TY - JOUR
T1 - Making and its promises
AU - Lindtner, Silvia
AU - Lin, Cindy
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under awards 1513596 and 1321065, the Intel Science and Technology Centre for Social Computing, and the Lieberthal-Rogel Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. We thank all the participants in our research as well as Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Marisa Cohn, Stefanie Wuschitz, Jean Hardy and Seyram Avle for comments on drafts. We also thank our long-term research collaborators Lifepatch, Sachiko Hirosue, Eric Pan, Kevin Lau, David Li, Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, Anna Greenspan and Andrew Moon.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2017/4/3
Y1 - 2017/4/3
N2 - A fundamental goal of Participatory Design (PD) scholarship has long been the democratisation of technology production. To democratise technology production in PD is a political project, driven in part by the desire to protect and create democratic societies by virtue of opening up computing and design. Recently, DIY (do it yourself) making has come to be seen by PD scholars as rejuvenating such ideals at the heart of their project. Beyond just PD, the idea that making is an ideal avenue to implement societal and political change has been endorsed by a variety of actors from politicians, corporates and activists, across regions. In this paper, we draw from long-term ethnographic research in China and Indonesia to show how making’s global appeal does not arise from its supposedly inherent logic of democratisation. Rather, work goes into aligning making with particular political ideals. We found that the political projects and promises people attached to making were highly situated. We propose that by recognising this multitude of promises attached to making we can better understand opportunities for intervention, rather than assume that making will by virtue of its commitment to open-ness and participation inherently lead to a more democratic and participatory society.
AB - A fundamental goal of Participatory Design (PD) scholarship has long been the democratisation of technology production. To democratise technology production in PD is a political project, driven in part by the desire to protect and create democratic societies by virtue of opening up computing and design. Recently, DIY (do it yourself) making has come to be seen by PD scholars as rejuvenating such ideals at the heart of their project. Beyond just PD, the idea that making is an ideal avenue to implement societal and political change has been endorsed by a variety of actors from politicians, corporates and activists, across regions. In this paper, we draw from long-term ethnographic research in China and Indonesia to show how making’s global appeal does not arise from its supposedly inherent logic of democratisation. Rather, work goes into aligning making with particular political ideals. We found that the political projects and promises people attached to making were highly situated. We propose that by recognising this multitude of promises attached to making we can better understand opportunities for intervention, rather than assume that making will by virtue of its commitment to open-ness and participation inherently lead to a more democratic and participatory society.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85017210825&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85017210825&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15710882.2017.1308518
DO - 10.1080/15710882.2017.1308518
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85017210825
SN - 1571-0882
VL - 13
SP - 70
EP - 82
JO - CoDesign
JF - CoDesign
IS - 2
ER -