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Volume 18
New Anthropologies of Europe: Perspectives and Provocations
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Crafting Co-ops in Denmark
Reworking Craftmanship, Construction and Capitalism in a Cooperative Realm
Maia Ebsen
234 pages, 8 ills., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-83695-620-4 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (August 2026)
eISBN 978-1-83695-621-1 eBook Not Yet Published
Reviews
"Based effectively on extensive participant-observation research, the virtue and value of the text lies in its detailed exploration of the entwined tensions that arise between the promise and the pitfalls of both craftwork and collectivism. While the builders at KLAR are idealists, they are also skeptics — and thus are engaging ethnographic subjects from whom the author, and readers, can learn a lot….In short, this is a strong work of ethnography." Heather Paxson, MIT Anthropology
Description
Craft and cooperative practices are resurgent across many European and North American societies. This book explores the revival of cooperative craftwork in Denmark, venturing onto construction sites and into political assemblies to reveal the dreams, drives, and desires of a diverse group of builders in a Copenhagen-based craft co-op. It shows how these builders forge distinct political sensibilities through their daily work - sensibilities that frame their social and political engagement with society at large. In doing so, it illuminates the political capacities of cooperative craftwork, and the practitioners’ complicated relationship with capitalist practices, which they simultaneously refuse, ridicule, and reproduce.
Maia Ebsen is currently Assistant Professor at Aarhus University. She has held various visiting scholar positions at institutions including MIT Anthropology and served as Vice President of the Danish Association of Anthropology from 2019 to 2025.
