ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses objects and the meanings associated with them, the politics of socio-cultural transformation that surround making and crafting, and the participatory culture of do-ocracies—especially as it relates to education in schools, museums, and community venues, as well as in a few businesses. People make meaning through making. They also gain pleasure from doing so, “a joie de faire” that Ellen Dissanayake argues from a biobehavioral position. Putting craft and making in historical context, craft arose out of a perceived separation of materials and certain approaches to making that were different from art. American Studies scholar Thomas Schlereth defines the object in the encompassing sense of “concrete evidence of the presence of a human mind operating at the time of fabrication”. The methodological point of view could also be understood to encompass relationships between object makers and what they produce. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
