> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Author:: Alex Jensen > Reference:: https://www.localfutures.org/appropriate-technology-traditional-cultures-and-degrowth/#_ednref6 > Date:: 2021 > Tags:: #warp > WeftLinks:: [[Social value of craft]] > Claim:: [[Claim - Craft is a collective activity that forges trust and belonging]] > [!SUMMARY] Summary > Handmaking helps sustain communities. ### Highlights Some of the principles of AT (Appropriate Technology) are: use value over exchange value; social necessity; place-based, hand-made and low- or no-energy; non-polluting; durable but also ultimately safely bio-degradable; democratic and decentralized; and non-alienating.” AT are hand-crafted from local, natural materials, have been used since centuries for subsistence and are based on communal social arrangements. As such, they depend on social relations of cooperation, reciprocal labor and care: “There is no AT in traditional cultures independent of traditional community-based social arrangements: reciprocal labor sharing and care, mutual aid, and the like. The two are mutually constitutive.” The author argues that “traditional tools and crafts are incredibly effective, practical and still relevant today” for their deep sustainability as they are themselves “the result of centuries of careful refinement and innovation”. When done cooperatively in groups and in conditions of economic security, AT conduces to physical and mental well-being, social connection, and control over our lives. “Part of the essence of AT emerges from, in and for community life.” Movements working to rebuild community and decommodify life through projects of sharing and repairing are also pointing the way towards a ‘social AT’: repair cafes, remakeries, tool-lending libraries, and reskilling hubs.