Crafting Place: Rhetorical Practices of the Everyday explores how everyday rhetorical practices contribute to place- and space-making that enable us negotiate and form identities as well as develop professional skills. The theoretical framework I build is based upon a qualitative research study of a crafting group, The Crafty Beavers, whose members are graduate students. The methods used in the study include oral history interviews and participant-observation of group meetings. By listening to the stories from The Crafty Beavers, I hear their stories as theories and use them as the primary framework for the dissertation project. Their theories draw attention to how practice informs place and place informs practice, especially focusing on the practices of making social spaces when negotiating and adapting to academic places. The everyday practices within the group are carried from spaces of the group and spaces of home into professional spaces of participants' graduate studies. Through these stories and experiences, I develop a theoretical and methodological framework for studying space and place as simultaneously rhetorical, cultural, social, and physical that emphasizes the importance of everyday practice in the making of meaning and the making of space and place. This framework includes five key arguments 1) Space is fluid and relational and exists within and/or alongside place, 2) Place is more stable than space and is given meaning through artifact, language, and practice, 3) Spaces are made to change, adapt, and manipulate places, 4) Space and place are performed in multiple ways simultaneously, and 5) Space and place are mobilized through everyday cultural practices. Ultimately, these stories are about rhetoric and power and indicate a need for increased attention to how everyday practices and places inform professional practices and places.
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