
Making Trouble
Design and Material Activism
Otto von Busch(Author)
Bloomsbury Visual Arts (Publisher)
Published on 10. March 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-350-16254-9 (ISBN)
Description
Making hacks into reality. It engages matter in ways that trespass the boundaries between the civic realm and the state-assigned laws. Even with primitive tools and skills, designing and making can break open and repurpose arrangements of power. The proof is that some crafts are so controversial-lock-picking, moonshining, shoplifting, smuggling, sabotage-that they need to be controlled or even outlawed. When designers and makers touch on these contested realms, they run into trouble. This highly original book explores how the material power of design and making can challenge arrangements of agency and domination. Unpacking a series of conflicting cases-from illegal making to the strategic and civic use of crafts to manifest radical alternatives to the current order-it shows how designers and makers can use even basic tools to work towards more.
Reviews / Votes
This book will change your understanding of activism, design, and politics, fundamentally. Buy it, steal it, or read it, but most importantly: start redesigning things in your life! -- Stellan Vinthagen, Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance and Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA Making Trouble is a fabulous book. It offers an original and timely intervention in scholarly and activist debates and has the added benefit of being beautifully written. I fully expect it will become an instant classic in cross-disciplinary research and contentious political practice. -- Victoria Hattam, Professor of Politics, New School for Social Research, New YorkMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
42 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
312 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-16254-9 (9781350162549)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2022
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
€19.99
Available for download

E-Book
02/2022
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
€19.99
Available for download
Person
Otto von Busch is Associate Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design, USA. He holds a PhD in design from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and was previously Professor of Textiles at Konstfack University, Sweden. He has published articles in The Design Journal, Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty, Fashion Practice, CoDesign Journal, The Journal of Modern Craft, Textile Cloth and Culture, Craft Research, Organizational Aesthetics, Creative Industries Journal and the Journal for Artistic Research, and has contributed chapters on design activism to The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Product Design (2017), The Routledge Companion to Design Research (2015), The Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion (2014), as well as other design anthologies.
Content
Preface
Back to Matter
Activist Making
Affirmative Making
1. Power in the Making
Primitive Making
Matters and Materials
Making between Matter and Meta
2. State Metaxu
Metaxu
State Space - State Matter
State Meta in the Matter
3. Making Matters
Making Leverage
Finding Material Leverage
The Contents of Political Matters
4. Making Agency
Making Change, Making Resistance
Making Material Agency
Manipulating Meta
5. Doing and sitting
Sitting is Not Only Sitting
Royal Crafts and Citizen Consumption
Resistant Sitting
Seated Democracies
6. Recursive Matters
Intensity vs Scale
Making Means and Ends Meet
Pulsation
7. Strategic Objectiles
Material Mobilization
Tactical Presence and its Limitations
Stitch for Senate
8. Material Counter-intelligence
Material Intelligence
Artus and Metis
The Cookies of Cunning
9. Brewing Dissent
Controlled Substances, Controlled Crafts
Misuse and Mischief
Buckets of Evidence
10. Designing Back
Making Civics Tangible
Design and Activism
Material Civic Dissidence
11. Trouble Making and Counter-crafts
Dangerous Makings
Mapping Material Activism
12. Make it Simple
Making Action Spaces
Making Calisthenics
Stay Matter!
Back to Matter
Activist Making
Affirmative Making
1. Power in the Making
Primitive Making
Matters and Materials
Making between Matter and Meta
2. State Metaxu
Metaxu
State Space - State Matter
State Meta in the Matter
3. Making Matters
Making Leverage
Finding Material Leverage
The Contents of Political Matters
4. Making Agency
Making Change, Making Resistance
Making Material Agency
Manipulating Meta
5. Doing and sitting
Sitting is Not Only Sitting
Royal Crafts and Citizen Consumption
Resistant Sitting
Seated Democracies
6. Recursive Matters
Intensity vs Scale
Making Means and Ends Meet
Pulsation
7. Strategic Objectiles
Material Mobilization
Tactical Presence and its Limitations
Stitch for Senate
8. Material Counter-intelligence
Material Intelligence
Artus and Metis
The Cookies of Cunning
9. Brewing Dissent
Controlled Substances, Controlled Crafts
Misuse and Mischief
Buckets of Evidence
10. Designing Back
Making Civics Tangible
Design and Activism
Material Civic Dissidence
11. Trouble Making and Counter-crafts
Dangerous Makings
Mapping Material Activism
12. Make it Simple
Making Action Spaces
Making Calisthenics
Stay Matter!