CONSIDERING .
..
Eye on fhe Ball
repetitive tasks. In the context o f a global
econom y, mass production may sometimes
be ethically sounder than artisanal labor.
Buying handmade objects—though the qual-
ity' may w ell be superior-m ay contribute to
the m isery o f people half a w orld away.
L et’s take the example o f the soccer ball,
an object alwaj's made at least partly by
hand, because o f the com plexity o f its pan-
eled construction. Back in 1996, journalist
Sydney Schanberg traveled to Pakistan,
w here the vast majority' o f the w orld’s balls
w ere then made. His exposé, “ Six Cents an
H our,” was published in
L ife ,
and described
children w orking in conditions tantamount
to slavery. “T h e w ords Hand M ade are
printed clearly on every ball,” Schanberg
w rote; “not printed is any explanation o f
w hose hands made them.”
M anufacturers w ere w ell aware that all
publicity is
not
good publicity, and they
w ent to considerable lengths to change the
narrative. N ike, by' many accounts the
w orst offender, signed on to a “ Global
Com pact” to protect human rights. Adidas
prom ised to pressure its Indonesian suppli-
ers. M ore recently', Puma commissioned a
ball from Japanese design consultancy N en-
do. Grandly titled the “ Peace O ne D ay”
ball, it w as decorated w ith the w orld’s con-
tinents, rendered in traditional fabric pat-
terns. Though it may seem a stretch to
claim, as Puma C E O Jochen Z e itz did, that
soccer could “ make a contribution to the
generation o f global peace,” the design sug-
gests h ow sensitive these corporations have
becom e to the ramifications o f globalism.
Controversy' o f a different kind beset the
Jabulani, a ball A didas developed for the
2010 W orld Cup. C overed in slick polyure-
thane, the lightweight ball was meant to be
a technical marvel. Instead, it was a public
ESSAY BY
G lenn A dam son
w
▼
▼ H A T D O E S C R A F T L O O K L IK E ?
Y o u probably have a positive image: T he
furniture maker sawing in a sweet-sm elling
w oodshop, or the potter lining up wheel-
thrown vessels on long boards. But skill is
entirely compatible w ith exploitation. In
fact, if w e look at the w hole global produc-
tion o f handmade products, not just the
artistic objects shown in these pages, it is
obvious that most artisans in the w orld op-
erate under difficult circumstances. O ther
images leap to mind: Garm ent w orkers bent
over sew ing machines, or Andreas Gursky'’s
stunning photograph
N ha Trang, Vietnam ,
w hich shows a vast w orkforce assembling
chairs and baskets from straw.
G ursky’s image is a reminder to those
w ho love craft that automation isn’t all bad.
Karl M arx pointed out long ago that ma-
chines, w hile they' m ight increase a capital-
ist’s profits, also freed w orkers from
Adidas’Jabulani ball,
released for the 2010
World Cup, is an exam-
ple of how quickly
globalization moves,
and raises issues about
how such objects are
fabricated and made
profitable.
062 american craft dec/jan и
Photo Adidas Group
