The intimate geopolitics of charitable knitting: how crafting makes bodies

Abstract

Feminist geopolitics has long been interested in deconstructing the assumptions of its masculinist counterpart, complicating notions of where geopolitics takes place and the agents and actions it involves. The geographies of making have similarly been interested in taken-for-granted processes, bodies and materialities, and the ways that they are implicated in wider cultural and political processes. These two areas converge within the phenomenon of charitable knitting. This article centres around research undertaken at a charity that sends donated knitted objects to refugees, food banks and others in need. Through a set of 15 interviews with knitters and volunteers at the charity, along with my own volunteer ethnography, this paper investigates how the geopolitical imaginations of those involved in the charity, shape its work and constructs certain bodies as being ‘needier’ than others. Making for, or knitting for, these bodies is an important part of the process, both as something that is thought to make connections between bodies, but also as practice that has inherent benefits for those doing the knitting. Through these discussions, the paper considers who ultimately benefits, and is cared for, by the work the charity does.