Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from Diy and Knitting to Youtube and Web 2.0 - Softcover

Gauntlett, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745650023 ISBN 13: 9780745650029

Publisher: Polity Pr, 2011

Synopsis

In Making is Connecting, David Gauntlett argues that through makingthings, people engage with the world and create connections witheach other. Both online and offline, we see that people want tomake their mark on the world, and to make connections.
During the previous century, the production of culture becamedominated by professional elite producers. But today, a vast arrayof people are making and sharing their own ideas, videos, and othercreative material online, as well as engaging in real-world crafts,art projects, and hands-on experiences.
Gauntlett argues that we are seeing a shift from a‘sit-back-and-be-told culture’ to a‘making-and-doing culture’. People are rejectingtraditional teaching and television, and making their own learningand entertainment instead. Drawing on evidence from psychology,politics, philosophy, and economics, he shows how this shift isnecessary and essential for the happiness and survival of modernsocieties.

About this title

About the Author

David Gauntlett is Professor of Media and Communications at University of Westminster, UK, and author of several books including Creative Explorations.

Review

"Gauntlett offers a terrific account of how creativity, craft, and community intersect in the 21st century."
Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody

"Essential reading for media educators. Gauntlett takes us beyond instrumental notions of assessing creative practice or teaching with new media into a more far-reaching and political view of how human beings are finding new ways of making their mark on the world, contributing to culture and 'doing it for ourselves'. In a period where 'experts' are bombarding us with moral panics about 'screen addiction' and 'toxic childhood', usually without any research evidence or attention to the fields of existing literature, Making is Connecting redresses the balance and gives voice to the creative communities, on and offline, too often spoken about from positions of ignorance and suspicion."
Media Education Research Journal

"Gauntlett, who is an engaging man, is to be congratulated on this book which has taken on an enormous field and made a valuable step towards addressing some of the problems presented and the discussions around them."
Communication Research Trends

"A very accessible and sound argument centered on creating and sharing as the cornerstones to individual happiness and healthy community in a society saturated with messages imploring and coercing us to do the exact opposite. Academic but accessible, fun with serious supportive argumentation, full of life and exploding with optimism, I'm certain David Gauntlett's Making is Connecting will inspire in you the fire to make, connect, and do!"
Art Threat

"In a beautifully crafted book, [Gauntlett] explains how making things connects us to our world and to each other...Perhaps more academics should be 'craftivists'."
Alison Adam, Salford University

"Accessible, well constructed, bold and controversial."
Julian McDougall, Newman University College

"Making is Connecting is an inspired call to recognize the relationship between encouraging creativity and fostering an engaged citizenry. If you want to understand how emerging practices in digital participatory cultures can lead to positive transformations in our individual lives and in our societies, you need to read this book."
Lynn Schofield Clark, University of Denver

"Making is Connecting is a remarkably clear, convincing and engaging work. Perhaps the best thing about this book is the way in which Gauntlett draws together the existing literature in this field of creativity and community (particularly online). The book makes sense of Leadbeater, Anderson, Lanier, Shirky and others and shines a light on their strengths and weaknesses in a lucid and convincing fashion."
Andrew Dubber, Birmingham City University

Edition details

• Publisher: Polity Pr
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0745650023
• ISBN 13: 9780745650029
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286