"Otto von Busch examines how power is and can be manifested through the material practice of craft and design. Whereas the state's power takes concrete form in infrastructre such as roads, bridges, pipes, walls, fences, cables and cameras, craft objects and craft practice can be used to challenge the power of the capitalist state. Von Busch draws on the political philosophy of William Morris, Mohandas Gandhi and the Zapatistas to trace crafting's radical potential to disrupt the apparatus of market and state. His case studies of radical crafting around the world include craft practices so controversial they are outlawed: moonshining, lock-picking, shoplifting, smuggling, sabotage, Molotov cocktails and other DIY weapons, medical clinics that operate outside state control and the manufacture of unlicensed medicine in the context of unaffordable pharmaceuticals. Von Busch then turns to more positive and hopeful examples of a radical craft practice, drawing on the ideas of what crafts teacher William Coperthwaite calls "socially valid design," where the cultivation of skills and capabilities intersects with the development of civic praxis and social justice. Referencing the infamous CIA Freedom Fighter's Manual alongside the classic Anarchist Cookbook, he explores how craft can disseminate civic skills and autonomy instead of violence. The book concludes on a hopeful note on how designers can help materialize political "thing-power" as part of a strategic progress towards more democratic incarnations of the civic realm, and ultimately use "socially valid" design and craft to work towards justice and peace"--

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.

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!