This article inspects a set of paradoxes that appeared in an investigation of contemporaryudindustrial craft in the last remaining factory making machine lace in the United Kingdom.udIts focus on a single site, set against a now global industry, means it can build on work inudcultural and economic geography to understand this setting as a heterogeneous space, withudlinks to a range of material and immaterial lineages, practices and networks. Ethnographicudfieldwork on the factory floor at Cluny Lace threw up three paradoxes inherent in the firm’sudcontinued survival in a context of industrial decline. The first of these paradoxes is the reconcentrationudof material and immaterial resources in the factory both despite and as audresult of the global restructuring of the textile industry. The second is the embodiment ofudknowledge, and therefore craft skill, both within persons and distributed through theudworker’s material environments. Third, is the recognition that the skilled practice theudworkers carry is not uniform but is multiple, resulting from an unequal distribution ofudopportunities within the lace industry and different versions of practice that result fromudthe re-concentration of human capital in the factory. This article demonstrates that skill isudnot uncontested, but is power-ridden and value-laden, and transcends scale. It shows thatudknowledge and skill are not bound within an individual but are distributed among socialudactors, material objects and locales, where an attention to each is necessary forudunderstanding the spaces of skilled practices and the ongoing survival of contemporaryudindustrial craft production.
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