DIY: The Search for Control and Self-Reliance in the 21st Century

Kevin Wehr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136449482
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Customs & Traditions
• Index: Social Sciences

From the driveway mechanic to the backyard gardener, many diverse people are "doing it themselves" by building or repairing the stuff of their daily lives without the aid of experts. Do It Yourself uses Habermas's colonization of the lifeworld as a frame and mobilizes Marx's concepts of alienation and mystification to examine how social behaviors can be a conscious reply to a complex and fast-moving world, a nostalgia for simpler times past, or a just an economic impulse. Each main chapter is anchored by an extended empirical example: back-to-the-land, home-schooling, and self-government.

Glossary/Index

A

Abowd, Paul 8, 18

Adorno, Theodore 54

Agnew, Eleanor 15

Ailes, Roger 51

alienation: Karl Marx’s term for the separation of a worker from her product and the life force that went into making that product (associated with mystification and capitalism) 6–7

amateur radio operators 54

American Dream 12, 21

anarchism: literally “without rule,” a political theory of self-organization 42–43, 50

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle 16

Argentinian worker-run factories 36

Auletta, Ken 51

Aurini, Janice 29

authenticity 10, 57

B

back to the land: a social movement where people move from the city to the countryside, usually to live more simply and closer to nature 6, 11–21

backyard gardeners 19–20

barriers to DIY 8–9, 20, 57–58

Berger, Bennett 15

Berkeley cooperative supermarket 36

bicycle messenger cooperative 34

biodiesel 27

Blacker, David 28

blog: a website where the newest content is listed first, generally authored by ordinary people, intended for a wide audience 4, 51–53, 54

Blogpulse 51

Blood, Rebecca 51

Blumer, Herbert 4

Bowles, Samuel 28

C

Cablefish 44

canning 20

capitalism: an economic system where productive capacity is privately owned and run for the benefit of the owners (contrast to communism) 6–7, 8, 58

cooption of DIY movement 25, 26

and DIY media 53

and leisure time 38–39

public schools meeting needs of 33

casual carpools 27

Cheng, Xu 53

childcare groups 27

Christiania 43–45

code enforcement 8–9, 20

colonization of the lifeworld: a term used by Jurgen Habermas to describe the way that money and power invade our personal lives 8, 19, 21, 38–39, 46

Cometbus 54, 55

communes: collectively run intentional communities, where ba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface: Why DIY?
• I. A Good Idea, in Theory
• II. Home and Food
• III. School and Work
• IV. Government and Media
• V. Conclusion: The Search for Control
• References
• Glossary/Index