What is puppetry?

Puppetry is an art that has what seems to be an almost infinite range. It's really hard to define, because puppets are never just one thing, and are used in several spheres of performance. Puppets can be anything from body parts to anthropomorphic objects to Muppets to large scale paper mache (and even more) It's hard to define puppetry because an art that can go from bunraku to shadows seems almost incomprehensible, and I think that that might be the point. Puppetry is a way of anthropomorphizing things that do not normally have a voice or character in order to better communicate ideas, needs, and images, as well as a way to cope with an uncontrollable world by manipulating something that IS controllable.