In­vi­ta­tion to @bout time se­mi­nar with Ro­bin Holt

Time and the Tyranny of Tradition in Craft Work.

Calling on empirical work in Japan and the philosophy of Mingei, I will discuss how experiences of time become culturally venerated, to a point where they confiscate agency. The advocates of Mingei were anxious that the effects of rapid industrialization and technological advances would erode the values and rituals by which humans felt able to distinguish between a life being led and leading a good life. Such a distinction demands pause, it takes time to mull over and reflect upon, and the technologies of work have no such time. Enthusing over the collective rhythms of traditional hand work, Mingei extols a world of community and natural connexion where things are made and used in tune with, rather than opposition to, life. In the current blossoming of interest in craft work, often invoked as an alternative to the burgeoning spread of machine learning, replays the concerns of Mingei thinking: How to recover the thoughtful touch of human creativity amid the accelerating rush of technological development. In explicating the worldview of Mingei I will consider critically how craft work might be enlisted to re-organize emerging patterns of work life. 

Biography 

Robin Holt is Professor of Strategy and Aesthetics at the University of Bristol Business School, U.K. and Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University. He investigates the nature of organizational form. Working in Scandinavia, the UK and Japan, he has studied the emergence of new organizations like entrepreneurial ventures; the shaping of organizations through strategic practice; and the intimacy between organizational form, work practice, ethics and aesthetics. He has written and edited 10 books, including The Poverty of Strategy: Organization in the Shadows of Technology with Mike Zundel (Cambridge, 2023), Judgment and Strategy (Oxford University Press), Strategy Without Design with Robert Chia (Cambridge, 2009), and most recently Craft Work: Making Form in a Broken World (Cambridge, 2026). He is currently co-editing The Handbook of Craft, Work and Technology for Bristol University Press. 

Questions regarding the seminar can be sent to Christian de Cock, cdc.ioa@cbs.dk