Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Craft Economies provides a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary craft production, situating practices of amateur and professional making within a wider creative economy. Contributors address a diverse range of practices, sites and forms of making in a wide range of regional and national contexts, from floristry to ceramics and from crochet to coding. The volume considers the role of digital practices of making and the impact of the maker's movement as part of larger trends around customisation, on-demand production, and the possibilities of 3D printing and digital manufacturing.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Illustrations (p. vii)
• Notes on Contributors (p. ix)
• 1 Crafting economies: Contemporary cultural economies of the handmade (p. 1)
• Part 1 Craft, making and the creative economy (p. 15)
• 2 Crafts community: Physical and virtual (p. 17)
• 3 Fast forward: Design economies and practice in the near future (p. 28)
• 4 Craft, collectivity and event-time (p. 38)
• 5 'Buy a Hat, Save a Life': Commodity activism, fair trade and crafting economies of change (p. 49)
• Part 2 Craft, the 'handmade' and contested commodification (p. 59)
• 6 Towards a politics of making: Reframing material work and locating skill in the Anthropocene (p. 61)
• 7 Dichotomies in textile making: Employing digital technology and retaining authenticity (p. 70)
• 8 People have the power: Appropriate technology and the implications of labour-intensive making (p. 83)
• 9 The ghost potter: Vital forms and spectral marks of skilled craftsmen in contemporary tableware (p. 94)
• Part 3 The work of craft (p. 105)
• 10 Our future is in the making: Trends in craft education, practice and policy (p. 107)
• 11 Establishing the crafting self in the contemporary creative economy (p. 119)
• 12 Handmaking your way out of poverty?: Craftwork's potential and peril as a strategy for poverty alleviation in Rockford, Illinois (p. 129)
• Part 4 Craft-driven place-making and transnational circuits of craft practice (p. 139)
• 13 Interrogating localism: What does 'Made in Portland' really mean? (p. 141)
• 14 Policy, locality and networks in a cultural and creative countryside: The case of Jingdezhen, China (p. 150)
• 15 Design Recycle meets the product introduction hall: Craft, locality and agency in northern Japan (p. 162)
• 16 Crafted places/places for craft: Pop-up and the politics of the 'crafted' city (p. 173)
• Part 5 Technology, innovation and craft (p. 185)
• 17 Knitting and crochet as experiment: Exploring social and material practices of computation and craft (p. 187)
• 18 Towards new modes of knowledge production: Makerspaces and emerging maker practices (p. 198)
• 19 The post digital: Contemporary making and the allure of the genuine (p. 213)
• 20 Crafting code: Gender, coding and spatial hybridity in the events of PyLadies Dublin (p. 223)
• Index (p. 233)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Luckman (cultural studies, Univ. of South Australia) and Thomas (cultural geography, Univ. of Exeter, UK) have assembled 20 essays by scholars and makers representing craft communities and craft-related issues worldwide. Presented under five topical headings--"Making and the Creative Economy," "The 'Handmade' and Contested Commodification," "The Work of Craft," "Craft-Driven Placemaking and Transnational Circuits of Craft Practice," and "Technology, Innovation and Craft"--the essays wrestle with a wide variety of subjects, most of which concern the conditions of craft today: the impact of digital media on craft, the elimination of craft education in schools, the relationship of craft to industry, craft and women's time, entrepreneurship on the web, craft and poverty, questions of the local, the authentic, and the genuine, and more. This is commendable scholarship and a must read for anyone involved in making or teaching crafts. Summing Up: Recommended. Researchers, practitioners, students in technical programs. --Jack Quinan, emeritus, independent scholar

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Susan Luckman is Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of South Australia and Associate Director for Research and Programmes of the Hawke EU Centre for Mobilities, Migrations and Cultural Transformations. Her research explores cultural work, creative industries and creative micro-entrepreneurialism.
Nicola Thomas is Associate Professor in Cultural Historical Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. Her research focuses on the links between culture, economy and society and has included such topics as geography of craft and geography of creative practice.