Contemporary craft, art and design are inseparable from the flows of production and consumption under global capitalism. The New Politics of the Handmade features twenty-three voices who critically rethink the handmade in this dramatically shifting economy. The authors examine craft within the conditions of extreme material and economic disparity; a renewed focus on labour and materiality in contemporary art and museums; the political dimensions of craftivism, neoliberalism, and state power; efforts toward urban renewal and sustainability; the use of digital technologies; and craft's connections to race, cultural identity and sovereignty in texts that criss-cross five continents. They claim contemporary craft as a dynamic critical position for understanding the most immediate political and aesthetic issues of our time.

The strange cries heard at night in a dilapidated penitentiary, the glimpse of a `White Lady' floating through a graveyard, the face at the window in a room that has been locked for decades - stories of hauntings never cease to intrigue us. From palaces to prisons, from an 11th century chateau in France to 'The Island of the Dolls' in Mexico City, Haunted Places features the world's most fascinating spooky locations. Some hauntings are recent, others are ancient, but all the stories are striking: from the deceased monks who pace the boundaries of a ruined former priory, to the lift operator in a Canadian hotel still working his shift decades after he died, to the infamous Vlad the Impaler, who haunts a Romanian castle where he was imprisoned for seven years. With tales of the `Mad Old Woman' who searches Highgate cemetery in London for the children she supposedly murdered to strange laughter heard at night, from apparitions to floating orbs to radios suddenly changing station, Haunted Places features 150 outstanding photographs of haunted sites. Each eerie photograph is accompanied by a caption explaining the story of the haunting, from tragic accidents to brutal murders, from executions to disease and other sorrowful endings.