Fast, Easy, and In Cash

Book excerpt: What happens to skilled craftsmen when global trade brings cheap mass-produced goods to market? Economic anthropologists have been wondering and worrying about the fate of artisans and their crafts for decades. In "Fast, Easy, and In Cash," veteran ethnographers Jason Antrosio and Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld show how disruptive to local economies global capitalism has been, but they also shed light on what it takes to survive as an artisan amid intense competition. Using lively and often surprising examples from collaborative research in Ecuador and Columbia, they describe the time-tested tactics small-batch producers have used to sustain their livelihoods and foster distinctively indigenous forms of capitalism. Antrosio and Colloredo-Mansfeld explain that their stories can teach us not just how to make money in uncertain economic environments but also how to turn work into a socially-conscious activity while defending and expanding local economies. This is a clear-eyed account of how people can successfully respond to the disruptions of global capitalism that will be welcomed by economic anthropologists and anyone else concerned with building sustainable economic communities in neoliberalism s wake."