like it's the same kind of assumption that "mass-produced elsewhere" might as well mean "it just kinda materialised" (and credit is given to whoever designed it, not whoever made it)
which might gesture at the what you mean — as in, "the thing you think they're saying with 'hand-made' isn't that, but also the thing you probably *meant* can actually be had, just not from this hip company"
but i'm not sure how much I'd specifically agree with your phrasing? like, i think it's fine if the creator had little agency over the thing they produced (e.g. because it's a mass-produced design made by someone else), as long as they have agency over their job and aren't exploited (or am i just misunderstanding you here? 😅)
@stuebinm @nota@chaos.social I guess I could've been a bit clearer, yeah 🙂 Thanks for the background!
I was thinking to use "agency over their work" to describe what people currently think "artisanal"/"handmade" means, which would implicitly allow for reframing "handmade" as a descriptor of labour rather than as a mark of desirability/uniqueness/craft/etc. - which would in turn hopefully create more room to talk about the *conditions* of that labour, getting rid of the assumption that "someone worked hard for this" is in and of itself a positive property (since as you say, that depends entirely on the working conditions!).
@stuebinm @nota@chaos.social (The deeper background for this is that I've been thinking a lot lately about ways to change my language that actually encodes the relevant properties into the name directly, rather than relying on an assumption that is not universally shared - to make it harder for terms to be coopted.)
@stuebinm @nota@chaos.social (Where "creator" means the person who physically put it together and not the designer, but I'm having trouble finding a better word for this)