Hello new readers! Let me start by saying that I am very excited to
learn more about makerspaces this semester and I am happy that a mix of
colleagues new and old will join me on this journey!
For our first class, each of us was asked to pick a book about the maker
movement from a list that Kristin compiled. The book I chose was DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social
Media, which is an anthology of pieces edited by Matt Ratto and Megan
Boler. Essentially, the book explores new constructions of political identity
in the context of DIY (do-it-yourself) cultural and technological movements. It
asks questions that interrogate the meanings of citizenship, democracy, and
making while engaging in a broad scholarly conversation that includes a
multitude of scholarly voices. In doing so, the book splits itself into four
parts: DIY and Activism, DIY and Making, DIY and Design, and DIY and Media. The
book’s editors acknowledge that six thematic questions are interwoven
throughout these chapters and form the intellectual core of the anthology.
These questions include 1) Who is the DIY citizen? 2) What are the tools and
practices of DIY citizenship? 3) Is DIY essentially liberatory? 4) What and
where are the spaces and communities of DIY citizenship? 5) What are the roles
of social media in DIY citizenship? 6) What is the role of making for DIY
citizenship? [1]
DIY Citizenship contains a plethora
of voices from the maker movement, from videographers and urban architects to
anti-corporate radio activists and Harry Potter fans in online forums. This
broad coalition means that social media websites, audiovisual equipment, and agricultural
robots are grouped under a DIY/maker classification, and thus relevant to new
conceptions of citizenship and participatory politics. Yet, this book’s vast
collection of scholarly input undermines its ability to provide a concise understanding
of the significance of the book’s contents. Yes, DIY citizenship is an
interesting concept and can be applied to a variety of maker environments, but how
can these ideas be made useful to makers on-the-ground? Beyond deconstructing political
theories, how can constructive solutions be brought about and made applicable
to the average maker or the average activist? The overemphasis on scholarly
voices, resulting from the book’s inception at a conference on these academic
postulations, can stagnate rather than imagine diverse possibilities.
Aside from the broad, over-scholarly tone, DIY Citizenship brings valuable insight on defining maker and
citizenship. Highlighting the role of one becoming producer as well as consumer
in a capitalist society, this book focuses on how maker-related activities “challenge traditional hierarchies of authority and
the existing status quo.” [2] The book also acknowledges difficulties in
addressing digital disparities, asking whether good intentions are enough to
overcome issues of race and historical exclusion from technology [3] or teach “protocols
of engagement” with social media [4] that seems second nature to the teacher,
but not the learner. These reflections on the successes and failures of DIY
civic engagement focus mostly on the relationship of these concepts to their
maker appendages.
This book made me think in a
more theoretical way how maker activities can have broader impact on societies.
The potential for collaborating with technologies to disrupt systems of political
engagement is wide-ranging and brings a sense of hope and anxiety to our
current political context. I will close with Boler and Ratto’s definition of
critical making, as it invites an intriguing discussion on how we might begin
to utilize the tools we find in the makerspace towards a greater purpose.
Critical Making - an activity that provides both the possibility to intervene substantially in systems of authority and power and that offers an important site for reflecting on how such power is constituted by infrastructure, institutions, communities, and practices [5]
--
[1]
[2] Ratto and Boler, DIY Citizenship, p. 5.
[3] Ibid, p. 84.
[4] Ibid, p. 206.
[5] Ibid, p. 1.
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