Moves beyond economic success stories to foreground the often-overlooked forms of cultural production created by hobbyists, fans, volunteers, and other artistic communities.
Many modes of culture that are essential to artistic communities are overlooked because research and policy focus primarily on economic success stories in the so-called creative industries. But what about the noncommercial, the nonprofits, the volunteers, the temporary spaces and groups? And what about the glorious failures? Making Worlds and the book series it initiates, Cultural Production and Everyday Life, corrects these oversights by spotlighting the small-scale cultural production of amateurs, hobbyists, autodidacts, and various countercultural scenes.
Miranda Campbell and Benjamin Woo advocate for an ecological view of the grassroots forces that sustain and develop cultural and artistic activity. The authors ground this book in examples from their own involvement in and research with cultural communities, such as comics creators, game players, music scenes, zine makers, artist cooperatives, and fan cultures. Serving as a response to some of the early twenty-first century’s gig-economy boosterism, Making Worlds seeks to document how culture is not only consumed but also produced in everyday practices.