Luxury Craftsmanship as an Alternative to Building Social …
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These commitments included awareness programs targeting consumers and sanctions to those who produced and sold the replica of the hats. These awareness programs were linked to the media to achieve a massive impact on locals and tourists.
Additionally, a visual campaign was initiated by delivering flyers in the streets of
Cartagena to promote interest to know the traceability of the hat, its artisanal process
and the cultural richness that each piece intrinsically carries from the fabric.
When it comes to protecting the intellectual and cultural property of handicrafts,
government programs that legally protect their ancestral knowledge are essential.
However, these are not enough if they are not accompanied by education programs
focused on the consumer and a commitment from the private sector that promotes
ethical marketing practices.
5 Globalization
The strong demographic growth of the last decades and the current Colombian territorial context connect the handcrafting of indigenous peoples to a framework of
urban development, with new forms of cultural, social, and economic relations. These
new forms propose structures of urban alienation, articulating them with new forms
of capitalist creation and development, thus facilitating the adaptation of ancestral
knowledge and material expressions of popular cultures in different axes of largescale production and commercialization [4]. As a result, craftsmanship is visibly
altered in terms of exclusivity, sustainability, and preservation of the environment.
Commercial transculturalization, typical of globalization, and the opening of borders for free trade between countries cause new economic ideas and games of power
and dominance. They are consequently shaping forms of production and consumption in times and spaces different from those conceived. Those market displays are
interspersed by some indigenous communities, which begin to urbanize and blur the
characterization of their work and collective tradition, in the vertiginous rhythms of
the city and accelerated production.
Achieving the keeping of the community base as the only form of unification
across the territory and handicrafts is only possible by returning to the origin of
the villages, and the exaltation of oral tradition plus artisanal manifestations, as a
material expression of validity and distinction. This thought of resistance against a
society of voracious consumption and production and the acculturation process is
the way of resignifying artisanal luxury as a means of exaltation and protection of
the tradition of autonomous peoples, forgers of culture [10].
The craftsmanship is presented as a pre-industrial mode of production alternative
to modern production, managing to maintain the craft ability to remain in time under
its creation and production times, away from the voracious rhythm of modernity [13].
In contrast to industrial design and its rational connection to modernity, handicrafts maintain an indivisible line of connection between its creator and its creation,
continually reflecting the transformation of culture representation into colors, shapes,
111
These commitments included awareness programs targeting consumers and sanctions to those who produced and sold the replica of the hats. These awareness programs were linked to the media to achieve a massive impact on locals and tourists.
Additionally, a visual campaign was initiated by delivering flyers in the streets of
Cartagena to promote interest to know the traceability of the hat, its artisanal process
and the cultural richness that each piece intrinsically carries from the fabric.
When it comes to protecting the intellectual and cultural property of handicrafts,
government programs that legally protect their ancestral knowledge are essential.
However, these are not enough if they are not accompanied by education programs
focused on the consumer and a commitment from the private sector that promotes
ethical marketing practices.
5 Globalization
The strong demographic growth of the last decades and the current Colombian territorial context connect the handcrafting of indigenous peoples to a framework of
urban development, with new forms of cultural, social, and economic relations. These
new forms propose structures of urban alienation, articulating them with new forms
of capitalist creation and development, thus facilitating the adaptation of ancestral
knowledge and material expressions of popular cultures in different axes of largescale production and commercialization [4]. As a result, craftsmanship is visibly
altered in terms of exclusivity, sustainability, and preservation of the environment.
Commercial transculturalization, typical of globalization, and the opening of borders for free trade between countries cause new economic ideas and games of power
and dominance. They are consequently shaping forms of production and consumption in times and spaces different from those conceived. Those market displays are
interspersed by some indigenous communities, which begin to urbanize and blur the
characterization of their work and collective tradition, in the vertiginous rhythms of
the city and accelerated production.
Achieving the keeping of the community base as the only form of unification
across the territory and handicrafts is only possible by returning to the origin of
the villages, and the exaltation of oral tradition plus artisanal manifestations, as a
material expression of validity and distinction. This thought of resistance against a
society of voracious consumption and production and the acculturation process is
the way of resignifying artisanal luxury as a means of exaltation and protection of
the tradition of autonomous peoples, forgers of culture [10].
The craftsmanship is presented as a pre-industrial mode of production alternative
to modern production, managing to maintain the craft ability to remain in time under
its creation and production times, away from the voracious rhythm of modernity [13].
In contrast to industrial design and its rational connection to modernity, handicrafts maintain an indivisible line of connection between its creator and its creation,
continually reflecting the transformation of culture representation into colors, shapes,