What does Making Things with Your Own Hands Give and Mean to You? – Experiences About Using Skills of Hands and Producing Artefacts
What does Making Things with Your Own Hands Give and Mean to You? – Experiences About Using Skills of Hands and Producing Artefacts

Summary/Abstract: This article concentrates in the many meanings of the hand making skills have in modern world. The importance of skills of hand has grown dimmer all the time as the technological development has produced new equipment to do the jobs earlier done with hands. The great increase of knowledge has led many to think it can take the place of old hand skills. This way of thinking is totally wrong: the different areas of knowledge are in deep connection with each other and these cannot be separated. Without procedural knowledge (connected to skills, “knowing how”) cannot be declarative knowledge (connected to “knowing that”). The data for this research was collected from students of the Universities of Helsinki and Joensuu in spring 2006. It was analyzed by both authors of this article and the classification was done thoroughly. The results show nicely the many sided essence of the hand skills. The meanings reach from building self conception to economic and therapeutic areas of life. They form a possibility to a modern individual to have a bridge to old times, a channel to fulfil his own desires, ideas and plans. Hand skills make the abstract modern life more concrete, they offer a possibility to use imagination and develop own talents by creating new artefacts by hands.

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