From hobby to profession: The new paradigm of playful work among neo-craft consumer-entrepreneurs

This paper contributes to the ongoing debates on meaningful work by drawing upon theorizations of libidinal work from classic thinkers such as Fourier, Benjamin and Marcuse, the growing literature on passionate work (Borghi & Murgia, 2019; McRobbie, 2016; Sandoval, 2018), and recent interest in the politics and value of care (The Care Collective, 2020). In doing so, we examine the lived experiences of neo-craft consumers to conceptualise their transformative identity work journeys from hobby-craft enthusiasts to playful entrepreneurial workers. Neo-craft consumers are driven to craft making by leisurely craft values and the pleasures they derive in creating rather than simply consuming products, and in developing the competencies needed for their craft goals (Alba & Williams, 2013). In blurring production and consumption and breaking the neoliberal binary distinction between work and play, neo-craft consumers undergo transformative identity experiences in their juxtaposing of homo faber (the making man) and homo ludens (the playing, passionate, spiritual man) characteristics (Kim & Kwon, 2017; Huizinga, 1955). By deploying original qualitative data, we advance two main arguments. First, we suggest that neo-craft consumers are ‘hobbyfying work’ by harnessing the power of homo ludens values to develop their entrepreneurial work and work identities. Second, we argue that the idea of play is central to the neo-craft values and practices that underpin and define this new hybrid paradigm of ‘playful work’ and the role it plays in neo-craft workers’ identity performances. By building upon the foundations laid by passion and play, a partial but at times dark accomplishment of the antique myth and goal of libidinal work emerges, i.e., the emancipation from alienation and the transformation of work as a practice that can be generative of pleasure and care.