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Do the Arts and Crafts and Slow Food movements have any lessons for democracy? Advocates of “good design” in the late nineteenth century and “good food” in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries thought that taking pleasure in creating and consuming should be one and the same. And that the production of high-quality goods and foods should be accessible to all. The Arts and Crafts movement rebelled against factory drudgery and mass production. The Slow Food movement takes a stand against industrial farming and factory food.

Both movements, as political scientist Nora Hanagan writes, stressed “that democratic societies should restructure their economic systems so as to ensure that workers and consumers are able to experience pleasure.” Essentially, they argued that workers and farmers, and those who consume their products, have a right to be happy at work, at home, in the social sphere. The supporters of these artisanal economics twinned pleasure and democracy, arguing that “a democratic economy must both allow workers to labor joyfully and ensure universal access to material objects that enrich daily life.”

The movements, Hanagan continues, also have a “not entirely undeserved reputation for elitism.” So there is this major caveat: small-d democrats—those committed to the idea of a democracy—inspired by these movements “must make an effort to ensure their understanding of pleasure is inclusive.” Advocates of artisanal crafts and artisanal democracy “must vocally reject the idea that poor and working-class people do not deserve nice things.” Moreover,

[d]emocrats should not take pleasure in objects that were produced though the suffering of others, or that deprive future generations of needed resources. Nor should democrats delight in objects simply because they are inaccessible to others.

Hanagan borrows the philosopher John Dewey’s definition of democracy as “a way of life animated by a ‘working faith in the possibilities of human nature.’” By this,

Dewey means that democrats are willing to give people control over their own lives because they have “faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgement and actions.” Additionally, Dewey explains that democrats are committed to allowing individuals to develop their own gifts and are confident in the ability of individuals to work together to achieve shared goals.

Of course, as Hanagan points out, “providing all citizens with opportunities to perform joyful labor and consume well-made things will require a dramatic restructuring of capitalist economies.” There’s the rub. Writing in 2019, Hanagan noted “it is hard to imagine this kind of restructuring happening in the near future.” Indeed, with authoritarian plutocracy now ever more entrenched, the only restructuring going on is of another order entirely. Nonetheless, in the face of the realities of 2025, thinking about alternatives is a necessity.

While admitting that both Arts and Crafts and Slow Food movements weren’t and haven’t been “particularly effective at realizing” the ideals they espoused, Hanagan still finds their central point worthy of being influential.

“If we are genuinely committed to democracy as a way of life,” she writes, “we should care about the ability of our fellow citizens to experience happiness, and we should be especially concerned about their ability to experience pleasures associated with cooperation, agency, and the development of their own gifts.”

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By: NORA HANAGAN

American Political Thought, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Fall 2019), pp. 479–503

The University of Chicago Press in association with the Notre Dame Program in Constitutional Studies and the The Jack Miller Center