Craft Economies

Susan Luckman is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries and Director of the Creative People, Products and Places Research Centre at the University of South Australia. Her work is concerned with the intersections of creativity, place, making and technology.Nicola Thomas is Professor of Historical and Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter, UK. Her research addresses craft geographies and situating contemporary and 20th-century craft practice within the broader creative economy.

• 1. Crafting Economies: Contemporary Cultural Economies of the Handmade, Susan Luckman (University of South Australia) and Nicola Thomas (University of Exeter, UK)Part One: Craft, Making and the Creative Economy2. Crafts Community: Physical and Virtual, Xin Gu (Monash University, Australia)3. Fast Forward: Design Economies and Practice in the Near Future, Marzia Mortati (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)4. Craft, Collectivity and Event-time, Katve-Kaisa Kontturi (University of Turku, Finland)5. "Buy a Hat, Save a Life": Commodity Activism, Fair Trade, and Crafting Economies of Change, Lisa A. Daily (NYU Gallatin, USA)Part Two: Craft, the ‘Handmade’ and Contested Commodification6. Towards a Politics of Making: Re-framing Material Work and Locating Skill in the Anthropocene, Chris Gibson and Chantel Carr (University of Wollongong, Australia)7. Dichotomies in Textile Making: Employing Digital Technology and Retaining Authenticity, Sonja Andrew (University of Leeds, UK) and Kandy Diamond (Nottingham Trent University, UK)8. People Have the Power?: Appropriate Technology and the Implications of Design for Labour-intensive Making, Gabriele Oropallo (London Metropolitan University, UK)9. The Ghost Potter: Vital Forms and Spectral Marks of Skilled Craftsmen in Contemporary Tableware, Ezra Shales (Massachusetts College of Art and Design, USA)Part Three: The Work of Craft10. Our Future is in the Making: Trends in Craft Education, Practice and Policy, Julia Bennett (Crafts Council, UK)11. Establishing the Crafting Self in the Contemporary Creative Economy, Susan Luckman and Jane Andrew (University of South Australia)12. Handmaking your Way out of Poverty?: Craftwork’s Potential and Peril as a Strategy for Poverty Alleviation in Rockford, Illinois, Jessica Barnes (Northern Arizona University, USA)Part Four: Craft-driven Place-making and Transnational Circuits of Craft Practice13. Interrogating Localism: What Does “Made in Portland” Really Mean? Stephen Marotta and Charles Heying (Portland State University, USA)14. Policy, Locality and Networks in a Cultural and Creative Countryside: The Case of Jingdezhen, China, Troy Zhen Chen (University of the Arts London, UK)15. Design Recycle Meets the Product Introduction Hall: Craft, Locality and Agency in Northern Japan, Sarah Teasley (RMIT University, Australia)16. Crafted Places/Places for Craft: Pop-up and the Politics of the “Crafted” City, Ella Harris (Birkbeck University of London, UK)Part Five: Technology, Innovation and Craft17. Knitting and Crochet as Experiment: Exploring Social and Material Practices of Computation and Craft, Gail Kenning (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) and Jo Law (University of Wollongong, Australia)18. Towards New Modes of Knowledge Production: Makerspaces and Emerging Maker Practices, Angelina Russo (Global Centre for Modern Ageing, Australia) 19. The Post-digital: Contemporary Making and the Allure of the Genuine, Keith Doyle, Hélène Day Fraser and Philip Robins (Emily Carr University of Art + Design)20. Crafting Code: Gender, Coding and Spatial Hybridity in the Events of PyLadies Dublin, Sophia Maalsen (University of Sydney, Australia) and Sung-Yueh Perng (Maynooth University, Republic of Ireland)ReferencesIndex

Susan Luckman and Nicola Thomas have drawn deeply and carefully from the world’s well of the contemporary craft economy. Their pluralistic, international approach makes for a complex and counterpointed book of essays. Craft emerges from statistics as a still humanistic practice: hovering with creative intelligence in the body politic of culture and the economy.