Making Trouble

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.

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.