130 michael herzfeld
Craft production has thus largely become an economics-driven response to tourist
demand—or, perhaps more precisely, to what is locally perceived, often through polit-
ically motivated wishful thinking, as tourist demand (see, for example, Hazbun,
2007–08: 26). Yet what is on offer, not infrequently manufactured in locations far
removed geographically from the Mediterranean and reproducing a pattern long
established with the circulation (most notably) of “evil eye” beads (lending credence
to anthropological convictions that this belief system was a peculiarly Mediterranean
phenomenon and associated with the emphasis on jealousy that is such a staple of the
ethnographic literature of the whole region), may instantiate the regional spread and
standardization of form—and of associated stereotypes—but not necessarily of mean-
ing.^8 When these objects are produced far from the region in which they are sold as
“typical,” they mark a routinization—to invoke Max Weber—of what had once been
an interpersonal and familial mode of production linked to a highly interpersonal and
familial set of ideas about social relations. They become instead a commodity for
recapturing a generic nostalgia, a component of—rather than a talisman against—the
social wreckage neoliberal policies are creating around the Mediterranean.
Older craft production also encapsulated two other dimensions that usually disap-
pear or become radically transformed when mechanical reproduction takes over. One
is the sense of a systemic relationship among craft objects, which may also schemati-
cally reproduce the ideal–typical relationships locally assumed to subsist among
people; thus, in a society where men sing aggressive couplets, as in the mountains of
western Crete, it is not surprising to find as well, on woven goods for example, pairs
of opposed animals or stylized humans similarly expressive of what structuralists used
to call complementary opposition. The other dimension is that of the relationships
among the producers. While tourists may appreciate the “diamond in the rough”
quality of the picturesquely rude craftsman (and sometimes even pay a higher price for
the pleasure of being insulted in a sufficiently traditional mode), they are unlikely to
realize that this rudeness is a reflection of bitter rivalries among the artisans them-
selves and of the rough training they receive as apprentices (although there are also
differences largely dictated by more generic norms of interaction within each gender)
(Herzfeld, 2004; Maher, 1987).
These dimensions of the artisan class are not always a source of approval. They
belong to a “Zorba the Greek” view of local character, and may be viewed as more of
a hindrance than a help in the search for a locally-acceptable modernity. “Folklorism”
is a criticism I have heard made in Rome of an elderly street vendor who emphasized
his dialect speech and rough manners, a source of both amusement and irritation to
his neighbors and also a potential embarrassment when dealing with delicate aspects
of official business. Various forms of “informal” dealing such as the Italian arte
dell’arrangiarsi (art of fixing things; for example, Pine, 2012: 22–24; cf. Dines, 2012:
193) are frequently invoked, not only as elements of a local style, but as a stereotypi-
cally Mediterranean excuse for failing to conform to regulations. Such devices, which
reproduce precisely those attributes that lead outsiders to condemn Mediterranean
people (or Italians, or Neapolitans, or even the residents of a particular neighbor-
hood) as feckless and untrustworthy, can work against their bearers’ collective inter-
ests, and the training of artisans often leads to the reproduction of these rough and
disreputable characteristics from one generation to the next and so perpetuates both
the internal class structure and the external judgment that they belong to a relatively