Abstract

This essay is about the ensuing problem that in general it is nothelpful to talk about non-standard knowledge practices as modeled after our Western ideas of what knowledge is. It negotiates this problem by arguing that artisanal knowledge is an independent and self-contained mode of knowledge and is arranged in three parts. In the first part an outline is given of the key assumptions of the interactionist conception of knowledge that needs to be put in place as an alternative to the basically Kantian mixture of empiricist and rationalist assumptions of the folk model of Western academic thinking about knowledge. In this interactionist conception of knowledgeartisanal knowledge gets center stage. In the second part, the notion of craftknowledge is opened up as much as possible. The third and final part takes upthe question whether craft knowledge is a cultural universal.