press.
  56. Nussbaum M. (2011). Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Harvard University Press.
  57. O’Neil J., & Marsick V. J. (2009). Peer mentoring and action learning. Adult Learning, 20(1-2), 19-24.
  58. Orr J. (1996). Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. Cornell University Press.
  59. Paxson H. (2011). The life of cheese: Crafting food and value in America. Univer-sity of California Press.
  60. Pink S., Ardèvol E., & Lanzeni D. (2016). Digital materialities: Design and anthropology. Bloomsbury Academic.
  61. Polanyi M. (2000). The tacit dimension. Routledge.
  62. Pöllänen S. (2015). Elements of crafts that enhance well-being: Textile craft mak-ers’ descriptions of their leisure activity. Journal of Leisure Research, 47(1), 58-78.
  63. Putnam R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American com-munity. Simon & Schuster.
  64. Raelin J. A. (2000). Work-based learning: The new frontier of management development. Prentice Hall.
  65. Ring J. (2020). Making makerspaces work: How feminist makers reconcile with the logics of entrepreneurialism and “passionate work” within Canadian makerspaces. In: A. Naudin & K. Patel (Eds.), Craft entrepreneurship (pp. 199-216). Rowman & Littlefield.
  66. Schön D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.
  67. Schwab K. (2016). The fourth industrial revolution. Crown Business.
  68. Sennett R. (2008). The craftsman. Yale University Press.
  69. Sennett R. (2012). Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. Yale University Press.
  70. Shove E., Pantzar M., & Watson M. (2007). The design of everyday life. Berg Publishers.
  71. Siemens G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3-10.
  72. Song M. J. (2022). Craftspeople's new identity: The impact of digital fabrication technologies on craft practices. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 32(4), 2365-2383. Doi: 10.1007/s10798-021-09686-5.
  73. Sun Q., & Kim E. (2022). Facilitating students’ reflective practice through visual data: A qualitative study of craft design education. The International Journal of Design Education, 17(1), 143-160.
  74. Tapiero S. M., González D. A., & Cambpell A. D. (2024). From the university to the pluriversity? A reflexive critical literature review of indigenous artisan community engagement in decolonial education and knowledge co-production with design programs in Latin America. Diseña, 25, 1-1.
  75. Taylor E. (2010). Fostering transformative learning. In: J. Mezirow, E. Taylor, & Associates (Eds.), Transformative learning in practice: Insights from community, workplace, and higher education (pp. 3-17). Jossey-Bass.
  76. Thorpe A., & Gamman L. (2011). Design with society: Why socially responsive design is good enough. CoDesign, 7(3-4), 217-230. Doi: 10.1080/15710882.2011.630477.
  77. UNESCO (2021). Traditional knowledge and craftsmanship in the digital era: Challenges and opportunities. UNESCO.
  78. Väänänen N., & Pöllänen S. (2020). Conceptualizing sustainable craft: Concept analysis of literature. The Design Journal, 23(2), 263-285.
  79. Vannini P., & Vannini A. S. (2020). Artisanal ethnography: Notes on the making of ethnographic craft. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(7), 865-874.
  80. Wenger E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.
  81. Wenger E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.
  82. Wenger E., McDermott R., & Snyder W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press.
  83. Wertsch J. V., & Tulviste P. (1996). L. S. Vygotsky and contemporary develop-mental psychology. In: H. Daniels (Ed.), An introduction to Vygotsky (pp. 53-74). Routledge.
  84. Yan Z., Dhaygude M., & Peng H. (2025). Make making sustainable: Exploring sustainability practices, challenges, and opportunities in making activities. arXiv preprint. -- https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13254.
  85. UNESCO (2021). Recommendation concerning the safeguarding of traditional culture and folklore. UNESCO.
  86. Yarrow T., & Jones S. (2014). ‘Stone is stone’: Engagement and detachment in the craft of conservation masonry. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 20(2), 256-275.
  87. Zabulis X., Partarakis N., Demeridou I., Doulgeraki P., Zidianakis E., Argyros A., ... & Krivokapic J. (2023). A roadmap for craft understanding, education, training, and preservation. Heritage, 6(7), 5305-5328.
  88. Zhan X., & Walker S. (2019). Craft and design for sustainability: Leverage for change. In: Design and the Creation of Social Value Research (Vol. 3, p. 145).

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...